China Day 5, Travel Day

Friday July 1^st

We had a free morning to enjoy in Feng Huang. I wanted to catch up with a couple of people on Skype and unfortunately the wi-fi in the hotel died during the night so I went wandering through town looking for a cafe. I found one called Soul Too and had a western style breakfast of eggs and toast and a banana milkshake while talking to Carol to wish her a good holiday in Italy and Peter, asking him to update my blog for me, as I am behind the red wall of China and the blog site is blocked.

Then I went back to the hotel to pack and meet up with the group. We walked back along the river and up to the car park to meet our minibus. We retraced the same ninety minute ride to Jishou that brought us here. We had a ninety minute wait for our train, so we went to a restaurant across from the station and had lunch. Then we boarded the 'hard sleeper' train to Yichang, which was a nine hour ride. We were separated in different areas of the cars. I was in a compartment with a seventeen year old girl and her eleven year old cousin, who were quite interested in me and wanted to practise their English, so we talked for quite awhile. Later when we stopped at another station I got off to stretch my legs and a different young woman started to talk to me, asking where I was from and where I was going. When we got back on the train we sat together and I showed her some of my photos on my camera of China, which she found interesting because she had not been to Feng Huang. Then she wanted to see some of the other places I'd been. So we passed an hour looking at photos of Africa, Egypt and India. Made me realize just how many I actually have! I enjoy talking to the local people, but there are not many that have enough English to strike up a decent conversation, but they are very interested in Westerners. The first girl was very surprised that I wasn't religious, as she thought that all Westerners were. Makes you wonder what they are taught about us.

We arrived at Yichang, and caught another minibus to the port where we met up with our Yangtze River cruise boat called The Princess Jeannie. Our cabin on the boat is small but comfortable. As it was midnight we all headed straight to bed.