Overnight in Yichang
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2008
1
20
349
Trip End
May 14, 2009
Yichang,
Hubei,
China
Friday, June 20, 2008
We were told there would be 2 toilet stops on the way. The first stop was after one hour and I didn't need to go at this time. However, 15mins after we restarted, I felt that feeling that you should only ever get when you are within 10 yards of your own bathroom!!!
The rumblings had started and I knew there was 2 hours until the next stop! I have to say that I was pulling some very strange faces and my whole body was shuddering for the full 2 hours!
When we finally stopped, I shot off the bus like a man possessed into the roadside toilets. At no point had I remembered that we were in China and therefore......squatter toilets!! By this stage though, I would probably have done it in a paint tin if necessary! As I relinquished my hold on the remains of my beef noodles, I let out a cry of ogasmic proportions, as the relief was so intense. After completing my task I walked out the cubicle to find a cleaner stood there waiting for me to finish! No matter how hard I tried to explain to him that he ought to "give it a minute", he just didn't understand, and in he went - he has now not been seen for 2 days!
After this wonderful episode of my life we just had one further hour on the bus, which I managed to survive.
We got dropped off at our digs for the night, the Hotel Chujiang in Yichang.
Claire, Lorna, Jilly & Kev
The hotel is quite basic but met our needs for our one night stay. We ate in the hotel tonight, rice, beef, dumplings etc and then after a supermarket visit we were off to the pub!The pub we chose was called the Tango Bar. Now I don't know if it was just because it was a Friday night or nit, but it was packed, and we were the only non-Chinese people in there, except for some strange Dutch guy. We were the freak show for the evening I think! The night though was brilliant. They had live singers on and proper cocktail barmen tossing their bottles all over the place - even with flames. The defining moment was the Long Island Iced Teas. This is my favourite drink but there are not many bars that make it properly (well, the way I like it anyway!). However, this bar put all the ingredients in it - vodka, bacardi, gin, cointreau and tequila!! It was just like being at one of the parties at Chez Vickers. The measures were big as well and it only cost £2! I needn't tell you that many of these were consumed during the evening. The effect of said drinks became evident around midnight. Me and Kev decided that the stage was just too inviting, so we cleared people off it and set about a new dance routine. It started off with us doing Tai Chi moves to the techno music, but when we forgot what the next move's were, we just blended it into a drunken version of the Macarena! Now, if we were in the UK, they would have put a straight jacket on us and whisked us away to a padded cell, but not here. Instead, the barman came over to us, dropped half a bottle of JD on the table and said, in broken English, "Very funny, you drink!". So just to be sociable.....well, you can guess the rest!
We ended up being the last people in the bar at 1.30am, so we went across the road to indulge in some late night street noodles. Lorna tried to resist, for a whole 3 seconds, then as you can see from the photo, she dived straight in!!
It was always going to be a challenge to get up at 7am tomorrow morning to board our boat!!
