We Give Thanks For... Yichang?!?

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So we departed the boat, and fortunately Hong had a map of the town, which showed that the train station was only 3k from the dock. My miles/kilometres conversion skills leave a bit to be desired but I think thats about one mile. Most of the other passengers were already sorted and got straight on their buses. The taxi drivers wanted to charge us 100Y for a mini-bus into town. We didn't want to pay that much for something that was so close, and there were no public buses. They were all bastards and were talking to each other telling each other not to take less than 100 (I understood that much!) Fortunately, one of the lovely boys who worked on the cruise was just starting his holiday, and we saw him. We managed to ask him for help and get a mini-bus for 50Y instead. All the Chinese people were talking to Hong like he understood them, even though he kept telling them he didn't, and I think that China must be an awful place to visit if you look Chinese but don't speak the language. At least because I don't look Chinese, everyone makes allowances when they're talking to me.

It turns out the map we had must have been dead old because we were in the taxi for ages, and it was definitely a distance we couldn't have walked, even if we hadn't had our bags & was really hilly too. Our trip involved driving through all the ghettos of Yichang, and we were pretty sure the driver was going to chuck us out and have away with all our stuff. Turns out he just wanted to show us the Dam of Yichang. That was pretty sweet of him, to want to show us Yichang's one tourist attraction, but a bit misguided considering he knew we'd just had three days of Dam-related goodness on the boat, and were all dam-ed out. We took the boys to the train station and they ran for their train to Shanghai. I tried to buy tickets from Yichang to Chengdu, and managed to buy them before realising I already had the first leg that I'd bought in Chongqing. I now had two tickets for two trains that made the exact same journey, three hours apart. Me and Jacie were tired, and this little mistake made us hysterical for a good five minutes outside the train station. We got a lot of funny looks from all the Chinese people. We calmed ourselves down and tried to get another taxi, thinking it would be easy to get one who was willing to use the meter at the train station. WRONG. Again, the drivers all conspired against us in Chinese to try and get us to pay 20Y. They also thought it was fucking hilarious that there was two of us, and surrounded us like little Chinese puppies after a treat. We started to get pissed off and just thought the best bet was to halve it and try for that. We managed to get a taxi in the end for 10Y even though the journey should probably have cost about 3Y.

Having checked into our hotel (that I'd managed to book all by myself!) we went to find internet and Turkey. It was Canadian Thanksgiving that day, and I'd been foolishly promising Jacie a turkey sandwich for days, not realising what a dump Yichang was. We were willing to settle for a rotisserie chicken, but couldn't even find that. A sweet old man at the supermarket showed me how to know which mandarins to buy, which is information that I was grateful to recieve. We bought tons of food at the supermarket and went back to our hotel room. Although the guide said we did have the Chinese English language channel, we didn't. Instead we watched hours of diving competitions, pingpong, volleyball, circus acts & cartoons. One of the divers had marks from cupping all over his back, which was cool. (On a related note, I also drank 2 litres of water that day, just like a good girl) One of the cartoons was a bit apocalyptic, and freaked me out a bit.

The next day we had to get up early for our train at 10am. The train was totally empty and I sneaked into the hard sleeper section from my hard seat and me and Jacie played cards. I learnt how to play Kings in a Corner, which I'm sure I learned when I was 11, but I'm rubbish at card games and always forget them a few hours later. I did win a few times though, so maybe I should try and remember this one. I got off the train at 2pm at a place called Xiangfan that I think is just a town built around a really huge train station, but the waiting room wasn't too dirty so I didn't care. I had to wait until 10pm for my train, so I claimed a big row of seats and sprawled out. Unfortunately, I'd only been able to get a hard seat ticket, for the 12 hour journey which is the worst kind. Actually no, the worst kind is standing (which they even sell for journeys that take 30-40 hours) and you just wander around looking for a vacant seat. Highlights of the wait in the train station were when a man who was sat opposite me came and stood behind to see what I was writing, over my shoulder. He then sat down next to me, peered at my book again, and beckoned his friend over to see. His friend came over, and they had a full 5 minute conversation all about me, while completely ignoring me and then walked off. Later on, two young boys, (about my age) were sat opposite me, and tried to surreptitiously take a picture of me with his camera phone, but forgot about his flash. They then tried to be all nonchalent about it by looking round as though they wondered where the flash came from. Life in the country, eh??

My train was a little bit late which caused me a bit of panic as I don't know the word for late and the train station was huge so I was convinced I should have been somewhere else. There was another train leaving twenty minutes before mine that had one number different that I tried to board but fortunately the guard saw it wasn't right and sent me back. God knows where I'd have ended up. Finally the train arrived and I went to board.

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