Yangtse River Cruise

All aboard the Yangtse!! The river cruise was absolutely spectacular! We were given a really cool little cabin with a massive window and a shower room. The way the shower/sink works though is for the water to go through gulleys around the bathroom... so you see what you've just washed down the sink around your feet! Other than that it made a strange noise most of the time (for which you learn to block out) the cabin was class. It was about 9 or 10 in the evening when the ferry departed so it was already dark. We paid 55 Yuan to be able to sit up on top of the ferry. We also met a Spanish guy Oscar, who kept buying all of us beer! The scenery though, truly was unbelievable.

The Little Three Gorges was a funny excursion. The ferry stopped at 12pm and we got out to go on a smaller ferry. This took us through the backs of the little gorges where a boat full of Chinese tourists crowded to the front of the boar with us listening to their tour guide go on non-stop for 45 minutes. I don't think she even took a breath! After that little tour we went into small river boats where a man shouting at us in Chinese, wearing a funny hat, started singing and getting everyone to shout what sounded like "ORGY!" whenever he stopped singing. We joined in on this and they thought it was bloody hilarious. This lasted around another hour and then we went back on the ferry's to an old town on the side of one of the mountains. It looked really nice but we had no idea what was going on. So we followed a few other people and found out that apparently we get free stones... sweet! Back on the small ferry and through the gorges again to the big ferry. The whole excursion took around 6 hours and was really good fun. We had some more drinks with Oscar and on the following day we arrived in Yichang. From Yichang we got a bus to Wuhan which is were I am now.

Wuhan is a massive place. When we got off the bus we had no idea where in the city we were or where the hostel we are staying is in relation to anything. While we were looking stranded, lost, dazed and confused, we were helped out by a woman from the bus who could speak English, she asked another girl where it is we have to go and in the end the girl offered to take us there. It was incredibly nice of her, thought we ended up going around the city twice by accident, but she got us there eventually. She didn't speak a word of English but when we got to the hostel an American who speaks excellent Chinese translated our thanks. We all went out for dinner and had some beers as well.

That night (last night) we had a few drinks and when it got to about 1am we decided it'd be a good time to start some poker. So me, Andy, Mike (the American), a German guy, a woman called Christine, and a Chinese dude, played Texas Hold'em until 4am. In this time we got through 2 games. I won game one, because of my excellent poker patience..... but I crashed out of game two.

We had a change of plans: instead of going to Shanghai and across the east coast, we're heading straight down into Hong Kong. From Hong Kong we are going to Yaoshan and Guilan before heading west. For those of you currently doing exams - good luck!!