Sharing a cabin with a rat was fun

My last few weeks in China have been a myriad of exciting experiences, laughs and at many points squeals. Whilst in China Jess, Fran, Jazza and I took part in the National Day celebrations as well as traveling during October Week holiday. We decided to be brave and book a flight to Chongqing where we hoped to catch a 4 day cruise of the Yangtze River. A trip which- for one hundred pounds- promised a once in a lifetime view of the wondrous Three Gorges, three nights accommodation on a "cruise ship", entrance to EVERY attraction, on-ship catering and sundeck area. A fun filled trip for all!
No.

The LOWDOWN: What happened to us on the Yangtze River Cruise:

1)We shared our minuscule cabin with a rat. He/she squeaked all night- Jess and I were on bottom bunk.
2)Our "sundeck" was roughly the size of my kitchen and packed in 300 Chinese people. They always hogged the seats.
3)Our en-suite toilet [aka squat] shared a communal trough/drain with every other toilet on ship, the smell was excruciating and this fact was made worse by the unbearable humidity and the fact that our air-con gave up.
4)The staff kept shouting at us when we wanted to eat. For ages we just could not work out why.
5)There was only one life-jacket in our room which had a bloodstain on it.
6)Our wake-up call was 5am every day. We were all grumpy gits in comparison to our overly chirpy Chinese tour guide, Ting Ting. She would barge into our room in the middle of the night (5am) shouting "up, up!" I won't tell you what we shouted back..
7)Instead of looking at the ancient temples and mountains most Chinese families took pictures of us. It was almost like being famous- except after a week we had to really fight the urge not to tell people to bugger off.

However, it most defiantly was not a trip of doom and gloom. We kept our spirits high with the aid of Jazza's ukulele, and the tambourine which I purchased! I am really pretty crap at playing tambourine in all honesty, but we sang the nights away as we cruised along the Yangtze.
The Three Gorges was every bit as magnificent as promised. I found myself humming the Jurassic Park theme tune more than once because it really was that wild and mystical- especially at 6am when there was the veil of mist swirling around the water.

Our October Week agenda was pretty hectic as not only did we cruise the Yangtze, but also we visited Chongqing, and spent two days in Wuhan. Typically, on day one of our trip we nearly missed our flight to Chongqing. After arriving at Nanjing airport, we calmly waited for our flight at the correct departure gate without many worries at all. As me and Jazza were debating the pros and cons of the National Day celebrations we heard over the loudspeaker that our flight was boarding. We all looked around, no one moved. Our gate number was 7, we were all sitting at gate 7 but our gate was empty of any queues...so we ignored it. In fact, we ignored the loudspeaker call three times.... At the sound of the last call we asked the attendant, just to be safe, "Why are they saying our flight is boarding?" He replied in a lazy voice- "Oh, your flight is boarding at a different gate...it changed..." WHAT????!!
Yet again- we were running though an airport. Yet again we were the last to board our flight. Deja vu??

After arriving in Chongqing two hours later, we explored what is actually a lovely city and ate a fantastic hotpot! We then went to the travel agent to meet our tour guide Ting Ting (this name still imbues a sense of fear inside us). After she lead us to our boat, I think Jazza and Jess may have lost the will to live. While me and Fran were prepared for the worst...our boat was by far the dirtiest and shittest boat in the harbour, and took us all a little by suprise- but hey, it was an adventure!!

The second day started dark and bleak at 5am. We visited the Ghost City. It was not the best attraction to start with as it was by far the biggest sell out to capitalism I have seen in China so far. I was expecting ancient buildings and temples however, we were greeted with fairy lights, mock up brightly coloured temples which were built in the 1990's and also a Ghost Train. A horribly made, tacky Ghost Train. I shit you not. There were so many people ready to rip off tourists with extra fares and costs, it was shocking.

Despite that, the views were spectacular, the heat was intense and we did have a lot of fun together. On the evening of the Second Day we had a night tour of a temple which was pretty wonderful. In the dark the temple looked beautiful [despite the glow in the dark characters] and a few Chinese families took a liking to me and Jess quite a bit. The pointing and staring was pretty intense, so we had a laugh with it and there are several photo's of me with families looking rather insane.

The third and fourth day were tiring yet the best by far. We travelled by dragon boat down the Yangtze where we had our own paddles. We were all positioned in two's inside a small narrow boat with brightly coloured dragons painted on it. At the front there was a navigator who beat a drum, which we were "supposed" to paddle in rhythm to. The Chinese girl behind me soaked me with her paddle. DRENCHED. [Not good at 5am. I was rather pissed off, sitting there in a dragon boat with a soaked bum with a girl laughing at me in a "oops a wet the foreigner" type of way.] On a positive note, we saw wild monkeys climbing the Gorges and we even had a bit of a climb ourselves- up some very rusty staircases fixed to the cliff wall...[Terrifing!] On the fourth day, [after the night spent with the rat] we visited the Three Gorges Dam. I am glad I saw it as it is the biggest Hydro-electric Dam in the world, however it was all a bit too technical and machinery related for me- and I was more concerned by the wasps which were EVERYWHERE.

Culturally, what I noticed most about the trip cruising the Yangtze is the Chinese obsession with taking photos of themselves. It is rather interesting, and I honestly did not expect them to be as fascinated with Westerners as they appeared to be- we were more or less stalked for a week. Chinese people have also developed a madness when queuing. In my twenty years I have never seen anything more ridiculous in my life. Picture this:
You have just spent your day climbing hundreds of temple steps. You are rather tired and are waiting or the buses to come to take you back to the cruise ship. Everyone seems to be sizing each other up. There is a definite tension in the air...When a bus appears SUDDENLY HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ARE PUSHING, SHOVING, ELBOWING TO GET ON THE BUS FIRST!!!
It was like that every time we queued, whether it be a bus or for an ice-cream. It got so bad that Jazza actually moved the queuing partition and stepped in at the front. A few people actually clapped... I think they found it funny that the foreigners were being completely idiotic also.

Embarrassingly, Chinese people also love to spit on the floor. Men, women, children...everyone spits. I presume it is common all over China, certainly in my experience so far. So- being that I wanted to embrace this unusual cultural anomaly- I tried it. Squatting is one thing, spitting is another. There is no way I can become a spitter. NOPE.

Since returning to the blessed comfort of my student life in Nanjing it has made me become even more aware of just how happy and comfortable I am here. We all sighed a breath of exhausted relief when we returned "home" to our rooms at Nanjing Uni. Our last two nights in Wuhan were much more relaxed in comparison to the physically and mentally exhausting trip on the Yangtze, as we visited an art gallery and rode the public bus- but, speaking Chinese when you are tired and hungry is just not easy at all!

This marks the end of my latest blog. Being that China National Week incurred a massive crackdown on illegal sites, it took me this long to update my adventures onto this website. I have lots more to talk about, so I shall be updating again soon with more of my University goings-on!

Hope all is well in England everyone,
Bex xxxx