Back below deck things weren't quite so romantic. After boarding and finding the key to my "Royal Class" cabin, I threw my luggage and my body down and tuned into Boney M, which was on repeat over the ship's PA. My porthole opened up a new vista for me and I drank it in. Industrial Incheon port slowed to a standstill at the end of the day. The red sun descended over western hills. There were Chinese people putting their bags down in my room. Of course they were. Now they were sitting on my bed. Now their Dad was shuffling in and taking off his slippers. Now he was clipping his toenails.
Problem solved; I was moved to a single cabin (like I'd booked in the first place, one month previously), this one without a view of the harbour - without a porthole at all in fact - but crucially without an Septuagenarian Chinese man's toenail clippings. Royal indeed.
Ships move slowly out of the harbour. I love watching the crews working together to get a 50 000 ton vessel out into the open waters. There is this cooperation between the crew on board and the groundstaff, mainly communicated by signals; all the while the ship slowly breaks away from its moorings and crawls to the mouth of the harbour to plot its course on the open ocean. No wonder the ship comes up again and again in literary metaphor.
We sat here, at Incheon Port for a good 15-20 minutes. I'd like to know exactly what goes on. Staff on the ground rode bicycles between the dockside and their office. One of the first things I noticed about China was how old the bicycles were in comparison to their Korean counterparts.
Leaving Korea.
On board that night I slept poorly through the sounds of passengers talking loudly in their sleep through the wall of my cabin. Or, perhaps they weren't sleeping at all but shouting over their card games. The only other foreigner on board - a smelly Dutch hippie who had vague plans of going from Peking to Mongolia to ride horses or something (he still called it "Peking;" I couldn't ignore that) - chose to sleep in the 50 person dormitory below decks: "spitting class." Royal Class was heated to the point of discomfort and I was pleased to be roused from my restless slumber by the announcements - first in Korean, then in Chinese - informing us of our position and our ETA. But I can only assume this as the only thing I understood was "nimen hao" and then something about breakfast, which turned out to involve some kind of pickled fish and kimchi:
My old friend Kim Chi and his also not-suitable-for-breakfast-associates.
Our tugboat steams out to meet us as China comes into view.
Once we'd docked it took around an hour to get off the ship. I'd observed how Asians like to organise themselves for travel (by using the "me first" method) and decided that it wouldn't hurt to hang back a little and wait for the panickers up front to clear out ahead of me. We were to be herded onto transit buses and driven to customs for processing. What I didn't know was that the Chinese authorities had allocated a certain number of buses for this purpose, and that all passengers had to be accounted for by the last journey. As a result, after waiting an hour for the crowds to thin, I found myself on the last, and fullest, bus.
You haven't travelled in Asia unless you've been squashed flat up against the window of a train or a bus at some stage. As another 10 people were ordered onto the already overflowing bus (I think the driver had someone on his lap), I reminded myself that Thailand is for the sun and the beach and women named "Pong," whereas China is for true adventure and the stories one brings home. I couldn't move my left hand to reach out for support, but this didn't matter at all as I was fully wedged into an upright position by the people around me. My other hand held tightly onto my backpack, which was roughly the size of the toe-clipping grandpa in cabin 403. The bus stalled. The bus wouldn't start for 5 minutes. Can we get off? Verboten! It kicked into life. The driver got it moving before it could protest again. We drove through the gates of the dock and around a right hand corner: a distance of 150m. Everyone laughed incredulously. We could have walked it back and forth 2 or 3 times while standing on that bus.
I was the last person to be processed at customs. The junior officer seemed confused with something - how to pronounce my name perhaps? I think not. Getting my things in order I marched forth and steeled myself, "Right, on the other side of that door, that's China, Lach. Now be careful and enjoy yourself. You've earned it." I walked out and squinted in the weak winter sunlight and straight into the arms of a gimpy little man, who wrapped up my legs in a tackle reminiscent of Allan 'Alfie' Langer in the '89 Origin Series while pleading up at me for some money. The townsfolk laughed and coughed and spat and someone tried to sell me a map and several dynasties later I remembered the Chinese for "Go away!"
Pretending to pirouette out of his tackle and charge ahead in simulation of "try time for the Tigers at Leichhardt Oval," I spotted the smelly Dutchman over the road, who was also bound for the long distance bus terminal. I knew where this was. I knew I knew where it was because I had the latest edition of Lonely Planet China in my backpack, and not only did I have it but I'd been studying it for the last 3 months. All we had to do was cross the road, walk up the next one, and it was on the right. Which it wasn't. It was in fact a 25 minute bus ride away (during which we were escorted by a passing good Chinese samitaran who also taught (and spoke perfect) English at a local academy. She paid for us too.)
I tried my Chinese at the Weihai bus station but they kept switching me back to English. I should have perhaps seen this as a signal that the Chinese probably don't much feel like listening to me butcher their language. So we did it the tried and true way: with them butchering English. On the bus, a movie about Mao kept the travellers loyal to the party as we passed the farmland of Eastern Shandong province. When I saw a farmer leading an ox, leading a cart full of straw, I realised I'd arrived in the 3rd world. The snow on the ground got thinner and thinner as we neared Qingdao.
Two new destinations in one day! And the second time, in Qingdao, I truly did get ripped off, taking my eyes off the ball and walking straight towards a greedy pedicab driver, who charged me 50 kuai to drive around the streets and ask people for directions to the Kaiyue Hostel. Pride had me exit and take to Qingdao on foot, and 15 minutes later I was relaxing with a Qingdao (the amber variety) in the hostel's bar, after a good 30 hours in transit. Ganbei!
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