Xitang is one of the ancient water towns of China, some say it is the Venice of China, although you probably cannot compare them. It is about half an hour out of Shanghai on the bullet train, then 1 hour on the local bus. 

We were just about over old towns by this stage, so we just had a bit of down time. The room was tiny and the beds were hard. Xitang is quite picturesque, especially the waterways, but at night time it is party central when the large nightclubs open. One particular pub had a llama at the front door, I started taking pictures and the lady quickly grabbed a sign we couldn’t understand so we walked away. We found a good food place, he made really nice breakfast crepe things with egg, bacon and spice. For dinner 4 good size dishes was only 40 yuan, about 8 bucks. 

It was raining on the day we were heading back to Shanghai, so the owner of the hotel ran out in the rain and down the street to look for a taxi for us. About 5 mins later a taxi pulls up and he jumps out all smiles. He didn’t speak English, in fact no one in this town spoke English, but we still managed to communicate with people, through Google translate and lots of gesturing.