Him and Her still on the road.: Wuhan, Shanghai & Beijing

Wuhan. After we left the boat and said goodbye to our fellow seamen ( and women ) we hopped on a bus to Yichang, this took about an hour, when we arrived in Yichang we needed to catch another bus to Wuhan ( 5 hours ) We arrived in Wuhan around 6pm to yet another monster of a city, and another monster population of 5.7 Million. We then had to sort out some accommodation, this wasn't too bad though we were probably about the only westerners out of the 5.7 million population and the only ones who couldn't speak Mandarin. Anyhow we sorted out a room and got a meal at a local restaurant, the Chicken dish we thought we ordered turned out to be mega spicy Fish on sticks... 10 of them, plus a dish of rice and vegetables. Our room in Wuhan had for sure the worst view of any in our 9 months of travel, but it was clean and quiet so no problems.

Next day we caught an internal flight to Shanghai, A city we had visited a few years back. The skyline of Shanghai is iconic. The Bund ( a waterfront walkway ) is spectacular at night though you do have to share it with more than a few other people. We didn't do much in the way of sight seeing in Shanghai as we were intending to go to the Expo but after hearing that queues with waiting times of up to 5 hours to get into some of the pavillions and a daily attendance of 400,000 people we decided that maybe Mal would get too grumpy so we didn't go.

We did meet up with our Dutch friends Joanna and Jerome and had a great evening at a local bar to watch Holland beat Japan in the World cup qualifier. The next day we did some planning and decided once and for all that going to Japan was going to wipe out our remaining budget so we booked a couple of flights to Seoul and Taiwan.

After a short stop in Shanghai we went to Beijing, this time staying at a Youth Hostel. We quickly managed to get to grips with the Beijing Metro and started to explore the area. A really nice guy we met in Darjeeling ( Aaron ) lives and works from Beijing and we called him up, As it happens his folks were over on a visit from the States so we arranged to have lunch with them, Kay and Roger, smashing couple. We spent about 5 hours talking and drinking some fine Belgian ales with the three of them, just when we called for the bill we found that Aaron had already settled it. Very generous as the bill also included food.

Next day we went to the Forbidden City just off from Tianemen square, this place is huge and although we had been here before, this time we could take our time. The crowds are a bit of a problem but by keeping to the side passages and walkways you can get some space to yourself. After about 3 hours the heat had finally got to us so we decided to make a slow walk back to our digs and get our bags packed for an early flight the next day to South Korea.