The Long, Long Boat Trip

Well, we made it to China- barely.

We awoke the morning that our boat was leaving to HEAVY rain in Kyoto. We had to make it from our hostel to the train station which was only a 15 minute walk away but the rain was a pretty big deterrent. We also really had to leave on this boat since they only sail once a week and Friday was the day. We checked out the taxis and they were all booked because of the rain so the only option left was to walk. So, we hung around the hotel for as long as possible and just as we were about to give up and get soaked there was a break in the rain! We RAN to the train station with all of our luggage and caught a train about 20 minutes later.

This was incredibly lucky as we later found out because rather than taking 30 minutes as the guide book said it took about an hour. We also had to find an ATM and change trains before arriving at the port. By the time we actually made it to the port, they were frantically waving us in! We got on the boat and it shoved off a few minutes later, 30 minutes ahead of schedule!

The boat was a really odd mix between a cruise boat and a cargo ship. I'm not really sure how to describe it but lets just say that the charm wore off after the first hour or so. We spent that afternoon sitting on the deck in two of the 10 or so chairs available and watching the crew paint the deck below us. We were introduced to Chinese cuisine later that evening- goat head, bird eggs (not the kind from chickens) and some other odd looking dishes. We went with the rice and veggies for the entire trip.

The next day, we ran into a bit of rough weather. As we were eating breakfast and watching the waves, we heard a bunch of screaming. We looked outside to see what the commotion was all about and saw three men clinging to buoys in the water! Seriously. It took a lot of manoeuvring to get close enough to the men to pull them out of the water because the boat was making a pretty strong current. After about two hours, the crew managed to pull all three of them in. The two younger men were ok but the older man drowned as they were trying to pull him out of the water. They gave him CPR for about 20 minutes but it was too late. They had been in the water for about 15 hours at that point and I guess it was just too much. We don't really know how they ended up in the water but our guess is that they were washed off of Korean fishing boat since we were in Korean waters and they were holding on to fishing net buoys. The Korean cost guard later came to pick them up and take them back to Korea.

That afternoon we hit some serous waves and just about everyone took to their bunks. I'd gotten a patch for seasickness before we left so I stuck that on and felt fine the entire time. After about an hour or so of the waves, people began running for the bathrooms. All of the sinks and toilets were full ALL NIGHT. Some really great sound effects there.

The next day the sea had calmed down and we were scheduled to dock at 2pm so everyone was in a much better mood. We had lost quite a bit of time rescuing the Koreans so we got to the dock late and lost our place in line. We ended up sitting there until about 9:30pm. We did eventually make it off of the boat and easily breezed through customs. That was fantastic because we'd heard that the Chinese government was confiscation guidebooks that did not recognize Taiwan as a part of China and we were really worried that ours would be taken. We would be totally lost without that book!

We had docked so late that all of the trains and buses had stopped running from the port to Beijing so a group of us decided to go in on a taxi. We settled on a price with a super aggressive woman who touted her large car. She did have a big trunk that fit all of our stuff so we got in. She drove us around for about 15 minutes, talking on her three cell phones all of the way before telling us that we would have to transfer cars! We REALLY put up a fight about this but she'd taken us to an empty stretch of highway where two more cars were waiting and we really didn't have any other options. We ended up switching to a sports car with a tiny trunk and no seat belts! Before loading all of our stuff into the trunk, the guy took off his licence plate and threw it into the trunk with our bags. We're not sure if this was because he was an illegal cab or because of the way that he was planning on driving... That driver was INSANE and I was pretty sure that we were all going to die in China. We were passing trucks on the shoulder at 120km per hour (about 80mph), swerving in and out of traffic and cutting everyone off! Thankfully, we did make it to our hotel in one piece. I'm still not really sure how...

Once we got to our "hostel" we were totally blown away. It's this really nice hotel in the center of downtown with marble floors, down blankets, etc. for about $24 a night. Amazing! A very nice ending to a harrowing day.