Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 41 - Sunday June 19th 2016 - Ovation of the Seas - Xiamen, China

So today we would finally put our feet down in the country we had most wanted to visit, China!

So after all the normal morning activities involving kettles and bathrooms we had to add something new to our morning today and that was passport collection.

It’s all very complicated on board the ship regarding visas and passports, well certainly not straight forward by any means. Sometimes you have to carry photocopies that have been stamped by the visiting countries immigration teams, other times we have to be seen face to face but today is was about standing in line and actually getting our own passports back having already been stamped by the Chinese immigration on board. Is a good feeling having it back in your own possession after getting on the ship.

Passport in hand we headed up to the Windjammer for a quick breakfast

before departing the ship and heading off into Xiamen.

I need to go back a little first and talk about sailing into Xiamen. Firstly, it was really misty as we slipped into Xiamen, all you could really see where the faint outline of small islands but what really hit you where the really high modern tower blocks that were shooting out of the clouds looking like they were floating in the air. This looked like a much bigger city than we had ever imagined and its skyline of glass and steel really quite took us by surprise. It also appeared that the city was sizable, as the fog and mist cleared you really got the sense that this was a big place.

Now we have been pretty good on our trip knowing where we were going and what we wanted to see but for some reason and I really don’t know why Xiamen had slipped through our fingers and we didn’t have a clue! We watched a ships talk on the TV about the city yesterday but that was about the only thing that we had to go on some we were not armed with the best of information or an itinerary as such……um, this would prove to be a bit of our undoing today.

Off the ship and we joined the queue for a taxi into town (it seemed like a really good place to start). Our taxi driver seemed to understand where we wanted to go and off we sped. This was actually quite a relief as we had seen other westerners getting out of taxis not being able to be understood so us being on the move was a good sign. There was no conversation in the taxi at all, it was clear that our driver did not speak a word of English and we only speak two of Chinese (hello and thankyou) but we got to our destination really quickly without the meter on the taxi being run up by taking the ring road around Xiamen (we had been warned that some taxis do this).

So we got out the car at a place called Zhongshan Road, a pedestrianised shopping street that makes up the retail centre of the city apparently. The drive into the centre had revealed a very modern clean city, all raised link roads and Porsche garages and parks and manicured hedges and a waterfront promenade, not the China we were expecting outside of Shanghai or Beijing. Xiamen is actually a Chinese holiday resort and Taiwan sits just off its coast hence the cruise terminal been absolutely full of Taiwanese. This was reflected in the retail mix down the main shopping street, there were lots of gift type stores selling sweets and cakes rubbing shoulders with department stores selling every western brand you could think of. There was a Starbucks, a KFC, loads of really unusual clothes shops and all the big brands. It was clean and spotless and a really nice place to be. The architecture was actually quite colonial along the road, a cross between what we had seen in Vietnam with the French influence on the buildings and Victorian era British architecture.

We walked the whole length of the road, not intending to buy anything but just to get a sense of the city before doubling back on ourselves and heading down to the waterfront to catch a ferry.

Catching a ferry, sounds easy, looks easy, unfortunately it was really difficult and actually turned out to be impossible but we did not know this at this moment in time but it would take up the next two hours of our day!

So the ships video commentary on the port had told us that the main tourist attractions in Xiamen where actually to be found on an island called Gulangyu, a short 8-minute ferry ride from the centre of town so that’s where we wanted to go. We crossed the road to the ferry terminal to be greeted by sign after sign after sign all only in Chinese and we seemed to be the only westerners there. After a lot of pointing and asking and blank faces we found a girl that spoken very little English who tried to explain that we were not allowed to cross to the island from this ferry port anymore as it was too old and that the operation for foreigners only had been moved to a different terminal. Locals could use this service from this ferry port but no tourists……..gggggrrrrr.

So with this information we headed off on foot in the general direction of this so called terminal. So it was a really really hot day, Trev’s T-shirt was already soaking wet and now we had to walk a mile or so to this other ferry port just because this one is to old (it almost sounded like a scam at the time, trying to move us off to some place, who knows but the language barrier was huge!) We walked, and walked and walked, keeping an eye out on the sea, watching the boats that were going back and forth to the island but we just could not see where they were coming from. We must have called in every jetty and departure terminal type building for the best part of a mile trying to find the right place but wherever we went we were always met with more blank faces and confusion and we were still no clearer about where this ferry for tourists only left from.

We had virtually walked all the way back to the cruise terminal before we called it quits and turned around and took the long road back into town again.

When we arrived back at the non-tourist ferry terminal we gave it one last chance to try and understand where the ferry went from when a ticket seller pointed us to the tiniest piece of paper written in English sellotaped to the counter that kindly told us that the tourist only ferry was now operating from the cruise terminal only……back where we started from…more ggggrrrrrrrr!!

By this time, we were parched and a little hungry and needed some air conditioning so we headed off to Starbucks for Frappuccino’s and a bit of cake before getting a taxi back to the cruise terminal to see if we could get to the island.

Things were still not simple, there was some signage in English but not much and one minute there was a sign to the ferry then it would just disappear of the radar, all the ticket machine were only in Chinese and our frustration levels were going through the roof. We queued, we waited at unmanned information points, nothing no one, zero information or help.

We had given up and decided to just get back on the boat, we were getting nowhere when we bumped into an English speaking Chinese lady who explained that you have to pre book the tourist ferry and it was now sold out until 1530 which was far too late for us as we needed to be back on-board by 1730.

So in all the morning and early afternoon was a bit of a waste of a day. All we really managed to do was frustrate ourselves and be pleased that we had a guide for all our other time in China. We have to take responsibility for it though, we had not done the research and that came back to bite us on the bums, hard!

After a morning like that getting back on the boat was a pleasure.

So back on board it was, we crashed out in the room for a while feeling more than disappointed with ourselves but what can you do? The afternoon came and went until it was time for the Ovation to push on again, leave Xiamen behind and face two days at sea until we dock in Korea.

Our conversations had started to turn to what we were going to do once we arrived in Australia. Are we going to continue travelling or are we just going to head home? It was Father’s Day today in the UK so we had both telephoned home to wish our respective fathers well. The good news is that Trev’s dad is no worse, no better either but after how things had been just before we left this was in fact positive news from home.

We don’t know the answer to the question of travel just yet and it is actually all interconnected to a planned trip back to Australia in November in 2017 for Jonathans nephews wedding. Shall we push ahead now and get the camper van in the winter months or should we wait until next year when we will be back in the summer…decisions decisions (and we are not very good at those).

So back to the ship and the now, we got changed and headed out to the Schooner for that pre dinner cocktail, before having dinner in The American Icon Grill. One things about the complimentary restaurants on board that drives us mad is how close all the tables are to each other and tonight’s was just ridiculous, about 15cm.

It means you just can’t have a private conversation at all as you just can’t help but hear every word the table next to you are saying (although being honest the table next to us tonight spent their time on their phones rather than talking to each other). There is a restaurant called Centrum in Gran Canaria that is similar but its saying something when the tables there are even further apart. It’s all these little things that diminish the experience.

The food was good though, can’t knock that at all tonight but we didn’t manage a dessert, just so full!

It was time for something a little different tonight through and a night in the Music Hall. Now we have never really ventured in here before on either cruise on the Ovation as every time we have it has been rammed. Tonight we got there early and got the pick of the seats.

The music hall is a live band music space and just like out first cruise on the Ovation tonight’s band was a Beatles tribute band. We had tried twice to watch a similar band on the first cruise so getting front row seats for tonight was worth the half hour wait.

They were really good actually, playing two sets, one from the sixties and then one from the seventies. We sang along to all the songs as did everyone else. The funny thing about it is when we are sat in the Schooner Bar you can hear the music hall blasting away as the bass rattles the floor as it is just above it but inside it actually sounds a lot quieter than outside, weird.

It was midnight by the time we left and Trev went off to the Bionic bar to get his nightcap, tonight is was seven shots of very expensive brandy! Don’t worry he didn’t drink all seven, only the three……the other four are for later use (all will become clear!)