THE CRUISE FROM HELL
AH the last couple of days have been pretty SHITE actually - but it's all good now. We're finally back on track, this is what happened:
Origional plans were to travel by tain from Xi'an to Chengdu (where we are now) and do a heap of stuff around here for a week, but when we talked to the nice guy running the hostel we were staying at, he sugested we go on this 'cruise' down the Yangze river instead (I don't think I spelled that right) because, I don't know if you know, but it's all going to be destroyed by 2009, because China are building the biggest damn in the world (and destroying the 3rd largest river in the world in the process, and uprooting 1000's of peopel - entire towns....). He convinced us to go 1st class, which cost more, but he said it would be the experience of a life time... and boy was it.
first we had to take a 16 or so hour train ride (what it would have taken to get to Chengdu in the first place) to Yicheng (the ride wasn't so bad - we managed to score some 'soft sleep' tickets, which were pretty comfortable, and I managed to make a friend on the way, who sat in our compartment and talked with us all night!!!! I'm going to send him an email tonight... he was very cute - but I think he's gay... so when I say 'cute', i mean 'squoochy-woochy cute, not 'hot'), and from there we were supposed to get on the boat. But when we got there, the people who were picking us up from the station said because our train was late we'd missed the boat, and that it would be waiting for us at anohter town, even though we got in at like 9am, and we were told the boat wasn't leaving till at least 4pm or later. But they drove us to the next town, and told us to go wait in the building/harbour whatever it was. They promised us it would be comfy and warm in there, and left us, but it was cold and uncomfortable, and the boat ended up being 2hrs late.... Now, alarm bells started ringing in my head as soon as we walked into the place, becuase it was full of what seemed to be migrant workers who were waiting with us. At the risk of sounding completely bourgeois (that's not how you spell that either) we weren't looking forward to spending a boat ride with this lot - all they did was stare at us.. and I mean STARE in a very peculiar way.... All of a sudden our '1st class cruise' - which I forgot to mention we payed alot of money for - was starting to look less cruisey.
so the boat came, and we all cramed on fast - with little heads sticking out the windows oggling us again. It was very disconcerting. And we soooon realised that this wasn't a cruise ship at all, but a workers transport ship..... we got to our rooms and there were people sleeping on the floor at the end of hall - the hall stank of stale urine, and the rooms smelled even worse of it. The air was thick with the stench. The 'bathrooms' were only one of the hole-in-the-floor toilets (that I'm becoming very used to here) that was stained a splotchy brown, and the 'showers' that we were promised were right above said holes, and ther ewas no hot water. The carpets are beyond description. They weren't just stained - they were encrussed with god knows what, and we were afraid to put bare feet on it. The linen was stained as well..... I slept in all my clothes.
THEN after finally trying to (unsuccesfuly) air out our rooms, we finally got down to sleep - oh, this was after calling the guy who set all this up for us and compaining. He is actually quite a nice guy, and he ended up getting us an offer for 4000 yuan refund - a little over 2/3s... we siad we'd sleep on the offer. I locked the door, but we forgot to lock the window - I didn't think there would be any problem - there was no deck outside, we were on the 4th floor of the boat...
At about 2am (I checked my phone) someone tried to open our door - it was just me and Carl (a guy we're traveling with)... and he was really deeply asleep, so he didn't notice. But this person outside kept trying to get in, and I could hear scrabbling that I thought was someone trying to jimmy the lock - and I checked in the morning and the wood on the door was all chipped and scraped. they kept going away and coming back, and I could see shadows of feet under our door. I was pretty scared - obviously they were tying to comein to rob us - but becuase they kept leaving and coming back I didn't know if I should do anyting about it (like wake carl) becuase I didn't know if it was necessary. Finally, I coughed really loudly to let them know I was awake - and they finally left and didn't come back. So it tooke me agest ot get to sleep again, cos I kept hearing noises that I got paranoid about... but finally I did.
But then at about 4, 4.30am I woke up again, in time to see our window open, Carls backpack on the ledge under the window (not where it was supposed to be) and I sat up to see someone climbing up outside our window to the ledge above. I grabbed the bag and my phone which was sitting there as well, and lay back down, and it took me ages to summon enough courage to sit back up and close the window. It was pretty scary - but nothing was taken in the end. I was sleeping with my money belt on anyway - and I'm glad I did.
We talked to the staff in the morning, andn they said the couldn't do anything about it, but they must have told some police who were on board, cos one came to talk to me (and cindy, of course - i can't speak the language!) and we told himw hat happened. He said he would sleep on our level that night to keep an extra eye out - and we made sure we locked the window, and we made an elaborate trap at the door to let us now if anyone was trying to get in.... so I slept a little better last night, but i also slept with my money belt on, my camera bag around my legs and my wallet and phone in my pockets.
The boat ride was terrible - all the 'sights' that we were supposed to see we passed at night time so we COULDN'T see... and we were only on there for 2 nights and 1 day (it was supposed to be 2 and 2) but in the end we were SO GLAD to get off the 'hell boat' as we call it now, that we didn't mind. But then we had to travel 5 hrs on a bus to get here to Chengdu today, so we're finally abck on track, but now we're going to miss out doing things here, because we wasted time. We did however, ring back the dude who was organising things and told him everytghing that happend... and we ended up getting a full refund, so that was better... still not great... but.... at least we're all ok and now washed and happy. (I didn't change my clothes for 4 days - ew).
so it's happy again now. We're travelling to see the 'great budda' tomorrow, and from there we're going to visit a little town, almost on the boarder of tibet, so it's basically a little tibetan town, and stay there for a night or two. Then we're coming back here for a couple of days, then going to Baotou to see Cindy's family.
The hostel that we're at at the moment is really cute and I love it here - I wish we had more time to spend here... As we walked up there were all these people singing along to a piano accordian at a cafe out the front, and there's a dog and it's just all round really cute here. I've taken photos.
I'm still going to try and post some as soon as I can get that worked out...
Origional plans were to travel by tain from Xi'an to Chengdu (where we are now) and do a heap of stuff around here for a week, but when we talked to the nice guy running the hostel we were staying at, he sugested we go on this 'cruise' down the Yangze river instead (I don't think I spelled that right) because, I don't know if you know, but it's all going to be destroyed by 2009, because China are building the biggest damn in the world (and destroying the 3rd largest river in the world in the process, and uprooting 1000's of peopel - entire towns....). He convinced us to go 1st class, which cost more, but he said it would be the experience of a life time... and boy was it.
first we had to take a 16 or so hour train ride (what it would have taken to get to Chengdu in the first place) to Yicheng (the ride wasn't so bad - we managed to score some 'soft sleep' tickets, which were pretty comfortable, and I managed to make a friend on the way, who sat in our compartment and talked with us all night!!!! I'm going to send him an email tonight... he was very cute - but I think he's gay... so when I say 'cute', i mean 'squoochy-woochy cute, not 'hot'), and from there we were supposed to get on the boat. But when we got there, the people who were picking us up from the station said because our train was late we'd missed the boat, and that it would be waiting for us at anohter town, even though we got in at like 9am, and we were told the boat wasn't leaving till at least 4pm or later. But they drove us to the next town, and told us to go wait in the building/harbour whatever it was. They promised us it would be comfy and warm in there, and left us, but it was cold and uncomfortable, and the boat ended up being 2hrs late.... Now, alarm bells started ringing in my head as soon as we walked into the place, becuase it was full of what seemed to be migrant workers who were waiting with us. At the risk of sounding completely bourgeois (that's not how you spell that either) we weren't looking forward to spending a boat ride with this lot - all they did was stare at us.. and I mean STARE in a very peculiar way.... All of a sudden our '1st class cruise' - which I forgot to mention we payed alot of money for - was starting to look less cruisey.
so the boat came, and we all cramed on fast - with little heads sticking out the windows oggling us again. It was very disconcerting. And we soooon realised that this wasn't a cruise ship at all, but a workers transport ship..... we got to our rooms and there were people sleeping on the floor at the end of hall - the hall stank of stale urine, and the rooms smelled even worse of it. The air was thick with the stench. The 'bathrooms' were only one of the hole-in-the-floor toilets (that I'm becoming very used to here) that was stained a splotchy brown, and the 'showers' that we were promised were right above said holes, and ther ewas no hot water. The carpets are beyond description. They weren't just stained - they were encrussed with god knows what, and we were afraid to put bare feet on it. The linen was stained as well..... I slept in all my clothes.
THEN after finally trying to (unsuccesfuly) air out our rooms, we finally got down to sleep - oh, this was after calling the guy who set all this up for us and compaining. He is actually quite a nice guy, and he ended up getting us an offer for 4000 yuan refund - a little over 2/3s... we siad we'd sleep on the offer. I locked the door, but we forgot to lock the window - I didn't think there would be any problem - there was no deck outside, we were on the 4th floor of the boat...
At about 2am (I checked my phone) someone tried to open our door - it was just me and Carl (a guy we're traveling with)... and he was really deeply asleep, so he didn't notice. But this person outside kept trying to get in, and I could hear scrabbling that I thought was someone trying to jimmy the lock - and I checked in the morning and the wood on the door was all chipped and scraped. they kept going away and coming back, and I could see shadows of feet under our door. I was pretty scared - obviously they were tying to comein to rob us - but becuase they kept leaving and coming back I didn't know if I should do anyting about it (like wake carl) becuase I didn't know if it was necessary. Finally, I coughed really loudly to let them know I was awake - and they finally left and didn't come back. So it tooke me agest ot get to sleep again, cos I kept hearing noises that I got paranoid about... but finally I did.
But then at about 4, 4.30am I woke up again, in time to see our window open, Carls backpack on the ledge under the window (not where it was supposed to be) and I sat up to see someone climbing up outside our window to the ledge above. I grabbed the bag and my phone which was sitting there as well, and lay back down, and it took me ages to summon enough courage to sit back up and close the window. It was pretty scary - but nothing was taken in the end. I was sleeping with my money belt on anyway - and I'm glad I did.
We talked to the staff in the morning, andn they said the couldn't do anything about it, but they must have told some police who were on board, cos one came to talk to me (and cindy, of course - i can't speak the language!) and we told himw hat happened. He said he would sleep on our level that night to keep an extra eye out - and we made sure we locked the window, and we made an elaborate trap at the door to let us now if anyone was trying to get in.... so I slept a little better last night, but i also slept with my money belt on, my camera bag around my legs and my wallet and phone in my pockets.
The boat ride was terrible - all the 'sights' that we were supposed to see we passed at night time so we COULDN'T see... and we were only on there for 2 nights and 1 day (it was supposed to be 2 and 2) but in the end we were SO GLAD to get off the 'hell boat' as we call it now, that we didn't mind. But then we had to travel 5 hrs on a bus to get here to Chengdu today, so we're finally abck on track, but now we're going to miss out doing things here, because we wasted time. We did however, ring back the dude who was organising things and told him everytghing that happend... and we ended up getting a full refund, so that was better... still not great... but.... at least we're all ok and now washed and happy. (I didn't change my clothes for 4 days - ew).
so it's happy again now. We're travelling to see the 'great budda' tomorrow, and from there we're going to visit a little town, almost on the boarder of tibet, so it's basically a little tibetan town, and stay there for a night or two. Then we're coming back here for a couple of days, then going to Baotou to see Cindy's family.
The hostel that we're at at the moment is really cute and I love it here - I wish we had more time to spend here... As we walked up there were all these people singing along to a piano accordian at a cafe out the front, and there's a dog and it's just all round really cute here. I've taken photos.
I'm still going to try and post some as soon as I can get that worked out...
posted by ekstasis at 11:01 PM
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