A Luxury Cruise Down The Yangtze....
Trip Start
Nov 26, 2007
1
40
44
Trip End
Apr 17, 2008
Wuhan,
Hubei,
China
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
We got back to the hostel at slightly after 6 (our intended departure time) to find a Polish and a Spanish girl who were also supposed to be traveling on our luxury boat getting rather irate with the hostel staff. The root of the problem appeared to be that transport to the boat was supposed to be included but now they had to get their own taxi. Dave and myself suffered the verbal torment for a bit and then decided to sack of getting to the cruise right now and instead went for dinner. This worked perfectly; by not shouting at the staff Yi Yi accompanied us down to the dock and got us onto the boat.
Chinese tourism at its best
Unfortunately this mean that I had to endure a 20 minute taxi ride of Dave staring with half closed eyes and smiling at Yi Yi while she sucked his thumb (and that is as far as their relationship got...I definitely would expect more than a thumb suck after the amount of eye staring that boy has done. On arrival at the dock we drove past the ultra luxurious QE2 look-a-like that we had convinced ourselves was our boat earlier that afternoon and got into a funicular thingy to got down to our luxury cruise ship. Despite the fact it was too dark to see the boat itself first signs were good when we boarded and saw that the ship was rated with 4 stars...we should have had our suspicions when we saw the staff sniggering at us pointing at the 4 star sign but instead we were still sniggering with joy as we got led to our room.On the face of it the room looked fine, two nice beds, TV, air con, toilet etc but then things started to go bad when Tom, the friendly travel agent, fellow started to describe out itinerary. It quickly became clear that the trip to the dam (and extra 15 quid) wouldn't be included as we thought it would be. At precisely this point Yi Yi evaporated into thin air and suddenly Dave had nothing to stare at anymore. Anyway, at that point we were still pretty excited about the whole affair so went and got ourselves some beers and out on deck...well out on deck once we had paid the extra 60 Yuan to get a pass to go out on deck. It was only when we went back to the room that we started to find that it stunk as a result of fumes coming up the crouching style toilet and that the air con was actually just a fan inside an air con unit. And even worse we had the Spanish witch in the room opposite which essentially meant we couldn't leave our door open either or she would be in telling us how great Spain was and forcing fish down our throats every 2 minutes. We did meet a really nice Canadian bloke (Trevor) who was the only other Westerner on the boat. Just as well really as the Chinese people on the boat really didn't seem to enjoy our presence that much which was a bit of a shock to the system after so many welcoming friendly people. We had a beer with Trevor and then went to bed....
Temporarily went to bed that is as our nice non-English speaking guide (we had been promised an English speaking guide when we booked) woke us up at 5am to show us a piece of paper saying "Do not buy josh sticks from the monks" and so the pattern began...for some reason on a 'luxury' Chinese cruise it is necessary to wake the passengers up at 5am so they feel like they are being looked after...and if you don't get up at 5am then maybe you'll get up at 5.30am or 6 am or 6.30am when friendly tour guide wakens you again...and after 6.30am she just opens the door without knocking and shouts "Let's Go" at the top of her voice at you so you can go stand with 300 Chinese people queuing to get off a boat that is still steaming down a river with no port in sight. And that wouldn't be so bad if you were getting off the boat to see some amazing sights but the amazing sights have all been covered by water as a result of flooding behind an amazing dam so the amazing sights are actually contrived pieces of crap...such as the ancient temple made of reinforced concrete or the ghost villages (we thought this was going to be a town about to be flooded) that are like the ghost trains in Blackpool pleasure beach 30 years ago. But even though I had suffered the 1st days for some reason I still allowed the shrieking tour guide to get me out of bed the 2nd day at 6am to go see more crap...I have now learnt my lesson.
In fact the only tour that was of any interest whatsoever was when the boat docked at Wushan and we went onto smaller boats to see the Three Little Gorges (see video). These were pretty impressive but still not as much fun as some of the river trips I did in Laos or sailing up the fjords in Norway. During the Three Little Gorges tour and English speaking tour guide called Alice suddenly appeared for 3 hours as well which made things much more enjoyable. The Chinese did their best to spoil the Three Little Gorges by having people installed way up on the cliff tops to sing and play on trumpets as you sailed past and we even had a karaoke session on the boat to spoil the serenity of the moment. It seems that the Chinese tourists are incapable of just sitting and making their own of any sight. They constantly need a guide shouting through a microphone telling them how great something is and when their isn't actually anything to see they need to play a game or sing karaoke in case they get any time to think for themselves.
Wushan itself was pretty nifty. As we declined to go on the tour to see the "Old Town" that had been manufactured above the new town of Wushan (all of original Wushan had been flooded during the 1st phase of dam filling) we had the opportunity to spend the 3rd evening walking around the new town and went for tea in a restaurant. I had to do the point at other people dishes and see what comes routine for tea which resulted in a lovely meal of pigs ears and chicken hearts...it all tasted fine to me but I don't think Trevor was that convinced. I was happy anyway as it was better than the pot noodles we had been surviving on in the boat for the previous 2 days. I think I eventually made myself sick of those pot noodles at long last as they can't be good for you.
In the centre of Wushan they had constructed a big square with a sort of amphitheatre arrangement which was just full of local people dancing. It truly is amazing to watch hundreds of Chinese people getting their Saturday night enjoyment, from 4 to 80 years old; dancing together with not a single can of lager or buckfast in sight. And of course we were celebrities in this town once again which made me feel alive after being poisoned by the boats toilet (or being bitten to death by the mosquitoes which filled the room as the windows were open to stop us being poisoned). Which also reminds me to mention that on day two the hot water pipe to the sink burst meaning that the toilet and hence room quickly assumed the humidity and temperature of a sewage filled sauna. Dutifully we got the phrase book out and went up to the desk and communicated the problem in exemplary style. The young lady followed us to the room, looked at the problem and went away...we waited for someone to come for 12 hours but in the end I got my emergency tie wraps out and fixed the problem myself.
All in all the amount of water behind the dam is pretty impressive; we basically cruised down river for 3 days in water that was behind the dam looking at the marker levels showing as that despite there already being 100m of flooding there was still another 75 to go before the dam was filled. It's just as well this was impressive as we never really got to see the dam. We were thrown off the boat by the screaming banshee tour guide in Yichang just before the dam as we hadn't bought the tour to the dam itself. If anyone ever does this tour make sure the boat actually goes down past the damn through the locks etc as that has to be more interesting than most of the cruise. We did see the dam in the distance from our bus to Wuhan and I have to say it didn't look that impressive at all.
We didn't arrive in Wuhan till quite late and it was absolutely pissing down by the time we got there so we just settled into the hostel for the night. Again we landed in a top little hostel with the staff taking us for breakfast in the morning and not even letting us pay. I reckon there could be a market for this kind of hostel in Manchester; from what I can see on the internet it is impossible to get a bed in Manc for less than ₤22/night in the youth hostel. Surely it would be possible to do somewhere up and set it up with some cool staff, 6 bed rooms, a bar etc and charge ₤15/night and make a decent living off it...
The next day we spent the day wandering around Wuhan which was a nice enough town but lacking anything really spectacular. In the evening myself and Dave said our goodbyes as he headed off to Beijing and I boarded the sleeper to Shanghai.
Photos.
