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Published: June 20th 2007
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Hi guys,
Since my last entry I have a fair amount of information so here goes.
On the 13th of June, Nima, one of the guys I was hanging about with at the "West Lake" hostel asked me if I wanted to go with him for a cruise down the Yangzi river, this was at 4:30pm. By 4:45 I was packed and ready to go (as long as I could get a train ticket that was). The guys who worked at the hostel were very upset as I was supposed to stay untill friday and Nima and myself were pretty popular there; no matter though as I took all of their email addresses and sent them some messages.
We arrived at the train station at about 5:20 and I got a ticket no problem. When inside the station, waiting to go through the gate we met a French guy and had a chat with him but apart from that, we were the only non Chinese people on in the statation and beleive me, were the full center of attention. The whole time we joked at situation and compared it to a scenario from one of Michael Palin's adventures;
The Boat
Check out the Deluxe Boat. and apparantly I remind Nima of Michael Palin as some of the way I say things is like him (can't see it myself).
Anyway, for the train we opted for the Hard Sleeper, which means that the whole carrage is sectioned and each section has 6 bunk beds (see the photos). The best bit was that no other person was actually staying in our section but we made some friends with the people in the section next to us. The train took about 22 hours to reach Yichang.
After getting to Yichang we went for food near to the station and made our way to the river to try and find a travel agent that spoke English so we could book the boat. At first they tried to sell us the tourist boat which was a propper cruise ship with jacizi and swimming pool. We didn't want that of course as it was very enpensive and we wanted to hang out with the chinese people so we insisted in the Chinese boat. The quality of rooms was either 1st, 2nd or 3rd class, so being real travellers we opted for 3rd class which was 6 people to a room,
Anchors Away
Nicely Decorated and hoped for the best. The boat was the friday so we found a good hotel took some pictures and settled down for the night.
The next day we went to visit the 3 Gorges Dam which when finished will be the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. After leaving the dam tourist entrance we found it hard to find a taxi and needed to get to a bus stop for the number 8. The road main road was about 6 lanes wide, dusty and virtually deserted. Nima had the umbrella to shelter from the blazing sun and I have the chinese fan, which we swapped from time to time. I decided to take a chance and flagged down one of the few vehicles, said "bus bus" in chinese to the driver and he knew what we meant. We arrived back at the hotel, collected our bags and made our way to the boat station with about 15 minutes to go.
We were given a tour guide who just about spoke English with a bit of thinking about what to say next and were shown to our room. We happened to be sharing with 2 young Chinese couples
and by the time we arrived they had already started smoking and filling up the ash trays with orange peel and the rest of the pips they had spat out. After realising that 3rd class wasn't just a bad idea but probably bad for our health, we happend to bump into a girl named Sarah who also was not enjoying her room so we decided all to upgrade to 2nd class (4 beds) and get a room togeather; buy some strong alchohol from the shop and celebrate.
The whole trip was good and lasted 3 nights. We met some other foreign people on the boat who were on guided tours and I bought some little souviners on the way from the stop off points; rock on.
The boat docked fully in Chongqing which believe it or not is actually pronounced "ChongChing", no stereotyping there. Chongqing is a pretty cool place but there are no hostels so we opted for a posh hotel room in the "World Traders Hotel" for all 3 of us.
I have to be out of China by the 24th at the latest and have decided to meet Anna Palmer (http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/annabanana82) in Vietnam for
the 29th June. I got the train from Congqing to Kunming which left at 13:30 on the 19th and arrived at about 10am on the 20th.
So here I am in Kunming. I have submitted my application to the Vietnam Embassy, pick up my Visa on the 22nd and can't wait to meet Anna.
See you soon folkes.
Jamie
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Claire
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Looking Good
Hi Jamie Looks like you're having a blast. I was starting to worry about you when there was no posting for 12 days-glad to hear from you at last. It makes the dreary days at JD easier to bear!! Take care Claire xx