Day 7 travelling

Remember when I said the Chinese think big and then build it? These satellite suburbs are often known as ghost towns because they are built by the government with the knowledge that one day they will be needed but until tenants are found they just stand waiting. 

This blurry pic is taken through the bus window, as part of our day of travelling that includes many buses, a plane and a boat. This pic is taken on the way to the airport to catch a flight to Wu Han, where we'll meet up with another tour group and catch a bigger bus to the boat for the Yangtze river cruise. And what a shock that meeting was! We joined a group of 36 who had been touring together for 14 days already. They were having fun with each other (quite loudly), and voicing their opinions (embarrassingly loudly), and a ll round just a wee bit overwhelming. One lady commented that we looked like stunned mullets - flattering they were and not adverse to sharing their every thought out loud.

I realise just how spoilt I have been to have been travelling in a group of six now I have a frame of reference. Our travelling companions would be people we'd be drawn under any circumstances, such a blessing to be in a small group of considerate, gentle souls who shared generously and taught us how to do tour-group travelling.

 Things are understandably different with a group of 42. 42 peeps couldn’t all share one conversation over lunch – which was okay today because … no lunch for us today, replaced by a pit-stop at a road-side service centre shop for ‘snacks for the journey’ and another stop for ‘drinks for the boat’.

We were on that bus for 5 hours with the only other stop - a 10 minute ‘pee now or forever hold it’ stop – talk about pee pressure!

We did stop for dinner, we had Chinese, (quell surprise) before we arrived at the boat, pretty right?!

this was a welcome sight indeed