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Let me tell you about my boat journey, but shhh… we’ll have to whisper, so I don’t get thrown overboard.
After a long morning of hurry up and wait, we finally made it through Customs to board the boat for our trip across the East China Sea. It took us about an hour just to get out of Shanghai, which made me thankful for not taking a river boat here in Shanghai, as we saw the whole thing from the ferry anyway. So, our accommodations are “clean and comfortable”, lol, no, really, it’s cool, it’s just a little cramped to have 4 people in a closet-sized room. Thankfully, the boat is fairly empty so there are a lot of lobby and lounge areas, and even a reading room that looks out over the front of the boat. I guess I’ll be doing a lot of reading over the next few days. The sad part of the boat? Back to regular prices, lunch was $5, I miss my 25 cent street food!
After lunch, everything was going fine, people seemed to be getting along, we tried some real Japanese saki at lunch, everyone was reading or playing games, no one had gone stir-crazy yet… and then? People started disappearing. The sea sickness was setting in. Even after their meds, almost everyone had gone to their rooms, and the halls and bathrooms had a distinct vommity smell. The water got choppier into the evening, with some pretty big swells, that the whole boat was rocking from side to side. By around 6pm I started to feel it a little bit, so I decided to just go to sleep in case I was getting sick like everyone else. That did the trick and the waves rocked me right to sleep. (I’ve heard it wasn’t such a calm night for my comrades). After about 12 hours of sleep, I was refreshed and ready to… sit around on the boat. At breakfast, I discovered that I was the only one enjoying our little adventure at sea, and was beginning to feel a little like Jonah.
OK, I admit, by mid-afternoon I was just about stir-crazy, but at least I wasn’t ill. I spent the day playing games, reading, and drinking the free tea from the vending machine downstairs. Oh, it’s nice to experience simple means of travel, but it will be nice to just get there tomorrow.
Are we there yet?!?
