Last night I was asked by one of my future coworkers to join her for dinner and then a poker match in a part of Suzhou that is new to me: Water Alley Neighborhood, also known as Ligongdi Road.
This part of Suzhou is very expat friendly with lots of international style restaurants and pubs and tons of English spoken. The place where we played poker, Ollie’s, is a restaurant/bar that sometimes has live music, a pool table, a few different beers on tap that come in the customary 1L glass, and a semi-private area in the back for the poker league. I did not sample the food at Ollies — maybe next time — but I did have a litre of beer.
While I didn’t do too much exploring of the various restaurants and bars in this area, Google Maps seems to detail them pretty well as you can see in the picture below.
But where is this neighborhood in relation to everything else? Yeah, I heard you ask that question. Ligongdi Rd is on the southwestern corner of Jinji Lake (金鸡湖), seemingly in the middle of everything yet not really that easy to get to via public transit. A 30 minute cab ride from this neighborhood to where I’m staying in Moon Bay was 30 yuan (元), or less than $5 USD. (Considering the bus would cost only 2元, it’s could be pretty expensive if you’re on a budget … ) Anyway, I decided a visual representation of the various expat friendly neighborhoods or areas is needed:
Currently I’m living in Moon Bay, which is a short 20 minute walk to work. There’s a few things in this area for those who only speak English, but not much: Coconut Bar (expat type restaurant and bar, a bit on the pricey side), Papa John’s Pizza, Four Points Sheraton Hotel, three different Starbucks, and a Subway restaurant. Do not expect to do much shopping in this area nor expect the Chinese restaurants to have picture menus. On a post another day, I’ll detail the neighborhood a bit more, same with Times Square.
How did poker night turn out? It was my first time playing in a real game in 3 or 4 years, so I was happy that I was not the first one “out” for the night. I ended in the lower third, but that’s ok as it was fun and was good to meet some new people! It would’ve been nice, though, if my best hand of the night didn’t wasn’t a suited King-10. (No pairs! No Aces! No suited connectors. Ugggh. Maybe next time…)
