Hello again,
welcome to Yichang. It's a non-descipt city with about 4 Mio inhabitatnts, and the reason that I'm here is because it's the starting point for my yantse River cruise to see the three gorges. That was actually the main reason I came on this trip, so I'm very excited. I treated myself to a luxury cruise as a 'present' for taking the bar exam, but the waethe is really icky, so we'll see how this turns out.
I arrived here yesterday and told the taxi drver exactly, which hotel I wanted to go to. When we arrived, it looked a little doubtful. He said tha they just renamed it. (Which should have made me suspicious.) But the price was okay (18 euros), so I didn't mind. Later it turned out that he had taken me to a completely different hotel, which was prettz much in the middle of nowhere. And I got ripped of with the price as well. But as I thought the price okay and the room was okay as well, and as Taxis are dirt cheap anyway, it didn't matter much. That's the good thing about China - even when you do get ripped off, it doesn't hurt.
Later on I spent about 2 hours at a travel agent trying to sort the rest of my trip out. I decided to do the easy thing and fly everywhere, which is a lot easier than taking busses and trains. Very few people speak English, which makes even shopping for water an adventure. I was the last customer at the travel agency, and when they closed, the travel agent, a young girl called Daisy (her English name, I forgot her Chinese name) got picked up by her friend Sue. And they took me out for dinner, which was excellent. We went to a place where they served hotpot - with tiny catfish. Apparently it's a specialty of the region, and though it looked very weird, it actually tasted better than the other chinese food I had so far. That's the thing with independent travelling. It's a hassle booking all your transport and accomodation for yourself versus speinding the time sightseeing. But on the upside you get to meet the locals, which is just amazing.
Another fun thing I did this morning was grocery shopping at a local market. They had the weirdest little market in a back street around the hotel. They sold fruit and vegetables, but also spices I couldn't make out and live fish and stuff. I was incredibly proud of myself when I bought a couple cakes, plums, bananas and apples. All in Chinese, of course. I am not sure whether they carged me a "special price", but I paid about 1,20 Euros for everything, so that's okay.
And just one more thing to finish up / traffic here is horrible. The rules seem to be more like suggestions, which you can follow or not, depending on your liking. Also, people don't buckle up. Whenever I do it in a taxi, the driver tells me it's not necessary. And it seems that the other passengers don't do it either, because the belt is very dirty and I usually end up really grimey. But hey, safety first.
Okay, I have to go, my ship is about to leave. I will write as soon as I get to Quongqing. Until then, all the best,
Katalin
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