China - Thursday 14th May - 2010 - Journey to the Yangtze

last night we travelled the train again, luckily it was closer to bedtime so after ablutions were done we all retired to bed, personal stereo on.

I got to have a good chat with Yen, an Aussie girl who was travelling with her partner Rob. She works in some kind of number crunching position as a manager in Fosters, the lager company. It seems all the Australian people I met whilst touring were successful in stable, well paid jobs - they seemed at ease and content with their choices made in life.

The lights flicked off, 10pm prompt so there wasn't much else to do except sleep. Wayne, my nemesis, was on the bunk below me and had pre-warned everyone of his incredible snoring ability. It's pretty good, disturbing but not so bad that it kept me awake for too long. I surprised myself by falling asleep fairly quickly and being able to stay rested longer that the previous train journeys.

This was a long journey at 14 hours and we were already delayed an hour. Rolling into the bus station would be at around 11am where I'll be travelling into Wuhan. About 19 hours on my rump.

During the bus journey we took a pit stop at a small roadside shop in the deep heart of the rural province. The toilet was behind the shop, down a small dirt track....following the smell I found the way and was presented a hideous sight. The toilet was an open room with a roman trench style system on one side. There was no flowing water in the trench, just cracked tiles lining the hole. This was a communal experience, where your business was everybody's business. I stood over the abyss fumbling with my buttons and felt an immediate retraction in my nethers as I caught a glimpse of a Chinese chap to the right of me, he was squat down facing me trousers around his ankles and cigarette hanging from his mouth and he was just staring, staring at me whilst going about his business. I am learning the power of self control during this trip, I'm heading back to the bus awaiting the next stop - so what if it's another four hours, I have a plastic bottle.

Entering Wuhan was amazing. It was a mixture of high rise accommodation towers and some of the poorest and decaying down-town settlements. The atmosphere was busy and everyone looked like a film extra, entering left or right on screen or poised over a cooking pot, washing, repairing things after the director called 'Action'!

I was particularly taken by the tree-lined streets, mostly London Plane (Chinese Plane?) which acted as excellent shade providers in addition to breaking up the array of concrete structures apparently randomly growing from the city streets.

We had to board our yangtze boat at a location different to that previously arranged. It appeared to cause concern for the guides Victor and Daniel. The driver negotiated his bus through pot-holed streets down winding tracks to the new destination. The view was amazing, incredibly steep mountainous slopes gave a good precursor to what will lay ahead of me on the river cruise. Just before the port (which looked like it was more suited to rubble cargo ships than tourist boats) we came to a closed gate. The line of five or so cruisers were line up but we couldn't access at this time.

The guardsman said for us to take our hand luggage with us to pass through the security gate. The machine beeped like crazy as we passed through, each bag setting off the alarm though they simply waved us through. We weren't however allowed to take our main luggage from the bus cargo hold. There were dozens of men milling around and the atmosphere was tense, myself and the other passengers were either looking confused or concerned. The men were getting agitate, flapping their arms around and ordering us to walk away and make our way to the cruise boat. None of them had any form of official looking uniform, pass ..not even a neat authoritative haircut.

We sheepishly walked to the port side and watched the men take our baggage from the bus and pass them through the security detector. It seems they were asking for money to allow the bus to travel 50 yards through the locked gates which could have meant we carry the luggage ourselves. We couldn't carry the bags through and if we insisted the men said we would have to take the bags to the previous village up the steep hill and bring them back, though I'm sure, even then they would not let us pass through without some greased palms. There was no option but to pay the bribe, we weren't allowed to watch, they shouted at us to go onto the boat whilst hassling the tour leaders and driver.

Once aboard I met a guy called Cam who I'd be sharing a room with for the next few days. He was decent chap and after chatting I learned that he was halfway through a one year tour of the world.He's already been through America, Thailand, Vietnam and now in China...next stop Australia. Later that evening we met in the awful karaoke bar on the mid deck. The boat by the way was a rusty, tatty twisted old stained carpet tug, but it had a certain charm and apparantly this was an upgrade to a four star from two....I wonder how bad the two star could have been?

A few beers inside me we teamed up with the Australians to play a group game using cash and dice. Apparently it's called something like, 'Left, Right, Pot'

Everyone has three bank notes, either Yuan (as we played) or dollars. It UK it would have to be quids which may not work so well.

There's three dice and depending on how many notes you hold you roll the corresponding number of dice. You follow the dots (numbers) on the dice to determine the following actions:

1 - Hand a note to your left

2 - Nothing, safe

3 - Money goes into central pot

4 - Nothing, safe

5 - Nothing, safe

6 - Hand a note to your right

The idea is to be the last one holding money which means you get the pot. It's an easy game, simple but very fast and great fun. I unfortunately became unlucky and always seemed to roll a three which meant my money went to the pot, without fail.

After the game Victor showed his bravery by singing karaoke, a Chinese ballad. We all roared and cheered when he finished and grabbed a few more beers.