The first week in China has flown/wobbled by!
Firstly the 'cruise' from Kobe was an experience to behold. We are fast learning the word 'experience' means 'brutal' in the same way describing a hostel as having 'charachter' means it is probably going to be freezing cold and around 400 years old! It all adds to the 'experience' mind!
Back to the cruise....
We arrived at the port terminal 3 hours ahead of boarding, to find it was totally closed with nothing for miles. Noting a sign for Ikea on the monorail we thought Swedish meatballs maybe a good choice. To our dismay said meatballs were nowhere to be seen, so after 3 hotdogs we set off back to port, and on the way noticed the meatball cafe was actually on the 2nd floor. Gutted to say the least!
We had hear rumours that the ferry had a restaurant and a beer vending machine, sounded sufficient for 3 nights at sea. It also claimed to have a gymnasium so Claire was happy! However once on board we soon realised that if Fawlty Towers ever did a spin off based at sea then the Ying Yang to China would be it!
Firstly out of the 10 vending machines on board only one was working, and after the general niceness of the Japanese we were welcomed into the world of Chinese Hockles, smoking and noise in extremes!
The boat normally carries 400 but this time there was surely no more than 80 on board, we soon spotted the only fellow westerner on board and Nina became our German shipmate for the Voyage.
All was going well until tea time when we experienced our first taste of casual racism where all our Chinese ship mates all got free food, whereas they attempted to rob us for 500 Yen, so out of principle we refused and looked forward to 3 nights of pot noodles that we had pre packed!
First nights sleep was not too bad, and despite our slight paranoia that all tannoy announcements in Chinese lasting 3 minutes followed by 2 words of English, and the fat snoring man, and the fact that all Chinese on board sounded like they were engaged in constant argument, and could not keep their tops on of their lives depending on it, we finally got to sleep.
Breakfast was between 8 and 9 and consisted of Chinese vomit, what looked like a dogs d*** pretending to be a sausage, bread and pickled cabbage. Picked at it and with another two days to kill headed back to bed and the Ricky Gervais podcasts.
After dozing for an hour we have another announcement in Chinese, followed by an English translation of 'put on your life jackets, go to your bed and do not get excited'. We were not getting overly excited, especially when we were not entirely sure if it was a drill or not! It was the sign of things to come!
Later on day 2 the cinema room (a tele and some Darby and Joan style seats, the gymnasium turned out to be a storage room, and half a soviet exercise bike) spoilt us by showing every single Halloween film ever made, including reboots! At the end of which one of the staff forewarned us that tomorrow would be choppy between 9 and 3. We were a bit dubious but thought nothing of it.
Day 3, 6am. Awoken by a huge crash and notice the boat is rocking quite a bit. I decided to go out of the bedroom to find a wind blowing through the ship, and a few meaty waves. I decided to go back to bed and wait for breakfast. Before breakfast we sat on the top deck seeing waves crashing against the windows, and after giving breakfast a miss, retired to our cabin where all you could hear was a huge crinkly each time the front of the ship hit the water. Before the boat I mentioned that I would love to go on deadliest catch, I am now more than happy to have my sea legs amputated!!
Once back in the cabin the emergency alarm started ringing, so I wobbled to reception to ask what it meant, the reply was 'everything ok'. This worried me as the alarm had not been going off previously to let us know that everything was ok! Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Who knows?!
We finally arrived in Tianajin, and border formalities were over in a flash, and we boarded the bus to Tanguu. The first we noticed was the smog, secondly the spitting on the buses, and finally that the Chinese take to the roads like a Demolition Derby. We ignored the 6 million taxi drivers, and got on the bullet train Chinese style to Beijing.
It was amazing, and quite frightening the sheer scale of building work going on. We drove past a block of 40 sky scrapers unfinished, with shanty towns all around them, still the smog followed us to Beijing, but we finally arrived at our hostel to find out we were sharing with Garry Glitters stunt double! But time was off the essence so we dumped bags and headed off to the Olympic site, which I shall bang on about more later as our flight to Guilin is about to board! Hoping it is better than the boat!!