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Published: December 13th 2008
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After finishing our river trip we had to take a 5 hour bus ride from Yichang to Wuhan or order to catch an overnight train to Shanghai the next day. Wuhan is a smaller city by comparison with only 10 million people ;o) Technically it's 3 towns merged into 1 now straddling the river Yangtze.
Things got off to a bumpy start when the bus driver arrived on the opposite side of the city, outside a hotel and made strong gestures for everyone to get off. What followed was a typical example of why China still has a long way to go before it can claim to be civilised. There was a lot of raised voices and shouting as not only were we expecting to be on the other side of the river but apparently so did the rest of the passengers. After 5 minutes of frantic yelling and arm waving at the bus conductor the entire bus full of people got off and headed into the hotel. We couldn't understand a word of what was being said but we knew that things were not going well when the bus driver got off and slung our bags onto the pavement
outside and shouted at us to get off. Luckily for us there was a Chinese businessman (from Beijing) travelling with us called "Xhang" who spoke good English (which in China is a rare thing indeed) and who was also trying to find out why the bus wasn't going to the east side of the city. Xhang explained to us that this bus was only dropping everyone at this single hotel for the night, apparently that was their instructions. He also said this kind of thing happened all the time!! We explained that we had paid extra money to the Chinese travel agency that had sorted the river cruise and bus tickets and they reassured us that it would go to the east side of the city in order for us to get to the main bus terminal to pick up a local bus to get to our hostel, which incidentally had our overnight sleeper train tickets and a room reservation for the night. Claire got off the bus to stand with the bags whilst Xhang proceeded to explain to the bus driver and conductor what we had been told (also showing them the travel agency business card we had). They
were clearly having none of it and despite Xhang's best efforts, he said we all needed to get off the bus. Xhang suggested we entered the reception of the hotel and he would try to get us some more help. It was now 8:30pm and Xhang had been told that no buses ran to the east side at this time. We thought rubbish!! Our experience so far has taught us that public transport runs until at least 10pm, we were clearly being fobbed off here.... eventually from absolutely nowhere as if a fairy had magically sprinkled some "let's be civilised and courteous to our weary foreign travellers" dust, one of the bus company conductors still in the reception area agreed to take us to the east side of the river. Xhang, who was surprised himself ask a few more probing questions to the conductor and shook his head in disgust. Apparently after all the fuss and distress we had been put through, the same bus complete with the same driver was now outside ready to take people from the hotel for it's next stop... yes you've guessed it the east side bus terminal. Needless to say although we didn't speak
Friends from the River Trip
The guys stayed in his uniform for the whole 4 days. Lovely couple though. any Chinese, we know that they understood what we thought of the whole situation. We eventually got to our hostel very late and crashed.
Wuhan itself is ok for a day visit. We checked out the Yellow Crane Temple on Snake Hill and bumped onto some fellow river cruise passengers (a military officer and his wife), they didn't speak any English and we didn't speak any Chinese but managed to smile and make pleasant greeting sounds together.
Back at the Wuhan youth hostel Andy added some art work to the guest wall, you'd think after eleven years he would be able to spell "Claire" by now! It should be noted that if you intend to stay at the Wuhan Youth Hostel during winter time be prepared for sub zero room temperatures even with the heating on full blast!
Later we boarded the sleeper train bound for Shanghai and a chance to catch up with our Uni friend Markie Boy.
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