Warsaw to Bangkok

First, I must apologize for the lack of photography in this section. My camera and photography skills were not sufficient to accurately capture the Three Gorges.

The touts and vendors at the ferry terminal are extremely aggressive. After three weeks of decency and respect, “hello” has once again become a dirty word. But as bad as it is to have “hello” shouted at you at top volume repeatedly, as racist as it is to be singled out of a crowd for harrassment, there is nothing worse than having someone clap at you while doing all this. Not applause clapping either, but the kind you’d use to call a dog. Harrassing me to buy stuff is one thing, but calling me like I’m a dog? That is so unacceptable.

Back to the boat. I went with a second class cabin, and I’m glad I did. Most backpackers take third-class, but they are dark, cramped, and don’t have full bathroom facilities. Nor do they have good views, whereas I had a large window. I had a proper toilet. I did not, however, have hot water. I guess they have to save something for first class. There’s a TV, two bunk beds, and an air conditioner. There are free toothbrushes and flotation devices.

The boat left at 8pm with just, myself and I in the room. I had the whole cabin to myself for two full days and 2 1/2 nights! Yes, 1/2, as the boat trip ends at 2am in Yichang. Of course, at 8:10, two guys show up. Supposedly they were staying with me. But they had no bags. On a 56 hour trip? Alarm bells were ringing, so I proceeded to make a nuisance of myself by verifying with the steward that these folks actually belonged in my cabin. I mean, why do I always get stuck with the weirdos? Memories of that drug-running sociopath from the Riga-Stockholm ferry came flooding back to me. Why can’t I get some more hard-partying businessmen like on the Moscow-Cheboksary train? Now, that was fun. At any rate, they belonged but I had to wonder about doing a 56 hour trip without so much as a facecloth or bottle of water.

Fengdu
The next morning, we stopped at Fengdu, home of the “Ghost Town”, which from what I’m told is a bunch of temples built on a haunted mountain or some such thing. I didn’t get to see it myself, because they tried to run a scam on me. I muscled my way past a kilometre of aggressive touts, only to have the fine folks at the ticket office decide that I needed to pay four times what everyone else was paying. I’m not the most patient person at the best of times, and first thing in the morning is not the best of times. Blind Freddy could see what was going to happen.

Walking back to the boat I stopped by the dock for some wontons for breakfast. They wanted me to pay 10 yuans for a bowl of wontons! Two yuans is closer to the right price. It’s a funny thing, though. The guy was smiling and had learned to say “Good morning”. It takes the edge of off “hello” and the smile was so far removed from the rude, scowling shysters at the Ghost Town that I was more than happy to engage in a little friendly bargaining. I ended up paying five, which was still too much, but it was very tasty (customized with chile paste and fresh crushed garlic). To me, we both won. He had ultimately tried to screw me just like the others, but he was friendly and reasonable about it. That was all the difference in the world.

Fengdu itself looks like a hole from the riverfront. There is good reason for this. In a few years, the riverfront will be underwater, hence all the vacant lots and abandoned buildings. On the far bank, they’ve already moved the entire city to higher ground, so the riverfront is nothing but a man-made bank awaiting the higher waters.

The Food
Rain settled in over the muddy Yangtze as we pushed off. When things cleaned up a bit, the river banks were bright green terraces with exotic subtropical bamboos and ferns. Occasionally, I was treated to the sight of a road leading straight into the river, a reminder that earlier this year they conducted stage one of flooding.

I thought about how good it was to be leaving Sichuan. Part of this is because I’m a little behind schedule, but the food has a lot to do with it. The past few days I’d been able to sample quite a few different Sichuanese dishes and very quickly that cuisine has gone from the greatest thing since sliced bread to a one-hit wonder. They’ve come across one compelling flavour combination – dried red chiles and huajiao (Sichuan peppercorn). This is a wonderful combo, but they’ve milked it dry. It’s like a Saturday Night Live sketch where they have one funny joke and bleed it out for ten minutes. Eating Sichuan food for a week is like listening exclusively to a cd of Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ Greatest Hit.

The other thing that’s done it for me is the grease. They don’t fry food in their woks, they boil it. The bottom of the serving dish is an orange puddle and all the food glistens. If that was not enough, pork dishes usually contain a mix of strips of pork meat and strips of pork fat, the latter being the majority. Now, a little pork fat is a good thing. It’s the reason we domesticated those filthy, ornery things in the first place. But you know there’s something wrong when I’m entertaining thoughts of going to KFC or Pizza Hut for lunch to cut back on my grease intake.

We stopped at the Zhang Fei Temple, a small wooden temple that climbs a sheer rock face. The giant rock sticks out of nowhere next to the river, and is schedule to become an island. The stairs are very steep going up, culminating in a ladder for the final floor. The views would be good but for the chronic smog problem in the Chang Jiang valley. The temple itself is quite nice, though. In addition to its interesting structure, there are fine Buddhas and rock inscriptions.

I could have signed up for tours of all these things. But I was on a local boat and they don’t speak English on the tours. For that, I would have needed to take a foreigners-only boat. When you research this trip online, those are all you see (in English). They are luxury affairs with ballrooms and chandeliers and patios for each room. I was doing the math and calculated that I could afford one of those if I took 17th class, which is sleeping standing up in the linen closet while your backpack is dragged behind the boat in a dingy. I had briefly comtemplated splurging for 16th class, but decided against it because I can’t sleep in a seated position. Plus, I’d have had to wake up and move every time somebody had a late-night bowel movement.

Reflections on Personal Security
This isn’t Africa. Travellers to Africa report that being robbed is pretty much routine. The central part of that continent, which admittedly sees few travellers due to chronic instability, is deemed the worst by diehard adventurers. In Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, a few of them told campfire stories.

One had been on an adventure tour from Cape Town to Cairo and their vehicle went off the road in the Congo. People were injured and in need of medical attention. The populace of the local village came by to help…relieve them of their possessions.

Another told of a friend who’d motorcycled the world. Trying to enter the Central African Republic – country #138 – he was shaken down by the border guards. He just thought “Mate, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.” and waited them out. They screamed and pushed and got in his face. “Nice touch, mate,” he thought, “But you’re not getting a thing.” Then one of them loaded his assault rifle, pointed it at our guy’s head and began to count down from cinq. Our boy paid up.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me, thankfully. I tend to steer clear of places like the Central African Republic. Only once was there ever a tangible threat and I got out of dodge in a hurry. Theft is another matter. I’m hardly the world’s most experienced traveller, but I’ve learned a few things. I feel a lot safer when people don’t see me as a wallet with feet. There’s a lot more money in China than in northern Lithuania, but I felt safer in the latter because everybody was so cool.

In Russia, it was the eyeballs that did it. There are a lot of roving eyeballs in Moscow. St. Petersburg and Samara weren’t like that and consequently I felt a lot safer in those places. Same country, but totally different vibe.

What you bring also has something to do with it. I have as valuables only a discman and a camera, both of which cost less than $100. The cd’s are all copies, so I won’t miss them beyond the duration of the trip should they disappear. But I’m still concerned. The reason I’m concerned is because there’s always something that is the most valuable, the least replaceable, the biggest hassle to lose. It might not be much – maybe your sandals, or undeveloped film – but there’s always something. Maybe the guys who brought nothing but a pack of cigarettes for this 56 hour trip had the right idea.

“Somebody stole my cigarettes!”
“So what? I thought you only had two left anyway?”
“Yeah, but now I’ve got nothing but the shirt on my back!”

The Gorges
We waited at the crack of dawn for first light before entering the first gorge, the Qutang. The whole boat crowded onto the deck as we crossed the misty threshold. Jagged cliffs towered over the river. Green cloaked the slopes. Very impressive. No fewer than three guides were blathering into their megaphones. I guess people who paid for tours would feel ripped off if there wasn’t a guide to explain every tree to them. And that’s how it went the whole trip – as long as there was something beautiful to look at, they didn’t take a breath.

The Qutang is very short and we quickly reached the end. We docked and shifted to smaller boats to head up the Daning River to experience the Lesser Three Gorges. These are shorter, narrower gorges than those on the Yangtze, though it should be said that the Daning is still a pretty big river. The scenery is more or less the same, featuring tree-covered cliffs. Occasionally, the top of a submerged tree poked out of the water, clinging to life.

At the end of the Lesser Three Gorges you get on a little wooden boat to visit the Mini Three Gorges. Neither of these actually contains the precise number of three gorges, but Three Gorges is a bit of a brand name these days in the Chinese tourist business. At first I feared that these last ones were nothing but filler, but I was dead wrong about that.

You go slowly up a small river with the shore rising up at 80 degrees, sometimes only a metre away. They’ve tarted it up with cliffside shawm ensembles and vocal groups, but these narrow gorges with roots hanging down them were too spectacular to ruin. The little brat in front of me with his cheap wooden whistle (when will parents learn?) gave it his all, so I moved up to the front of the boat and sat on the floor. I got an even better view there, and for the first time genuinely felt like I was part of the river. I imagined myself an explorer, reaching out to grab the vines and watching monkeys play on nearby rocks.

We came upon an amazing waterfall, as a small creek dashed and danced its way down the cliff, taking in several precipitous drops along the way. The driver turned the engine off and the kid put his whistle away and all I could hear was the glorious symphony of splashing. For three seconds, until the guide decided to practice for the upcoming Yangtze Karaoke Championships. He finished when we’d past earshot of the falls. Everybody applauded his warblings, except me. The fact is, Mother Nature simply has a much better voice and that’s what I wanted to hear.

We spent the afternoon passing the second gorge, the Wu, which had a similar landscape to the Qutang. All along the route there are indications as to where the water level will rise. After Wu, we had a few hours until the final gorge. At just after five, the sun already disappearing behind the hills, we stopped at another temple. I grew concerned about this latest stop, and deeming it superfluous. I was told it was a very important temple, but I pointed out that I’d paid to see three gorges, not two. I was right. Darkness cloaked the Chang Jiang as we resumed transit and entered the final gorge. Within half an hour, all was black and I’d seen only 2 1/2 gorges. Good luck getting my money back, though.

The latter part of the evening was spent going through locks, and there was an option to take a bus to see the Three Gorges Dam construction site. Being nighttime, and given that the dam tours are priced so as to finance the entire project, I passed on it and got some sleep. At 2am we arrived in Yichang and an entire busload of us were shipped down the foggy freeway to Wuhan.

Tags: China, Three Gorges, Travel

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