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

Day 58 - Wednesday July 6th 2016 - Yichang to Shanghai, or that was the plan...

So the day started with a ridiculously early alarm call. We all needed to be breakfasted and ready to leave the boat by 0745 this morning. What with the noise of passing through all the locks last night it had really not been the best nights sleep for us so getting up at 0600 was really quite a chore!

We had a quick breakfast and then made a quick trip back to the room to change flip flops for shoes and get the coats and umbrellas as the heavens had opened. It was a really humid, wet and misty day on the Yangtze this morning when our guide Mandy collected us all from the dining room and we headed off to the tour bus.

We had to navigate a small semi covered market to get to the coach once leaving the ship and the ladies were out with all their wares trying to tempt you with their goods. For some reason they always seem to home in on Trevor and today it was the lady from shop number 3 who was sticking to his side like glue. She was not taking no for an answer one bit so with a

promise to visit her shop on our return to the boat we were off.

As we have said today was not the best day for visiting the Dam or anything to be honest, the visibility was really poor and the rain was not going away. We had to clear a security check before having access to the many viewing stations to look at the dam and the locks.

The Dam is colossal and being honest we never really got to see it properly, to really understand the role it had played in changing the landscape of this area forever. The mists were so think that you really could only see and 10 to 15 metres in front of you and Mandy our guide said that it is like this most of the time.

There is no denying though that the Dam is an engineering marvel, this is man taking on nature and man winning although the full consequences of the Dams construction will not be known for many years.

We were whisked off in the coach to a viewing platform to view the locks that are ship had passed through only last night. It was pouring with rain yet all the older Chinese women who were landscaping the area were still hard at it, getting the plants in the soil. It took about five or six escalators to get to the top of the lookout and to be honest in the weather conditions we were experiencing the view from the bottom was very much the same as the view from the top. We went to see a rather lack lustre model of the Dam, nothing like the quality of what we had seen in The Shanghai Planning Hall before walking down to see the Dam itself, well as much as you could see which was not a lot!

In a way we were glad to be getting back on the bus and back to the ship after a very early and wet morning, never the best of starts. The boat still had some mileage to cover to get us to Yichang and after drying off and sorting ourselves out a bit we sat up in the bar on deck 5 watching the world go by. We were by now cruising down the third of the three gorges that had been split in half following form the building of the dam. The mists followed the boat all the way to the departure port where we were met by our guide Fay who was taking us to the airport.

We had not signed up for the internet package whilst onboard but the American couple had kept us up to date with the Chinese weather. It seems that China was experiencing Typhoon storms and really heavy rains with fatalities and towns destroyed being reported. This of course filled us with dread over out flights today and rather than Fay taking us for lunch we asked if she would just take us straight to the airport so we could see what was going on. The good news at this stage was that our flight on Fay’s phone was still showing as good to go and other flights out of the airport the same so we really had our fingers crossed.

As we drove through Yichang it really look like a nice city with a great riverside and a mix of old and new China rolled into one. It’s another huge city, with the two contrasting sides of old east meets new superpower.

We got to the airport, said goodbye to the driver and went to the check in line to do our thing. Jonathan disappeared as he needed to go for a wee and on his way back to Trevor and Fay he noticed a screen that said our flight was cancelled yet it was not showing as cancelled on the main airport screen.

Confusion reigned for a while whilst Fay went off with a mobile phone glued to her ear to tell her boss what was going on and we didn’t have a clue! It was confirmed that our flight was indeed cancelled and then to top that off apparently the airline (china eastern) do not even have a representative on site to speak to any customers.

By now Jonathan was on the phone to China Eastern trying to get transferred to the only other flight hopefully going out tonight to Shanghai, Fay was on her phone and Trevor was on his ringing AirAsia to see what could be done with our ongoing flights to Australia in the early hours of the following morning.

That hour went past very very slowly, it was painful! Poor Fay had only signed up to a pick up and drop off job now she was stuck with two western tourists and she was not going anywhere. After going right around the houses with everyone it was clear we were not leaving Yichang tonight so we booked the Crown Plaza in the centre of the town (Fay had told us it was the best hotel in the city as part of her spiel on talking us through the city when she had picked us up).

Before we could get to the hotel though we had to figure out a way to get to Shanghai and then change our flights to Australia, so many pieces to this travel jigsaw puzzle. Fay told us that the only really sure way to get back to Shanghai would be by the train, an epic eight hour journey, through the flood plains but worse of all …. we would have to navigate it all ourselves and she warned us that it would be really busy because of all the flight chaos.

There was no choice, this was our way to Shanghai and onwards.

We managed to change our flights onto Australia at no extra charge partly because they had made a really small change to the flights timetable since we had booked them so we had the right to change or cancel, small mercies indeed.

By the time we reached the hotel the plan was hatched. Two trains, a coach, a distinct lack of sleep and no food would get us to Shanghai providing that the train could pass along the lines and there had been no news to suggest that would not be possible.

So here we were in Yichang in quite a swanky hotel with no plan but exhausted and broken by the events of the day. There was a big western style shopping mall right next door to the hotel so we headed in there for coffee and a cake, we had not eaten anything today apart from the very small breakfast before we headed out for the Dam.

It was hard to believe we were in this place, we have not had one internal flight the whole time we have been in China leave on time yet the trains have been great…..there’s some advice in there somewhere?

Honestly the stress of dealing with all the different operators, the airline, the guide, the travel agent….It had really been a tough day on us mentally as we were ready to go and now our future plan involved more sleepless nights and horrific flight times.

After a much needed Coffee we headed to the local Walmart (yep, just like Asda) to stock up on some food things for the exceptionally long train journey tomorrow and a very much needed essential…A bottle of wine for tonight. We rang Joe and Kate and told them our news that we were being delayed. It was a real shame as they had arranged things with us to do, taken holiday time as well but it could not be helped at all.

Dropping our purchases off back at the hotel we headed straight back out again to the shopping centre for some food. Neither of us were in the mood for anything remotely Chinese so we settled on Pizza Hut again, the only thing that seemed to appeal. On a side note or tangent, Pizza Hut here is really not like what you get in the UK. Here they have a whole load of other dishes from steak on a hot stone through to all the pasta meals you can think of. It’s funny as its always the western style restaurants that look full first especially in these modern type cities and Yichang was no exception.

The meal was pretty average but it did the job. We didn’t hang around though and just headed back to the hotel for some much needed down time and an earlier night as we had a big and long day tomorrow with the trains.

Across the main road from the hotel was a park that seemed to run the whole length of the town beside the river’s edge. Tonight it was full of keep fit fanatics and dancers just like we had seen in Beijing. It really does create a great atmosphere at night, all these people dancing to Zumba music or classical tango. We didn’t even cross the road to watch, we just went back to the room, polished off a bottle of wine and watched the iPads and tried to upload the website after being on the boat with no internet for a few days. As per normal the internet speeds were really poor so it’s going to have to wait until we get to Australia now.

In time I know that we will look back on the events of today and laugh and it will actually become one of our major memories of the trip, the day that everything went wrong but right now both of us just want to get out of China, both of us just want tomorrow to be over. Let’s just hope we sleep tonight because there will not be a lot of it over the next 48 hours…….What a day!