OK, so we have a place to live, so we really don't need a hotel, do we? Well we don't, but we have friends/family or others coming in from out of town and while having them stay at your house can be great, sometimes it just isn't the best option.
Maybe you are coming to visit Suzhou and stumbled onto this or maybe you need a place to stay while you are looking for an apartment. Either way, hotels in China can be a daunting task if you don't know what you're doing.
Before we go any further I need to point out that this is called "Suzhou on a Shoe String" and not "a night at the Marriott". Decide now if you want to be forever resigned to staying at the 'western" hotels because you can't bear to think that there is no other way to do things than a western-style soft bed or a breakfast that involves bacon, eggs and cereal.
If you want to go "Western Style" hotels then jump over to Trip Advisor and sort by price, highest to lowest. Select any of those "top" hotels at $100+ USD per night and you'll do just fine. But for the rest of us cheap-skates... keep reading.
My personal philosophy on hotels and beds in China in general is "don't knock it till you've tried it" and by "tried it" I mean at least a month on a truly hard Chinese bed. I admit the first week or even 2 is a difficult prospect, you'll wake up in the night with your arm asleep and you'll wake up sore and still pretty tired. But after a week or two guess what, your body will adjust and so will you. After that initial adjustment you will actually be able to sleep comfortably on either style bed! I don't like a rock-hard bed, it still isn't my favorite, but a lower-end Chinese hotel? No problem! I can't tell you how nice it is to NOT be one of those foreigners who complains about the beds or the toilet or the spitting every single time I open my mouth. It is just negative and counter productive, so don't do it!
Ok, that is another topic for another day. Let's get back to the hotels. There are truly some decent hotels that are insanely cheap if you know where and how to look. For starters there are some hotel chains here in China that are really "mostly decent" and will give you at least a similar experience every time. There is something to be said for that and you can be comfortable once you've tried them. Here is a run down of them:
Maybe you are coming to visit Suzhou and stumbled onto this or maybe you need a place to stay while you are looking for an apartment. Either way, hotels in China can be a daunting task if you don't know what you're doing.
Before we go any further I need to point out that this is called "Suzhou on a Shoe String" and not "a night at the Marriott". Decide now if you want to be forever resigned to staying at the 'western" hotels because you can't bear to think that there is no other way to do things than a western-style soft bed or a breakfast that involves bacon, eggs and cereal.
If you want to go "Western Style" hotels then jump over to Trip Advisor and sort by price, highest to lowest. Select any of those "top" hotels at $100+ USD per night and you'll do just fine. But for the rest of us cheap-skates... keep reading.
My personal philosophy on hotels and beds in China in general is "don't knock it till you've tried it" and by "tried it" I mean at least a month on a truly hard Chinese bed. I admit the first week or even 2 is a difficult prospect, you'll wake up in the night with your arm asleep and you'll wake up sore and still pretty tired. But after a week or two guess what, your body will adjust and so will you. After that initial adjustment you will actually be able to sleep comfortably on either style bed! I don't like a rock-hard bed, it still isn't my favorite, but a lower-end Chinese hotel? No problem! I can't tell you how nice it is to NOT be one of those foreigners who complains about the beds or the toilet or the spitting every single time I open my mouth. It is just negative and counter productive, so don't do it!
Ok, that is another topic for another day. Let's get back to the hotels. There are truly some decent hotels that are insanely cheap if you know where and how to look. For starters there are some hotel chains here in China that are really "mostly decent" and will give you at least a similar experience every time. There is something to be said for that and you can be comfortable once you've tried them. Here is a run down of them:
Motel 168 - If you have been in China for any time at all you'll see the Motel 168's everywhere. What is the deal with them? Well they are pretty hard beds, I'd say they are a 3/10 for bed hardness, 1 being sleeping literally on hardwood and 10 being the softest mattress known to man. A 3/10 is perfectly ok and if you've done your 2-weeks of boot camp on a Chinese bed then you are good to go! So the gimmick with Motel 168 is that your price per night should be roughly 168. That is 168 RMB per night folks! They have them near every major train/bus station and there is even an airport Motel 168 between the two terminals at Pudong in Shanghai. The airport version is actually nicer but also smaller, and the cost is double at all the airport ones, so expect to pay a whopping 336 RMB because, well... it is the airport. I have stayed at at the airport one and it is just fine, you can even take your bag cart from the airport all the way up to your room, though it is very tight getting them in the rooms. If you consider the cost of an early morning driver to Pudong from Suzhou is about 450 RMB+, why not take the train or shuttle bus the night before and try Motel 168. You can check their rates at http://www.motel168.com/hotelFast.html and enter 苏州 for Suzhou! There are 9 of them in the Suzhou area, click HERE for the one at Walking Street and 5 minutes from Metro Stations.
This is another reasonably priced chain with lots and lots of them around China. HERE is their website. They are a bit nicer than the Motel 168 in my opinion, though they are very close. There are lots of these everywhere and the price is about the same too!