Chapter Three
From The Sublime To The Ridiculous - The Final Chapter
Hi from Hong Kong!
I'm not even going to go into what a job it was to find internet access for less than the price of a computer in this city!! It was easier in the most backward towns in mainland China! Anyhow, plenty has happened since my last mail, and we're now starting the last lap of our visit, having arrived in Hong Kong yesterday.
Anyhow, we returned from Lhasa to China with no great hitches, - just a last minute reminder of the political situation as we passed a 93 truck Chinese Army convey on the way to the airport. (I don't know which is sadder , that the army has 93 truck conveys in Tibet, or that we counted them!) Our Tibetan driver muttered darkly under his breath (all we could understand was the repeated word "chinese", - but it didn't sound nice!) for all of the several minutes it took them to pass! Once on the plane we knew we were back in "China", each aisle played different music, for our increased happiness and comfort!! Sitting in the middle aisle, for the whole flight I had a James Galway flute-alike droning overhead, "Smoke gets in your eyes" and other such hits coming at me from the right hand side, and sino-pop bleating at my left ear. This was all accompanied by every Dirt Bag on the plane harrumphing and gobbing into their spit-bags. By the time we reached Chengdo I was so comfortable and happy I could just shit!
Back in Chengdu we had what we thought was an uneventful bus trip to Chongqing, where we were to catch our boat on the Yantze River for our "Three Gorges" cruise. For the first time on our trip, it was a pissy day for the whole bus trip, - and as we neared chongqing we were told that we were catching the tail-end of 4 weeks of solid rain!! Our first problem made itself known when we arrived at the bus terminal to be told by the ferry agent (pre-arranged in Chengdu) that we had missed our ferry. We had booked for Spm, it was now 6.30, but the agent insisted that our ferry had left at 6!! It became obvious that we had been shafted in favour of a bird in the hand, but annoying as this was, the brown stuff really hit the fan when they told us we would now have to find and pay for accommodation in Chongqing, although our ticket had included our cabin on the boat.
As usual, politeness got us nowhere, and they thought they had us in a corner until tempers snapped. Starting by roaring at the silly bitch in the corner that if she didn't stop giggling we'd explain exactly why it wasn't funny, moving through calling them all liars and theives, and ending with the threat to smash everything in their office and THEN call the police ( an oxymoron that proved to them conclusively [and probably correctly] that we were both insane and dangerous ) they rapidly agreed to pay for us to stay in a nice room in the hotel in which they were based, and to collect us in the morning and bring us to the ship. As we were brought to our room we noticed a little money changing hands with the concierge on the landing, and we were not asked to check in normally. This was their cheap way out of the situation. It was no skin off our nose, but they were to regret it later!!
In our room we found that the bus trip had not been uneventful after all. Mick couldn't open the zip of the front pocket of his bag, and on inspection I was sure I could smell superglue. He cut in from the inside, to find that his envelope of documentation and money had been rifled. Passport and ticket were still there, but all money (bar EUR50 kindly left behind) was gone. All this had happened during the 5 minute courtesy stop in the middle of the 4 hour journey!! Of course it was unwise (and unusual) for Mick to have left the stuff on the parcel shelf of the bus, but fair play to the f*cker, he was quick (and thorough!).
Rapid calculations made the amount out to be over $1,000, mostly cash, but some travellers cheques. We cancelled the cheques, but had to report the cash to the police for insurance later. This was done at the front desk of the hotel, a pantomime performance between us, a local policeman who spoke no English, a police trans later on the telephone, and a lot of pictures drawn on the back of an envelope!! We had been warned to avoid the bureaucracy (and worse) that is the Chinese police, but although the whole thing took 2 hours, it didn't seem all that bad.