Looked like a few people fell ill after 3 days on the boat.... Overheard someone saying that it was the hamburger from the night before. May be, but then Russell didn't have any hamburger and he was sick all night. While I had no problem and went to have another big breakfast, he went to see the doctor, who told him he got an upset stomach as well as a slight flu, and gave him an injection as well as 4 different types of colourful tablets of varying sizes. Do you think I would be able to recognise any of the unlabelled tablets? Of course not.
Arrived at Wuhan just after 9am---- we were about 3 hours ahead of schedule but we all had to stay on the boat until our guides came to pick us up. Wuhan was made up of 3 cities (Hankou, Hanyang and Wuchang) separated by two rivers--- Yangtze River and Han River. The approach to the port in Hankou was rather impressive---- the 1.1km-long and 80m-high Yangtze Bridge spanning across the river, linking Hanyang and Wuchang. It was still cloudy and grey, but at least it had stopped raining.
After an early lunch at 11am, we got picked up by our CITS rep Lily just after 12.15. She apologised for not speaking English very well as she was a major in French. I certainly would not have imagined how my knowledge of French could come in handy in China, but it did this time!
Surprisingly the Wuhan Tian An Holiday Inn got our booking this time, but it could easily not have our booking as our voucher got a different Holiday Inn name (which was also in Wuhan.... after all, this is three cities in one!).
After a good 2-hour rest, I decided to venture out into the centre of Hankou. One of the main streets was Jianghan Lu which was pedestrianised. Quite a pleasant surprise. But there were too many McDonalds and KFCs around---- no less than 3 each on just this one street!
Decided to hunt down Laotongcheng Restaurant and at least have a look. The ground floor was the food hall, which upstairs was the posher restaurant. The famous dish here was doupi, which looked like an omelette stuffed with glutinous rice and meat, but in fact the wrapping was bean curd skin. Apparently the sanxian doupi (with 3 fresh ingredients, ie meat, prawn and egg) was Chairman Mao's favourite dish here (and there was a big red plaque saying that above the cash counter). So, to follow Mao's footsteps, I ordered one also for a mere RMB3--- a bargain! Very tasty but a bit on the greasy side--- I could probably try an omelette version back home. The food hall did not look too clean by western standard but it was probably OK.... but hey, I had to take a risk if I wanted to try out good food!
Stopped by a few CD shops on the way back to the hotel and picked up some CDs at RMB10 each. Were they fakes or would they even play?? I would have to wait till I got back to England!
We stayed at the hotel for dinner, and then went to the business centre to check the e-mails. Although it was an ISDN line there, I've never seen anything that slow even on the slowest modem back home. Maybe www really meant World Wide Wait in China!
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