Got up early, checked out of our hotel, and arrived at the train station 5 minutes late for the train we wanted to be on (really, we didn't realize we needed to be there 10 minutes early for immigration). Sat around playing cards for an hour and a half waiting for the next train. Then took the 2-hour train into mainland China. Turns out there are 3 train stations in Guangzhou, and we didn't arrive at the one from which the train goes to Yichang. So we took the metro through downtown to the correct train station, but walked all over the subway station looking for the right exit to get us to the train station, and then walked all over the outside of the train station in the rain looking for the entrance, then looking for the place to buy tickets, as you cannot go into the station without a ticket. By the time we got to the ticket counter, it was maybe 30 minutes before our train was to leave, so we didn't really expect to be able to get sleeper accommodations (in India, they stop selling those at least 2 hours ahead of time so they can “chart”, or assign bunks, plus we were worried about them selling out). But after some confusion about where we wanted to go (Yichang rhymes with gong, and Chinese being a tonal language, even though we got all the consonants right, the ticket seller had no idea where we were talking about until we wrote it down), we were able to get hard sleeper bunks. Yay!
We got some lunch and tried to get some money from an ATM, but it wouldn't take our card. We were almost out of local cash after buying our train tickets. The train ride was pleasant enough, and we even slept pretty well. Hard sleeper class in China is a lot like 3A in India, or maybe even a half step above. The scenery was very nice.
Upon arrival in Yichang, we discovered that Lonely Planet failed to provide us with a map for this city. It did say what bus to take to the docks, but not where to catch it. We tried to get directions, but of course, nobody spoke English except the taxi driver who wanted to take us. Eventually we found a city bus stop, but still didn't know if the #4 bus we got on there would be going in the right direction. We eventually realized that the name of the Ferry Terminal was written out in Chinese characters in Lonely Planet next to the English, and showed that to another person waiting for the bus. She indicated that we needed bus 4 and that it would come here. Showing the Chinese character name on board the bus to other passengers helped us to get off at the right place.
We spent a while wandering around different travel agents trying to find tickets on a Chinese cruise boat up the Three Gorges with the kind of schedule/stops that we wanted. Thinking we'd found what we wanted, we headed out in search of an international ATM. Everywhere else in the world we've ever been, you can go to pretty much any ATM and withdraw cash with your regular ATM card from home. This is not the case in China, though there are occasional international ATMs that will take common US debit cards. Eventually we found one, but our credit union card still didn't work. Will need to call them about that, sometime during business hours in the USA... probably they forgot that we are in China and deactivated the card for suspicious transactions. Our “backup” checking account from Madison did work, thank goodness! We didn't bring as much emergency cash as we should have, and have spent a decent fraction of it...
Stopped by a supermarket on our way back to the docks to buy food for our cruise (eating the food on the boat is not recommended—it's supposed to be lousy and expensive). Also stopped for lunch. Upon being offered a menu entirely in Chinese (but seeing from it that the prices were reasonable), we ordered by pointing at some good-looking dishes on another table. When we asked the price, it seemed too low, but we paid and got our change, so it must have been right. When the food came out though, it all made sense: the meat dish was actually tofu, and the vegetables were lettuce (steamed lettuce!). Fortunately we like tofu, steamed lettuce, and tomato-egg drop soup. Actually, it was really quite excellent.
Upon arriving back at the ticket agent we intended to buy from, we asked about maybe just purchasing a ticket as far as Wanzhou instead of going all the way to Chongqing to save ourselves some time (there's not so much to see after Wanzhou), and discovered that the boat he was trying to sell us tickets on got to Wanzhou in the morning the day after leaving Yichang in the evening... so this boat was, in fact, the boat that Lonely Planet had told us to make sure to avoid: the one that travels through the scenic portion of the Three Gorges in the dead of night! He still wanted to sell us a ticket, but his tickets for the cruise boats seemed too expensive and the language barrier and previous confusion was making us worry that we could end up on entirely the wrong kind of boat.
We went back to another agent where there was better English spoken and discussed all the details we could think to ask about on the boat ride she was selling us. Everything seemed right, except for the price (800 Yuan each for a private cabin), which was low enough to make the “too good to be true” alarm bells go off in our heads. A good price should have been at least 1050 Yuan each for a private cabin. But we couldn't find anything that seemed wrong in her answers, so we booked it. Four hours before departure, you can have the price drop dramatically to fill up the last few spaces. She told us that safe drinking water would be expensive on the boat, so we left our bags behind the counter and went out to purchase drinking water. As we were wandering around looking for a public toilet, she showed up completely out of breath, evidently having been running around looking for us. When she caught her breath, she said that she had accidentally sold us second class tickets on the boat (same room except 4 people in one cabin in bunk beds), with first class tickets being 1000 Yuan. This was honestly a little bit of a relief, since we'd known that the price she was quoting us was too good to be true and couldn't figure out what was wrong with what she was selling. We asked if we could pay the difference, but sadly first class was sold out, so that wasn't an option unless we wanted to wait around a day. We decided we'd rather another day in Xi'an or Beijing than a private cabin.
For dinner, we went to a noodle stand where they where Dad was making fresh noodles by stretching hunks of amazing dough many times into long thin noodles (screw getting a Kitchenaid noodle-maker, I just need a recipe for dough like that!), and Son was waiting tables and calling to passersby like us. He also took our photo with his cell phone once we had our food. It's so weird being such a celebrity. Even though we were across the street from where the international river cruise boats let off their international passengers, I don't think this stand sees many white customers.
We also killed some time sitting around in the waterfront park watching a couple of musical groups who seemed to be having rehearsals.
The logistics after leaving the ticket agent and getting going were a little more complicated. We got a receipt when we paid (which we promptly misplaced), and no ticket. The agent with good English went off her shift shortly after we bought our ticket (we ran into her on the street on her way home), and we were delivered to our guide by another agent who spoke enough English to explain to us that we didn't need tickets because our tickets were in the guide's head. It turns out our guide speaks no English whatsoever, and we are the only white people on the whole cruise ship. Lonely Planet and WikiTravel had told us to expect this, but normally when we are told to expect that, we show up and find the place has been “discovered” and is now a popular stop on the western tourist trail. So it's really pretty cool that this one hasn't been yet.
We spent a long while on a bus traveling first to a place where we saw a show about the history of the Three Gorges. The travel agent had assured us that even though this was going to be in Chinese, we wanted to see it for the music and dancing. We were skeptical but it was included in the package that we otherwise wanted. However, she turned out to be quite right. Even though we couldn't understand the words, it was quite engaging and the dancing was phenomenal. They basically made a Broadway-like musical out of the Three Gorges history, and the backdrop was a giant rear-projection movie screen showing old photos and videos of the historic things being presented, so we weren't totally clueless as to what was going on.
Then we took buses to our boat and got on and went to bed. Unfortunately figuring out all the logistics took so long that even though we were in Yichang from 8 AM until 5 PM, we didn't have time to go the hour each way to see the Three Gorges Dam. Though we're guessing it looks a lot like a dam.
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