Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube Read Free Book Online

couple found the left luggage room for me and a public phone for Susan. The phone was in a booth on the street and was guarded by an attendant.
    We crossed the road and entered an upmarket Chinese restaurant where we had a very poor meal of what was alleged to be pork and eggs. My plate came covered with something that looked like runny baked custard. Some of the prices on the restaurant’s menu were astronomical, especially for exotic items like snake. Susan read to me, ‘Steak and eggs, 480 yuan. That’s a bit hot!’ I replied, ‘Put your glasses on, that’s snake and egg’. And it was.
    When we left it was still cold and raining. In the street we sloshed past some great Victorian buildings and entered the marvellous Bank of China. It had massive chandeliers, carved wooden Corinthian columns, wonderful leather couches and a polished dance floor between the tellers and the customers. Outside the bank, in stark contrast, a destitute old man in rags huddled under a pedestrian overpass trying to elude the rain.
    Still hungry, we came upon a McMuck. At least there were no surprises on your plate there. Later we stood on a street corner looking lost. A Chinese man with good intentions, but no English, offered us help and so did a westerner, the first we had seen since Shanghai, who had lots of English, but turned out to be even more lost than we were.
    Susan and I parted at the train station and I returned to the boat terminal over the long suspension bridge that crosses the river at Wuhan and joins the two halves of the city. Except for this great bridge and the elegant old buildings, Wuhan seemed a cheerless town. The gate of the gangway that led to the riverboat was defended by an ogress who demanded six yuan to unlock it. I thought this was an extortion racket, but it turned out to be an official fee. I was given a ticket that entitled me to enter the first-class waiting room where you could avoid the rabble in the comfort of deep lounge chairs. There were fees for everything you did in China, especially if you were a foreigner. I had even been charged five yuan to cross the bridge in the taxi.
    My next ship, the Jade Vessel , was almost identical to the Yangtze Star . Once again I had an outside cabin, but this time the deck area beside my cabin was enclosed by glass windows. The attendant brought me five cakes of soap. I must have looked like I needed a good wash.
    We glided away downriver in the silvery gloom of dusk. As we passed under the looming suspension bridge, it was almost dark and the town lights and those of nearby ships twinkled cheerily. My cabin companion this time was a diminutive Chinese girl of about twenty, who put her pyjamas on ready for bed at seven and still had them on at lunch the next day. I drew my bed curtains and read while she snored.
    I slept snug and warm in my bed after I had shut up another lot of rowdies next door by elbow bangs on the wall. But I discovered that it was freezing cold and pitch dark out on the river when, in the middle of the night, I had to go down the deck to find the loo. Coming back I had a fearful time finding my door again and, palpitating and expecting to find myself in someone else’s cabin, I opened what I hoped was the right one.
    I was again woken at dawn by The Voice harassing me from the loudspeaker on the wall but, praise be! I found that this machine had a knob with which it could be turned off. To no avail, it turned out. The speakers in the cabins on either side were so loud that I could still hear it anyway. The Voice went on and on in a maddening shriek, probably exhorting me to be a good little worker and grow more rice. Then the cabin attendant barged in. There was no stopping her. She was programmed to sweep the floor at eight and that was what she did.
    It was still very cold. As I watched the dismal grey rain drizzling down, I wondered why I had thought I was leaving this weather behind in Beijing. It was actually colder here. More doleful