(30September)

This was a major travel day! Up and on the bus at around 8, then we headed for the three gorges dam. It was awful weather though, raining pretty heavily and misty. When we got to the car park 5 of us decided (wisely I think!) to stay on the bus and chill out a but while the others ventured up a hill in the rain to see the dam. I think it would have been really good if it was nice weather, but they couldn't even see anything in the mist really! And it was quite expensive for what it was - like everything in china, they majorly jack up the prices for tourists!!

Then we continued on what should have been a 3 or 4 hour bus journey...and it turned into nearly 7 hours! I don't know if I'd mentioned this already, but this is around when the phrase "National Holiday" became the most feared in my life haha! We first knew about it when the bus came to a standstill on the middle of a highway crossing a bridge. We weren't sure what was happening, thought maybe a crash or something. Then we saw something that probably just describes exactly how crazy the driving is in china! We were essentially on a one way motorway, and all the cars in front of us STARTED TO TURN AROUND!! So suddenly on this one way road we had loads of cars coming back towards us! I've never seen anything like it. Out bus just stopped and moved into the space they left when everyone had stopped turning around! Then we were basically not moving for an hour, even though we were only about 5 km from the train station. It turned out that it was just traffic because everyone we going on holiday at the same time! Mental. The driver actually just turned off the engine and hung back from the traffic...I'm assuming he was leaving the option open of turning around if the traffic stayed awful. After a while more cars came up though, and he eventually moved back into the traffic, where we started to crawl towards the station. Then Jenny hit us with the news that because of the national holiday, they hadn't been able to get us all hard sleeper beds! It turned out pretty well for some of us though...11 of us were put in soft sleepers, which are a bit more comfortable and have actual cabins with DOORS rather than being in just rows of beds. Pretty bad for the unlucky ones who drew the short straws though as they were stuck in the worst hard sleeper yet! Apparently it was really noisy and Lyndsey even caught a kid having a nosy at their bags in the middle of the night!

Anyway, the bus continued to crawl, and it started to look like we were going to have to walk the rest of the way! A lot of people were just walking at the side of the road despite the cars being a bit mental. Luckily we made it in time, but only 15 minutes before the train left, rather than the 3 or so hours we had expected! Everyone was starving as we had planned for dinner at the station, so most of us tried the food on the train... It definitely wasn't the best! I was glad I decided not to have meat, as a few people ended up sick from it! But my veggie option if bean-sprouts and rice definitely wasn't my favourite food of the holiday! At least I had some food in me though, at that point I'd had next to nothing to eat since lunch the day before! Was glad to get back to a bit of normality the next day!