Read Online Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube - Free Book Online Page B

crazily, but there were no bicycles. This was not bicycle country; men did all the packwork. Everywhere I looked I saw coolies in ragged blue Mao jackets walking about with their poles and ropes hoping for some chance employment, or bearing the most incredible loads on their shoulders.
    In the morning the bathroom taps produced no hot water, so I set off largely unwashed to find the Public Security Bureau (the police). My visa was about to expire and the PSB were reputed to supply extensions, albeit for a substantial fee. I asked the hotel receptionist to write down the address of PSB and astounded myself by finding it easily. After walking a little way, I had gone into a shop to ask directions. A young girl took me by the hand, led me next door to the PSB office and sat me down. The visa was accomplished reasonably painlessly in about an hour at a cost of ninety-five yuan and was presented to me by a beautiful young lady dressed in police uniform, plain navy slacks, jumper and shoes. With no embellishments or a single drop of make up, she was still stunning.
    Another young woman sat on the bench beside me and helped me fill out my form. She told me that she was getting an exit visa for her boss who needed to travel on business. An attractive young man took my application then sat at his desk reading the paper and extensively and diligently picking his nose. What an excavation job he did, first with one hand, then the other, to make sure he got it all. He rolled up what he found and dropped the end product on the floor. When he had completed this routine to his satisfaction, he started on his ears. Unfortunately I had to leave before I could see what came next.
    Much elated at achieving an extension of stay without the problems I had heard could be attached to it, I started my next mission – to buy a ticket onwards. Having read that it was possible to travel further on the river by smaller boat and that the Chongqing Hotel had a travel department, I went there and tried to extract some information. But the travel agent was only programmed to sell tickets on a tourist boat that did short river trips. She knew of nothing that was available elsewhere, not even in the next town. But the young man at reception produced a map and showed me that it was possible to go to Wuhan.
    I said, ‘I have just come from there. I want to go the other way, to Leshan, or another place further along the Yangtze.’
    ‘Not possible,’ he replied.
    I argued that it was and showed him my guidebook. Beaten into submission he said, ‘Okay. Yes you can go to Leshan.’ Suddenly, he knew all about it. ‘But,’ he said, ‘it’s no good boat. You not like it. Why not fly?’
    End of story. There was no way I would fly in China. I also decided against Leshan. The boat’s timetable was unreliable and irregular. Going to Leshan also meant heading north again, and I was sick of being cold. I wanted to go south, so I decided on a train to Guangzhou.
    It was now lunchtime and, as the guidebook said that good food was to be had at the Chongqing Hotel, I tried their restaurant. The menu had an English translation and attempts at western dishes, but the specialty listed was dog. I ordered rabbit, hoping that wasn’t an euphemism for rat, which were plentiful in Chongqing. Apart from the battalion that shared my room with me, I saw several well-fed rats lying dead in the gutters. The meat I ate was hot and spicy and, whatever it was, it tasted good, despite its having been chopped up brutally with a cleaver. Deciding to be utterly, decadently European, I ordered a banana split, but it was made from frozen milk with a couple of bits of banana thrown in. That’s it, I concluded. I am done with Chinese versions of western food.
    I took a taxi to the Remnin Hotel. A replica of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, a stupendous round edifice with a domed roof, in its former life it had been a palace. I went inside for a sticky-beak and while there I decided to look