Friday 17th July 2009 Yangzi River

---

Friday 17th July 2009 Yangzi River
We were once again woken at 5.30 by the ships morning call but we had no intention of going anywhere. There was another trip on up some other river but we were giving this one a miss. The mother in our room decided that 5 am was time to have full volume conversations though so it was hard to get back to sleep until they had left for the tour then we lay in til about 9 and went up on deck to read books for a while. There is another odd thing about these ships and Chinese tourists, any area of deck or around the railing on the side are full of washing. The passengers all do their washing on board and hang everything out, knickers and all to dry on deck. The same was going on on lots of other boats too, been in the mix of a wholly Chinese tour group has been an interesting experience. It wasn’t too long til we pulled into our final port and we bade farewell to our ship, we had to walk across another ship to go ashore though and seeing the conditions on that ours did look like a real cruise ship. This was a floating Mount Joy prison, with 2cm mattresses on iron bunks in cabins of 6 people with no bathroom. Thank god we didn’t have that or I’d say we would have snuck off in the life raft during the night.

We hadn’t bothered with the final excursion either, to see the three gorges dam itself. It would have been nice to see but the bus was going there for 3 hours and I can think of better ways to spend my time then looking at a big wall for 3 hours. We didn’t actually find one though and spent the next 2 hours on the bus to Yichang. We did manage to get a glimpse of the dam as we were driving along, it is what it is I suppose, its big alright I’ll give them that. In Yichang we were to be picked up by a bus that our tour guide had organized to bring us to Wuhan to get a train to Xi’an, sounds simple doesn’t it. First difficulty was that we got on and there were not enough seats for us. I don’t think they are allowed have the foreigners or Lawais as I think we are known here as there was a lot of screaming and arguing about trying to shift people around. Finally a couple found there way onto another bus and we got our customary last seats at the back of the bus again, we always end up in the back row. A little later on we stopped to pick more people up and they were made sit in the aisle on the plastic little kids chairs or stand, so the locals can overcrowd fine it seems. The buses air-conditioning had the power of a battery operated fan and did very little to alleviate the sweat that the 40 degree heat outside was backing the bus in; they also had a really weird Chinese movie on with the loudest sound system ever installed on a bus. The driver seemed to like the movie a lot though as he spent half the journey looking up at the screen while overtaking 2 rows of traffic and on the wrong side of the road. So our journey continued like this for four and a half hours constantly abusing our ear drums and draining our body of fluids through the gallons of sweat. We did have one thing to keep us occupied though, reading all the great translations on the road signs. They all carry English and Chinese on the road signs and there were such gems as, No driving tiredly, drive prudently, no drunken driving, beware - rear end collision and lots more that needed a run through the spell checker. There is a job open for an English translator in the road signs department if anyone is interested.

The journey abruptly came to an end then at about 7pm as we were once again ceremoniously dumped out on the side of the motorway outside of town. The operator had told us we would get off at the bus station only 300 meters from where we had to go but no here we were standing with our bags not having a clue where we were. And the taxis in China so far have been a strange lot; they don’t ever seem to want to bring you anywhere. You pull them over and hand them the address in Chinese and its location on a Chinese map and they act like you are asking them to bring you to Ballycullen or somewhere, it’s like they have never seen a map before. We eventually had to get some guy who was hanging around the bus stop offering lifts to bring us to the train station for a rip off 30 Yuan. The train station was jammed when we got there, Friday evening traffic, and we had no idea what we were doing, first we couldn’t pay in credit card, then we joined another of the 25 ticket lines and were told no Xi’an tickets here then finally we got to the window and found out there were no seats available tonight to Xi’an, next available was at 7.00 in the morning. Nightmare and trying to find out this without not a word of English written or spoken makes it even more difficult. We accepted that it was a night in Wuhan and tried again to get a taxi driver to bring us to a hostel that we luckily had a leaflet for. Finally after 3 turning us down we just got into one and wouldn’t get out. He didn’t know where he was going and asked about 5 people where it was. Turned out to be only about 2km away straight down the road, a 5 minute drive if you didn’t get lost. The hostel thankfully had a room for us and we got some pretty manky food before finally having a shower and going to bed again. God China can be testing.

---

Comments

[Conor Maguire]

Yangtze River Cruise
Hey! Good to hear from some Fellow Irish people travelling around China! We're in Xi'an at the moment and we already have our train ticket to Chonquing. We had planned on taking a river cruise along the yangtze but I've read so many bad reviews we're having second thoughts! Is it worth it? Any tips on a good (cheap) tour operator? Cheers Conor (Meath man)

[Asiaville]

its a bit of a cess pit of a river and visibility can be awful as with alot of China, the boats are a bit like prison ships too, but sure its all about the experience and is another experience of China, sure everything is a little strange and challenging over there. Cant remember who we booked the tour with though sorry.