longest toilet in the world

Lovely. Actually got around to reading the Yangtse cruise section in guide book today. Apparently the river used to flow quite nicely. Then they built the Three Gorges Dam and slowed everything down so all of the river above the dam (where we are) is something of a steaming cess pit. I was quite enjoying sitting on deck until I read that bit.

 

Quite a surreal day really – well the evening was anyway.

 

Breakfast in bed – sponge cake and banana bought in shops yesterday – too stingy to pay for buffet breakfast every day on the boat (but we’re having it tomorrow!). Nice lie in as we decided to skip the optional excursion this morning – no Abode of the Ghosts for us but its okay, the cruise ship sent a chap with a video camera to make a DVD for all the Chinese tourists and we’ve just watched it playing in the bar so we’ve seen the Abode of the Ghosts and we don’t think we missed all that much!

 

Sunbathed on deck for an hour. Had lunch. Went to talk advertised as ‘Chinese Traditional Medicine’ turned out to be on acupuncture and was in Chinese but our tour guide did a great translation job for us. Neither of us volunteered to be given acupuncture though. Apparently there are 12 routes of blood flow around the body just like there are 12 months in a year. There are 365 acupuncture points as per number of days in year. We now know four of them! Two for relaxation, one for funny tummy / travel sickness and one other that I’m not sure about!

 

Then had a Mahjong lesson for an hour. It’s a bit like Gin Rummy but you start with 13 bricks instead of 7 cards and you have to make 4 groups of 3 and one pair. If you get a ‘set of four’ you win double the bet money! Martyn and I lost 4 times. At least we were not betting otherwise we would be walking to the airport in Beijing!

 

Dinner was Chinese own brand pot noodle which was at least filling if not nutritious! Our food stash is looking much smaller though. Consequently have scheduled to have breakfast and dinner in restaurant tomorrow in the hope that if we have crackers for lunch we can eek out our supplies for dinner on the night train as well! Ah well, haven’t starved yet and we’ve always the ‘emergency biscuits’

 

And then there was the after dinner entertainment. Oh my goodness. It was billed as a ‘cultural show’. Hilarious. 7 of the most sullen looking Chinese yoooffs had obviously been forced by some sort of employment law to come up with a few dances to perform which they did with about as much enthusiasm as I had for listening to the second act – karaoke. Martyn held me in my seat and refused to let me leave which I think was a bit harsh as the whole show didn’t get any better. It was interspersed with two of the other guests performing more karaoke (actually they weren’t as awful as they might have been) and by the time the major ‘guest involvement’ sessions arrived I figured I might as well join in. One mad Chinese equivalent of musical statues later and I think our tour group had broken the ice with the Chinese tourists. Unfortunately our thought that ‘once will be enough’ didn’t quite hold out and we got dragged up for a sort of Chinese conga dance. Things dramatically improved when 4 blokes in silk dressing gowns arrived on stage to the sounds of Saturday Night Fever. Thankfully no strip show but instead YMCA – oh wow, one we all knew. An influx of 4 tall (relatively speaking) white English people ran to the dance floor. And then the piece de resistance – they played the Macarena. Well, the Chinese loved us. If they had been the sort of nation to give a standing ovation I think we’d have got one. Immense applause as we left the stage having done 3 rotations. That’s the funny thing about the Macarena. When on dance floor that is packed it seems quite a short tune. When on stage with two other people in front of a crowd of Chinese who have no idea what you are doing it seems like an amazingly long tune! Still I think we provided a good level of entertainment and we certainly have a starring role in the wonderful DVD that the ship sells and that strangely none of us will be buying!

 

And after all that excitement……bed methinks – we should arrive at gorge like scenery tomorrow…….