Wuhan - 5 - 8th November

After a dodgy 5 and a half hour bus journey into Wuhan, we fit a be lost but eventually found our hostel (pathfinder Wuhan) tucked down a side street, dumped our bags in and headed out for food. It looks like a really good, lively city and we even found a Muslim restaurant for dinner at 10.30 at night! Feeling pretty fresh since we'd just spent most of the day sitting on buses and since it was friday night, Az and I headed our in search of some nightlife the other aide of the river - Wuhan is made up of 3 cities, 2 main ones either side of the central river that's got a constant flow of huge cargo ships on it - before kong we found ourselves in a club that seemed pretty normal until they started playing 'a ga doo' and a chinese celebrity called Jackie cheung was brought in by army escort for a show that we didn't even know was happening! He was pretty much chinas answer to Peter Andre, the girls loved him, the club was alive and the singing was awful.
We'd been advised by the hostel staff to find a club on the river called return 97, so, we did and actually found a really good club in an amazing location playing brilliant music and full of people, unfortunately we hadn't drunk much and still just can't get used to the Chinese way of a night out where there's no dance floor, no bar and very drunk people everywhere so headed home early-ish after seeing two bad car crashes in the space of two minutes, right in front of us!
We made our way to wu pu alley in the morning, lanes absolutely full of food stalls and people that went on for ever, as usual we sampled the local delicacies and spent a while just taking in the atmosphere if the mad place! Wu pu alley is situated in the old part of the city, no high rise buildings, just lovely old Chinese architecture, art galleries tea houses and street artists. The main 'tourist attraction' for the city is the yellow crane tower which is basically a huge temple rising above most of the buildings in the area, it was impressive but by now I've seen a lot of temples and similar buildings so didn't pay to venture inside!
Evenings after that were pretty much spend in the hostel playing cards and chatting in the really nice conservatory area that was covered in quotes paintings and pictures that travelers over the years had added to the walls ceilings and surfaces. We did venture over to the other side of the river in day light too, to 'hankou' the new city by a small ferry for 1.5 Kwai (15p!) though the weather was bad and there wasn't a great deal to do or see so we had a potter and called it a day, saving money, time and energy fir shanghai where we'll be arriving tomorrow!