Anyone who’s travelled for a great length of time
appreciates the importance of sticking to a budget.
So imagine my excitement when my Shangai hostel advertised a
3-day Yangtze River cruise for a quarter of the price that I had seen online…what
a bargain! That may have rung alarm bells for most people, but having spent
some time in China, staying in fabulous private hostel rooms for $10 a night
and eating great meals for $3 a plate, I was now adjusting my expectations of
the value of goods and services. The only stipulation by the cruise was that I
had to share my cabin, which I was OK with, as I love any chance to meet fellow
travellers.
The day of departure drew upon me, and it did not concern me
that I was the only westerner on the bus to the port. Nor did it did not
concern me that our boat was the smallest, least impressive of those at the
port (though those 5 star luxury vessels looked mighty appealing!). With a handwritten,
scrap piece of paper as my ‘ticket’, I made my way to my cabin to meet my cabin
mate.
…correction, cabin ‘mates’. Three middle-aged Chinese men
must have seen my impression of a deer in headlights as I quickly retreated out
of the cabin. I tracked down a female attendant to express my concern that I
had been assigned the wrong cabin.
“But you must share with Chinese” she explained.
“Chinese…yes” I replied. “Man….no!”
Thankfully she relented, and I was given my own cabin. I’m
confident that she assigned me the worst cabin as punishment, but it was the
end of a long day, and I could hear passengers next door having what I assume
was a sumo-wrestling match, so I was grateful. I simply plugged up the 10cm x
30cm hole in the exterior wall with a blanket, and used the extras from other
beds to help keep me warm in the <10 degree foggy temperature. Feasting on my 2min noodles and staring out to
the Chinese countryside, I was ready to make the best of my situation.
The next morning I discovered that I was the only female passenger,
and the only one who was not part of the ‘corporate group’ who were all
travelling together. Three days away from wife and family equates to middle
aged businessmen gone wild. In retrospect, their behaviour was not very
different from a excited kids on a school trip, except that the drinking, smoking
and gambling are allowed. Every day they giggled at the ‘odd man out’ who had
to sit beside me on our day trip excursions, and on more than one occasion I
saw them double-take at the other boats
full of white westerners and look back at me with a look that I
perceived to be “why are you with us, and not with them?”. However, like most school trips, a sense of
solidarity builds over time, and when a group of us got separated from our tour
on day three, they did not leave me to fend for myself…but did try some miming
and grunting to indicate our predicament and lead us back to our boat safely.
The scenery was beautiful and the excursions were…not
translated to English, so I can’t be entirely sure of what ruins/palaces/sites
I saw…therefore, my story about the Yangtze is not really about the river at
all.
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