Running on Empty

Today began as a frustrating day as we were told we needed to be downstairs in the lobby at 8:30am and I rushed down with our bags and was there early and no one was around.  It was enormously irritating as when someone tells us to be somewhere at a certain time, we are there.  Finally 15 minutes later someone came down and said the ambulance was coming back to put our luggage into it and still no one else was there, which seemed strange because we thought the whole group was going on a tour of the University with us.  Apparently, wires crossed again and it was just mom and I and the other doctor and his wife- all of our bags in the ambulance and then we were told to get into two separate cars and we were going to the University.  We got into the car that has been driving us around since we’ve been here- a very nice driver, but his gas tank has been on empty since we’ve driven all around town and our running joke was that we were going to run out of gas every time we got into the car.  We never did run out of gas, but that would have made the trip interesting!

 

A few minutes later we arrived at the University, the entrance was a large archway in Chinese style architecture and many guards that needed permission to let us into the University.  We were given approval to enter and in we went.  There are about 20,000 students at the school and we drove up to the art building first.  We were taken here to see the art show that the people we were with put up and showed yesterday, but was not up anymore because we were all leaving today.  Another wire crossed moment.  Then we ventured in the pouring rain to the Medical School, which was really nice.  When we walked in, the Chinese Hippocratic oath was on display.  Mom asked to see a classroom and we probably would have just seen the lobby had she not said anything.  Then out of no where someone with a camera appeared as has happened everywhere we’ve been.  He must have taken a few hundred photos while we walked around.  We saw a few classrooms and then we went to the top floor to see the Chinese medicine area, which was really neat.  There were so many herbs, animal parts, even semen and a few students examining the specimens.  There must have been over a 1000 bottles and plant species in the room.  We were then taken to a lab on the first floor where they were extracting some of the things from upstairs so that they could test it and use it.  It was very neat.

Hippocratic Oath in a Chinese version talking about supporting the country.

 

 

Then we were rushed out of the school, had a photo taken with everyone, and told we needed to get to the airport by 11am.  Off we went.  When we got to the airport, we couldn’t check-in as the ambulance had not arrived and because the Enshi airport is so small they don’t open until 1.5 hours before a flight.  Our flight was at 12:30pm.  We were told to sit and have some tea, which wasn’t very good (the first time actually we haven’t had good tea).  Finally the ambulance arrived with our luggage- though we thought everyone’s luggage would be in the ambulance, but it was just ours- and we were able to check-in.  We were told that we would be able to check our luggage through to our final destination, but we came to find out that we needed to go to baggage claim in Wuhan (our connecting city), then check-inagain and go to our next flight.  We knew we only had an hour layover, so that would be cutting it close.  We also wanted seats further up on the plane as usual.  This is very hard to communicate in English to people who don’t understand English!  Luckily the people in Enshi payed for all of our overweight bags and then we said goodbye and went through security.  We were told that the rest of the group had already arrived and were waiting for us inside.  When we got inside, there were only 2 gates in this airport and no one that looked like our group.  So we waited for them and waited for them, went to the bathroom, and then it was time to board and they had not appeared yet.  So we boarded the plane, found our seats in the equivalent of the bulkhead and got ready to go.  We thought the others may be on the later flight or that they went on an earlier flight.  As the doors were about to close, the whole art group got onto the plane and actually made the flight.  It was a quick one hour flight and then we were in Wuhan.
In Wuhan we rushed off the plane to get to baggage claim, got our bags pretty quickly, then took the small elevator up to the second floor for departures and tried to find our airline that we were told we were taking for the next leg of our trip.  Finally we found the correct number to check in at and at the point our flight was supposed to board in 30 minutes.  The doctor we were with came with us (his final stop of the day was Wuhan, so we were on our own after that) and he helped translate what we needed to do to the check-in woman.  Finally she understood and checked us in, though she wanted us to site 5 rows apart in middle seats and eventually we convinced her to give us 2 seats closer and an aisle seat and actually when we got onto the plane eventually we switched with someone so we could sit next to each other.  So at the check-in counter the woman figured out how much we were over weight and mom had enough RMB’s to pay as they don’t take credit cards but she had to walk across the terminal area to pay and we couldn’t get our tickets until she did that.  So she ran.  We also had to take our baggage to another area because they were apparently too big to be checked at the main counter.  When mom returned we got our tickets, took our luggage to the other area, and then rushed to the security area.  The line wasn’t too long, so we were able to go through somewhat quickly and then we walked very quickly to our gate.  The door was open and we thought they may be boarding, but in broken English we hear 15 minutes.  Thankfully the flight was a bit late as we were supposed to start boarding 10 minutes before we got there.15 minutes later we boarded the flight, and it was pretty turbulent the whole flight, but an hour and 25 minutes later, we arrived in Chongqing.  Chongqing is a huge city of 30 million people.  A doctor whom mom has been communicating with for sometime now and is here from Columbia just to be here with us and to translate mom’s lectures picked us up at the airport in a large mini van driven by a lovely man. After a little bit, we fit all of the bags in and were driven to the Plaza Hotel (it doesn’t look or feel like the Plaza, but it is nice)- it is located next to the People’s Great Hall which is an unbelievable beautiful round large building.

 

 

The hotel is having a conference so there were no rooms with 2 beds in it.  They showed us a king size room which is large and has a separate seating area and we thought they may be able to bring a cot in as mom wants to sleep by herself tonight because she thinks she will be too anxious to sleep.  They said they had a large bed that wouldn’t fit and finally 20 minutes later a small cot came into the room.  (even though they said they didn’t have one).  It was 6:15pm at this point and we were told we were getting picked up for dinner at 6:30pm and we wanted to shower quickly as flying is dirtying.  So we both took very quick showers and were about to start getting dressed when we heard a knock on the door that was the doctor saying everyone was waiting downstairs.  We rushed and came quickly downstairs from the sixth floor.  There were 4 people waiting for us- the assistant director of the hospital, her secretary, a public health person and the translator the doctor.  We walked about 5 minutes away and entered a restaurant called the Lucky Fish Restaurant.

Our food was the best food we’ve had so far.  They served us a soup with 2 different types of locally caught fish from the Yangtze River.  Actually when we walked into the restaurant a man carrying a large blue water tub came rushing through the restaurant with the live fish.  That was cool.  The people here seem very bright and dinner was nice.

 

 

Right after dinner we walked outside and there was music blaring and people dancing every where in a park across the street.  There were hundreds of people dancing to different types of music, doing tai chi and everything seemed so organized.  It was amazing!  And it was all right in front of the People’s Great Hall (which is where the mayor and local government officials meet and greet and have meetings with dignitaries).  We then came back to the room and mom is very nervous about her lecture tomorrow but I think she will be great!

My phone stopped working again this evening for some reason and I had to spend 1/2 an hour on Skype calling Verizon to fix the data problem.  This is starting to get very frustrating!

TBD is now TBN (To Be Notified)

When you have an option for wet cleaning or dry cleaning at a hotel, we have discovered to choose dry cleaning every time.  We sent our laundry off yesterday to get washed as we were running out of clean clothes and we decided to use the wet cleaning as we thought it was like a washing machine and dryer and it was also a little less expensive.  However, we just received our laundry back today in a bag, folded and still quite wet.  So in Chinese terms, wet cleaning means washing your clothes and returning them wet.  We have spread all of our clothes out on the bed so hopefully they will dry by the time we have to pack tonight as we are leaving here tomorrow.  They also have a smell that we can’t pinpoint, but the chemicals they used on our clothes smell so unhealthy.

I was hoping to sleep in this morning, but at 7am, mom got out of bed and began making so much noise, packing and making me feel guilty for staying in bed and not helping dad before he had to leave, I had to get up and out of bed.  I finished getting dad’s duffel closed as mom had finished packing it this morning and then she and dad went to breakfast while I did a little work and started to get ready.  We then said goodbye to dad as the schedule has changed 15 times about whether or not dad was coming back to the hotel to get his luggage or not and finally he was just leaving directly from lunch to go to the airport.  Off he went.

At 10am, mom and I met Dickey (her English name- I have no idea what her Chinese name is) and it’s hard not to laugh every time we say her name.  We had arranged with her yesterday to see a little bit of Enshi for an hour or two today and then were hoping to have the afternoon off.  So we got into a private car and immediately left the hotel and drove about 10 minutes until we arrived at a beautiful temple/presidential palace/great wall of Enshi area of the Tonji people- one of the 56 nationalities in China.

Tickets were bought for us and then we were greeted by a traditional dance by the native people.  Mom videoed the whole thing and we were the only audience so it was quite cool.  Then we explored the rest of the area, the temples, heard the Tonji love song again, which we still really like and mom is excited about playing at my wedding (when we translate it).  Then we started hiking and hiking up lots of steps to the Great Wall of Enshi.  We are still very sore from yesterday’s long hike, so the steps at first were very hard, but as we started to warm up, it actually felt good to get some more exercise and work our tired muscles.  When we reached the top of the wall, we walked along the wall, up and down for a little while and met an adorable little boy with his grandparents and we then walked with them until we got to a bell tower that we climbed up and rang the bell.   

The child was adorable and spoke Chinese to us- he was a little over 2 years old.   

As we were climbing down the great wall, we were informed that we were joining Dad for lunch (we clearly we had not expected as it was already 11:20am)- so we rushed down the wall and into the car and got to the lunch place around 11:45am.  All of the doctors and nurses dad’s been working with were there at an absolutely beautiful place.  By the time we started eating it was already noon and dad’s flight was scheduled to take off at 1pm.  He was getting a little nervous because he had to check 2 bags and then someone, we don’t know who, decided to take dad’s passport and his luggage and check in for him at the airport.  When have you ever heard of someone else checking in for you?!!??  Apparently these guys have connections.  At about 12:25pm, we said goodbye to dad, and he was rushed out the door to the airport.  We learned later that he went directly to the plane and was the last to board, but made it.  He arrived in Wuhan an hour later and had to pick up his bags and then he had to check-in again for his next flight, but he had no idea what airline he was flying.  The doctor here said he was flying China Southern to Chengdu, but apparently someone looked at his passport and said he was flying Xinging Airlines that we’ve never heard of.  He also could not even check in as their counters only open 2 hours before hisflight and his flight was not until 7pm and it was only 3 pm.  So he waited, and waited.  And finally he was able to check-in, pay the over weight baggage fee and board the plane for Chengdu.

Meanwhile, mom and I were able to come back to the hotel after lunch and relax for 2 hours before we were getting picked up to do a little shopping- mom wants some scarves. During those two hours, our doorbell rang to our room and that is when our wet laundry arrived.  Around 4pm, we were picked up and went to a shopping area with Dickey.  We went to the city center and walked around a beautiful bridge that looked quite old, but was actually only 5 years old, found some nice chopsticks and some other little gifts and really enjoyed finally being able to see the “real” china and not the tourist attractions.   

When we were finished walking around, we were told we were going to a BBQ place about 1/2 an hour away so we got back into our car and were driven out of town and then suddenly turned onto a dirt road that we didn’t even see and drove through some construction and then to a farm and farm house and then to some Chinese yurts.  We had no idea where we were eating and we expected our whole group to be there.  We were led to one of the yurts which were made of bamboo and inside was a large BBQ pit and some small wooden chairs surrounding it.  It was very cool.  Then some other doctors and nurses arrived and it was just us, the other doctor that we are with and the doc’s.  A wonderful evening.  We had to cook our own food on the grill and we had very long chopsticks to turn everything.  We were also served corn juice, which was delicious.  And of course we tried the 130 proof alcohol which was very strong.  It was such a nice experience and the food was good too!  After we ate, we got back into our car and returned to the hotel to pack everything up as our TO Be Notified schedule, we were informed we needed to bring our packed bags down in the morning at 8:30am and then we are going on a tour of the University for a few hours before our flight.

 

 

 

On a bit of a side note, the hotel we are staying in is a nice place, but they have hung up on mom and jeff so many times it’s unbelievable.  Jeff tried to called yesterday and they hung up on him at least 5 times because they didn’t understand him.  Tonight we just wanted some towels so we could take a shower and they hung up on mom three times  and then finally she went downstairs to show them what we needed and while she was away, the manager called our room and I tried to ask for some towels, but it was absolutely hopeless.  He did not understand anything.  He thought I was asking to dry our clothes.  Finally our guides who are staying in the hotel with us were notified and came to our room and everyone was laughing… we got some fresh towels.

Mom received a beautiful huge bouquet of flowers from the people of Enshi

 

Trying not to throw up

I might be too tired to write this post but I will try to cover everything from today.

After getting about 4 hours of sleep last night, we awoke and actually went down to breakfast. We had some eggs.  Then we finished getting ready for a hike today that we were told was like the grand canyon, in fact the place is called the Enshi Grand Canyon.  We were supposed to leave the hotel at 8am this morning, but I think that everyone was so tired this morning that we ended up leaving at 9am instead.  We boarded a mini bus and spent the next 2 hours driving up the longest, windiest road I’ve ever been on (much windier than the Amalfi coast!).  We also climbed over 2000 feet in the bus.  I’m still not used to the driving and the honking- drivers honk when they want people and other cars to move out of their way as they drive, and I am always holding on for dear life when we are in cars and buses.  Two hours later, we arrive at a bus area where we are dropped off, given tickets and get onto a line to take another bus to the canyon.  I feel like this whole trip is more traveling and sitting on buses, trains, planes, cars and etc than actually doing anything, but I guess it just shows you need to move places to see things!  We got onto the second bus and drove up another tiny windy road (by the way, I forgot to mention that this road is quite narrow and is really a one lane road, but for two way traffic) until we reach an area where the bus just pulls over and lets us out.  Our hike began here.  

This hike is like no other hike that I’ve ever been on.  There was no dirt, no signs, no usual hiking things.  It was all concrete pathways and steps.  In fact, 7000 steps to be exact and then the walkways don’t count.  Our pedometers are reading over 12, 000 steps for today!  The trail was very steep up and down and was 7.5 kilometers long.  It took us about 6 hours to hike.  In the middle of the hike we were very close to the top of the mountain/canyon and we stopped for lunch.  Usually I don’t like to eat a large meal while I’m in the middle of a strenuous hike, but we had no choice and we were escorted into a 4 star restaurant in the middle of the mountain.  The food gets up there by horses, which is really cool.  And the meal was delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After digesting our food for not long enough (we have no idea how the Chinese scarf down a meal in 10 minutes and then get up from the table)  we got up and continued our hike.  Another 3 hours later, with steep cliffs and lots of steps, we finally made it down to the bottom of the trail.

At the bottom while we were waiting for the last of our crew to come down, mom and I dad learned a little Tai Chi from one of our colleagues.

Then we got back on the second bus and it took us down to our original bus.  We were running late at this point and the bus driver drove pretty quickly down the canyon and back to the hotel.  On the bus one of the guys on our tour had bought some green tea flavored oreos at the Walmart in Yichang and he passed them out to everyone.  I did take one as I’m craving a little bit of chocolate since I haven’t had any in a long time.  They were pretty disgusting and there is no need to ever buy that flavor of oreo again.  We got to the hotel at 7:15pm and dad had to rush to get ready because he was told in the bus on the way back that he had to give a lecture to over 100 medical students and physicians at the hospital in Enshi.  He was already exhausted after the hike, so he was a bit nervous about this.  Luckily, he got ready somewhat quickly and was out the door to his lecture.  While he was giving his lecture, mom and I went to dinner with our hosts here in Enshi.  The rest of the group went to dinner as well and it was the largest table I’ve ever eaten at.  The food was pretty good too as this region the food is very spicey.  Most of our group was still dressed in the clothing we hiked in all day long, but a fewmembers were dressed in nice clothing- another example of absolutely no communication.  We could have easily quickly put something nice to wear on, but no one said anything.  

We were a tad bit close to the construction next to us on the tiny road.

The entrance to our hotel in Enshi

We got back to the hotel around 9:15pm and were very happy to take showers and get a little work done.  Now I need to get to bed!

Here are a few photos for English enjoyment from what we’ve seen:

 

Seriously?!?!

This was the hardest and most stressful, long day yet.  I am currently sitting in the conductors quarters on a 36 hour train from Beijing to Quongqing (though we are only on the train for two hours) until 11:45pm and the car is filled with smoke and our luggage is in the hallway and one of the doors to the train.  I will get into details on how we got into this disaster as the day progressed.

Our day began on the boat still with a 6:30am (at least we got half an hour longer) nice music wake up call though we woke up earlier when dad knocked on the door all ready to go.  So up we got as we weren't sleeping anymore.  Again no breakfast for mom and I and we had to pack up all of our things and meet in the lobby at 7:30am to get off the boat for good… yeah!

 

As we left the boat we boarded the cable car again and rode to the top of the docks where we walked through the pee smelling boarding area and got onto asmall mini bus. We were going to the Three Gorges Great Dam key Water Conservancy Project (where we learned yesterday that about 50% percent of China’s power comes from this new controversial project).  The bus took us directly to the dam area (about 40 minutes away) and then we had to get tickets to board another bus as the dam area is highly guarded and there were security check points that we had to go through. We had to put our bags on an x-ray machine and then had to walk through a body scanner/ metal detectors. There are no private cars allowed so everything is very regulated and of course there are video cameras everywhere.  We get onto the appointed crowded pee smelling bus and go to our first stop at a garden area overlooking the massive 5 stage locks area- it takes large boats about 4 hours to pass through.  We climbed a large concrete thing to a lookout point and it was quite crowded so we stayed for a bit and then made our waydown and walked around the "gardens" and then met our group to get onto another bus to take us to a spot lower down to quickly view the dam from closer and then we had to show our tickets again to board a completely different bus. This bus took us to the lower opposite side of the dam so wecould see the spillway and some gardens.

Everyone seemed obsessed with taking photos in front of the dam. The park was made to have some greenery around this area that was transformed into a concrete haven. I think it was their way of making up for displacing and forcing 1.3 million people to leave their homes with no choice of where they had to move to.  Some people were moved to Beijing, Shanghai and others were moved closer to Yichang and other outlying areas.

Finally we left the dam area and got our mini bus from this past area and then took the pee smelling bus all the way back to Yichang (about an hour). 

We had been told many different schedules of what we were doing and our motto has become TBD, because this is the most disorganized non-communicative trip we have ever been on.  When other people arrange things for you and don’t tell you, it gets very frustrating.

In Yichang, the University had a lunch arranged for us at a hotel where a smoky wedding was occurring.  It was interesting to walk right through the wedding to an upstairs room to have lunch.  It was okay, by far not even close to the best meal, but we were a bit hungry as this was our first real meal since we got onto the boat that was somewhat edible.  And on a complete tangent, none of our pants fit anymore- they are so large we don’t have to undo any buttons to take them off.  I am rolling my jeans and mom is out of holes on her belt buckle, so we look a little funny.

After the lunch, we went back to our original hotel in Yichang where everyone had stored their luggage.  We were then told we had about 5 hours to do something in the city and then meet up for dinner and then we were leaving at 7:30 to catch a 9pm train.  The rest of our group wanted to go to a museum, but luckily it was closed or something was not right about it so we stayed near our hotel and walked around for a bit.  We explored some of the alley’s and mom found some children’s books that we’ve been looking for so we can learn to write and say a few words in Chinese.  Then everyone wanted to keep walking to some book stores and other places far away, but we decided to go into the department store instead on our own and look for some scarves, which when we finally found them were very expensive and we didn’t buy any.  The department store is right next to their city central park so we decided to sit down on the corner of the grass for a little bit to relax.  Their parks are strange here as people are not allowed to walk, sit, lie on the grass at all and there is a large fine if you go onto the grass.  This park is like Central park in NYC so to not be able to go onto the grass seemed very odd to us.  Everyone was sitting on the concrete right next to it.  Also we were told that the grass in the park was imported from Japan as it was a special grass that stays green all year long.  We sat in the park for about half an hour until we got too hot and until we didn’t want to be museum pieces anymore.  I think I’ve mentioned this before, but everyone stares at us and we have coined the term “museum pieces” for when we are talking to each other and people are just staring.  Literally, people just stop and stare and after a while it makes you uncomfortable.  

We walked back to the hotel and found a cozy corner of the lounge on the first floor and sat down and drank tea and dad had coffee.  We stayed there for about 3 hours until it was time for dinner.  It was the nicest relaxing time we’ve had and we needed it before the evening.  My blackberry stopped working a few hours earlier and my emails kept saying that they were being blocked, so we ended up calling Verizon from dad’s phone and after about 20 minutes on the phone with them, my phone was nicely fixed.  Apparently, sometimes when you go abroad your phone suddenly stops working and this is exactly what happened to me.  I’m glad it wasn’t anything more than that!

Dinner was at a restaurant around the street from the hotel where the mini bus stuffed with our luggage was waiting.  There are 11 people in our group and everyone has one large suitcase and a carry-on… the three of us have 5 large bags plus our carry-on’s so the mini bus was stuffed to the rim and then all of us had to fit into the bus as well!  After we finished our dinner, we boarded our bus and made the 40 minute ride to the large brand new train station.  So new (it opened at the end of last year) that the elevators were not working and the escalators were broken.  Now if you can picture the three of us with 5 large bags, 3 rolling carry-on’s and our backpacks/purses, you would imagine that going up 3 floors (and these are not your regular size floors as everything is much bigger here) would be quite challenging.  After 8 people in our group, who all speak Chinese, couldn’t figure out where to go and how to get upstairs, we found someone who told us there was a ramp we could go up to get inside the station and almost a mile later- with one duffel on my back while rolling a suitcase, dad had a duffel on his back while rolling 2 suitcases and mom had all three little rolling carry-on’s, we made it to the first floor of the train station.  Dad and I were dripping with sweat as these bags are not light.  We had to put all of our luggage on a x-ray machine and then we found out we had to go up to the tracks which was on the next floor.. think 15 steps per level on the stairs and each floor has 6 levels- so about 60 steps to get to the next floor.  The train station called some of their workers to help us with our luggage and they were wearing bright orange suits.  They charged us 10 RMB for each bag they carried up (that’s almost $2).  They only carried one of our suitcases up as dad and I got some exercise, but they carried a second suitcase the last 1Ž4 of the steps as they wouldn’t let me go anymore and took the suitcase out of my hands.  So we ended up having to pay 20 RMB for 1 1Ž4 bags.  I am still too frustrated to write more about that as I think one person in our group does not like us and hasmade our life a bit more difficult and has no respect for us.  Everyone else in our group is very nice.  No one could figure out where the gate was for the station as it was not clearly marked and then we found a tiny gate that looked like it was under our train number.  So we piled all of our bags near that entrance and waited.  We had about an hour before the train was supposed to arrive and we took turns watching the bags while we talked and recovered from being really sweaty.  At about 9pm, we find out that the train has been delayed until 9:39pm.  Finally as the time approaches, they open the gate to the train and because this is China everyone swarms in- no politeness, no respect, no manners.  The people in the orange suits help us with 2 of our bags and we quickly try to take all the rest of our bags and find our car.  We were supposed to be in car 12.  We passed a car that said 11/12 on it but the group thought that there may be another entrance to 12, so we walked down to the 12 car and none of the doors worked.  We started rushing at this point as the train was almost all boarded and we did not want to get left behind.  So we rushed back to the 11/12 car… we were now 2 train cars away and as quickly as we could got onto the train and tried to figure out where to put our luggage. This was a sleeper train with hardly any room to walk down the sides.  We kept thinking that things can't get any more dirty or worse ineach situation we end up in, but it keeps proving us wrong.

We slowly tried to take one or two bags each down to the 12 car, though we did not realize that we were not in the 12 car in the direction that we went.  We got to a nicer area where there were 4 bunks to a room with a closing door and there were people in our seats, which were 7, 8 and 9.  Then we were told that this was the 11 car and not the 12 car.  By this point we were exhausted from trying to maneuver the bags and two passengers actually saw that and began to help us with our bags, one for each of them.  It was very nice of them.  I took one bag and walked through the group bathroom in the car to get to car 12.  As soon as I walked into the car, I immediately thought that this cannot be right.  There were at least 100 people in this car, 3 bunks high all the way down the car and every seat in the aisle taken.  There was no way I was getting myself or any bags to our “beds”/ seats.  I didn’t know what to do and everyone was talking/yelling/etc we assume the train was actually waiting for us to get on board and figure something out and then finally we started moving with all of us in limbo in the middle of two cars.  I believe a conductor actually then told us we could leave our bags in the hallway of the dining car and so we walked 2 more cars in the opposite direction and placed our items in the hallway- we left a little pathway for people to go through.  We asked if we could just sit in the dining car so we could watch our luggage, and a nasty woman said absolutely not, we could not sit there and she was pissed that we had put our luggage in “her” area.  So mom and I decided we would stay with the luggage in the hallway, standing up for the 2 hour ride up the mountains and the other 3 in our group that we were with (including dad) would go back to the sleeper car where our real seats were. Not even 5 minutes later, and before mom and I even had a chance to settle ourselves, they returned back and said there was no way they were sitting in that car!  So we all stood in the doorway and hallway for a few minutes and then mom and I thought, well maybe if we buy something we can sit in the dining car.  So one of the Chinese in our party went and asked them in Chinese and she came back and said we could sit down out of the way and we have to almost be invisible.  She said she told them that one of the people we were with was 80 years old and needed to sit down…  he is not 80, but he looks old!  They were not serving any food so we went into the car and found two tables (there were only 10 tables in the whole car) and sat down on the filthy seats, with food all over the tables and smoke surrounding us.  It was so dirty and smelly, but we were sitting down rather than standing on the bumpy train.  Once we got a tiny bit settled, I began writing this post.  I was quickly interrupted though because we kept having to watch the luggage and I wanted to show mom the train car we were supposed to be sitting/lying down in.  So I took her the two cars away, past the public bathrooms in the doorway of the cars and when we got there, it was pitch black.  All of the lights had been turned out in the car and you could just see a few white eyeballs staring at you.  It was so freaky and I’m soo glad we could not even fit in the car.   

The train ride was 2 hours and through out the 2 hours, we came to realize that the dining car was actually the conductor’s rest, smoke, computer, eating area.  So many conductors were coming in to hang out, smoke and stare at us.  I was very glad when we were told that we were getting closer to Enshi as I was ready to get off the train and take a shower.  As we got closer to the station, we tried to move some of our bags closer to the exit door, but no one knew which side of the train we were getting off at, so we did the best that we could.  Many people were getting off at Enshi and we had a bit of a disorganized train of luggage to get it off the train as quickly as possible and we had to make sure that we didn’t forget anything.  There were no signs at the train station that it was Enshi and we had to really look around to make sure we had gotten off at the correct stop.  We did.  And as the three of us were figuring out how to get the luggage up the 5 flights of stairs to street level, a swarm of at least 15 people came running up to us to greet us all.  They were all affiliated with the hospital and the University here and the head of the hospital was there as well, whom dad really liked from his last visit to Enshi.  It was so helpful- they all took a bag and up we went the many, many stairs.  As soon as we exited the station, an ambulance drove up on the sidewalk and pulled in front of us.  They used the ambulance to put everyone’s luggage in to take us to the hotel!!  How cool is that!

Then we were escorted to private cars and all of us had cars to take us to our hotel.  About 20 minutes later we arrived at a beautiful place- I don’t even know how to describe the architecture, but I’m sure in a future post I will post some photos of the hotel.  We walked in, waited a few minutes to get our room keys and then went up to our rooms.  It was about 1am before we got into the rooms and settled and then we could finally take showers as we felt very gross.  Thankfully we have arrived safely.

Journey into Inner China

Our wake up call this morning was at 6am and the boat played some nice relaxing music to wake up to and it became louder as it went on.  It was actually quite pleasant.  However I was awake much before the wake up call as we docked at our location around 5:30am and there was yelling all around.  I didn’t sleep very well on the boat, though mom did, because we would pass barges that were loud and our ship is a bit loud as well and our beds are basically wood boards so not the most comfortable of conditions to sleep in.  The breakfast on the boat was definitely skipped by mom and I, though dad did venture downstairs to see what it was like and came back up and said it was a good thing we didn’t go.  We decided to have a bar for breakfast instead. At exactly 7am, we met our group in the “lobby” of the boat and left by crossing three other cruise ships that had already disembarked.  

 

We walked through many disgusting fish and meat stands and other chatchka stands that seemed very chintzy.  

 

There was a bus area that was a mad house and nothing was organized.  People were rushing to whatever bus arrived and our tour guide was not a typical Chinese guide and he had us wait until we were able to be the first onto a bus to go to our destination.

10 minutes later we arrived at the White King City.  It’s located at the mouth of the Qutang Gorge (one of the three gorges) and it’s now an island after they flooded this area to build the gorge.  It used to be a large peninsula with much history and artifacts from poets, but all of that is now underwater and there is a large bridge that you have to walk over to get to the island.  We then climbed over 200 steps up to get to the tiny city, which is really just a few buildings with poems and the hanging coffin, which was the major attraction, but it was closed for renovation.  This whole city was built in 1980, so there is not much history and had some nice scenery but that’s about it.

We then walked back to get the bus back to the boat and it took a long time to get on the right bus with people running and rushing and so we were one of the last groups to leave the site to get back.  The boat was supposed to leave at 9:30am and we got onto the bus at 9:25am.  So we had to rush, though the rest of the people in our group didn’t seem to realize that.  The entrance back to the boat was again filled with shops selling food, knick knacks, wood products, fruit, etc and it took us at least 10 minutes to get through all of those things.
We had to walk down all of the many stairs to get down to the docks and then we rushed onto the boat.  We were definitely the last group on and immediately after we got on, they blew the horn on the ship and we were off.  There was no time to spare.  I don’t know if they were waiting for us or if they even knew we weren’t on-board, but I’m glad we made it.  Even though its kind of gross in our room, it still felt nice to be back on the ship.

We had 4 hours on the ship to take some photos of the gorges and the huge mountains as were quickly went by.  Lunch was around 11:30am and we did go to lunch not expecting much, but we had some rice and a little bit of tofu and that was about it.  Apparently our guide had asked them to prepare our food without MSG, but after lunch, mom and I had splitting headaches and didn’t feel well, so we are assuming they still put some in.  We tried to rest for a bit and lied in bed while looking at the nice scenery before we had to get off of the boat again at 2:30pm.

 
Around 2:30pm, we again met our group in the lobby and then boarded a ferry that had come alongside out boat in the middle of the river.  It was an old fashioned looking ferry but very colorful.  We took the ferry for about 40 minutes up a tributary of the Yangtze and saw a hanging coffin, some monkeys! and some nice scenery (or as they translate scenery here as beauty).  After the ferry ride up the river, we arrived at another boat that we disembarked on and then we got onto a tiny 17 passenger wooden boat that was rowed by 4 men.  It was the best thing we’ve done so far.  For an hour we rowed up the river, saw some nice scenery and learned the story of the men rowing the boats.  Our hearts ache for them, but they are happy workers.  They work in teams of 5 (one man is the captain, the other four row).

 

 

They live about 3 hours away from this boat site and they commute everyday by their individual wooden boats to come and work.  They have made their boats and their oars and they are such hard workers.  They are also farmers so when they return home from working, they have to work on their farm to get some food for themselves.  At the half way point of the boat ride, two of the men jumped out on the side of the river, ran up a hill and started pulling us up the river from the side.  It was very cool.  Then they hopped back into the boat and we went back to the ferry boat.  The ferry boat then took another 40 minutes to drop us back off at our real boat.
When we got back to our ship, we boarded, quickly dropped off our gear in the room and went down to dinner, which was more rice, some corn kernels and a bit of tofu and pumpkin.  We also brought dad’s birthday cake from yesterday with us so we could celebrate for dessert.  Everyone sang happy birthday and dad made a wish and blew out his candles.  A man from a nearby table saw that it was dad’s birthday and came over to our table and offered him a little shot of the alcohol he was drinking and wished him happy birthday in Chinese.  We are now traveling somewhere on the river, but we are not really sure as we got off the boat onto the ferry this afternoon where we boarded the boat yesterday.  So we feel we may be moving but maybe going around in circles until we reach our final destination, which we don’t know what that is yet!