Having arrived in Osaka first thing in the morning we had a few hours to kill before the ferry to Shanghai departed at noon. We managed to fill the time waiting for a bus that wasn't running, walking with our packs to the wrong ferry terminal and eventually finding the correct terminal! Our ship was called the Su Zhou Hao and was mighty big as it also presumably carried a lot of freight. It has a capacity to carry 240 passengers, but on this trip only 44 brave souls had bought tickets to take the 48 hour crossing of the East China Sea to Shanghai.

Once boarded we settled into our shared dormitories, separated on the basis of gender, no beds in either just a roll up mat to keep us comfortable. Craig was lucky in that the mens' dorm was intended for 20 while there were only 8 men occupying the dorm, Gemma was less lucky with her 10 woman capacity dorm was full and had two small children sleeping in it.

With so few passengers the ship sometimes felt like a ghost-ship as many of the passengers confined themselves to their private rooms. We met a couple of travellers, Jeff and MJ, on the first night and chatted away, watched the Sun set, enjoyed dinner and sat in the bar. Sitting in the bar was difficult as we were observing dry January as we'd enjoyed ourselves too much in Goa. The ship had a quite a few facilities, a canteen (serving cold food) all sorts of vending machines, a bar, Wii game, reading room, DVD player, shop and Craig joked that it was like a cruise, Gemma, who has been on lots of cruises advised that it was nowhere near as luxurious!

The first day and night we sailed through some islands to the south and west of Japan, consequently we were not on the high seas and the sea was incredibly calm. First thing on the morning of our second day we hit the high seas and then the trouble started! Immediately after leaving the shelter of the islands our ship started to rock back and forth, port and starboard often at incredible angles. We looked out of the windows and could see huge waves and high winds battering the ship. Moving around the ship was nigh on impossible and many made straight for their beds in an effort to stave off seasickness. By mid-morning there were numerous cases of passengers looking green around the gills, although Gemma was able to stave it off until lunchtime. Dinner that evening was a quiet affair, of our original compliment of four travellers, Craig had to eat alone : (

The rough seas continued all day and all night, sleeping could have been difficult had it not been for the impossibility of doing anything else and for those who were ill, sleep promised a respite from the churning of their stomachs. Next morning we were approaching Shanghai and the sea had returned to the quiet state that we had enjoyed at the outset. We cruised down Huangpu River to Shanghai and before long we could sea the skyscrapers of Shanghai before us.