Entries about microphone

So during the night we bobbed along and arrived at White King City. After a magnificent buffet breakfast we hopped on a bus - 4 westerners in a sea of Chinese tourists and off we went to White King City. Our bus once again had a small tour leader that shouted Chinese into a bad microphone alllll the way to WKC and everywhere we went basically. (I might have mentioned this before. ) It was hilarious. And deafening. When we got off the bus, there was not only 1 of these little leaders but loads of them - everywhere - shouting away with their little flags and groups of Chinese tourists - all with their matching hats on. It was pretty funny actually. Hard to get a bit of peace and quiet to enjoy the sights and scenery though.

The White King City itself was alright. I think the 4 of us would have preferred a lie in though. :D We moved on anywho and had a look around. We had a nice view of a gorge, climbed some steps, saw some angry looking Chinese Chief/Warrior statues, then went back to the big boat.

Our main cruiser rocked off through the beautiful gorges before a big lunch......

....and disembarkment back to a smaller boat to do the 3 Lesser Gorges. This boat trip was SUBLIME. The scenery was spectacular.

The boat itself wasn't that great, and they charged you if you wanted to sit down on a seat on the deck. As a matter of principle (or stubborness), no one sat on the deck! Everyone ended up standing around on the deck for hours but it was beautiful.

Great big chunks of rock towered above us on either side as we sailed down the beautiful pea-greeny river. After a few hours, we changed boats to a smaller wooden boat with a retractable roof and a singing Captain, whose voice echoed through the gorges. It was Mighty Fine!

The lads had retired to their rooms and Mich had gotten sunburnt so had gone to smother herself in moisturiser. Later there seemed to be some racket coming from the ''ballroom''. Evan knocked on our room door to inform us he would be singing The Backstreet Boys in Karaoke in 10 minutes. I showered and went to witness the warbling madness, that was but a stones throw away from our room. Michelle was snoozing and I didn't want to wake her up. I toddled along to the scene of many crimes and found Neil just about to go 'onstage' to sing Santana. He was very good, and Evan followed soon after to rapturous applause from the western Laydeeze, and the Chinese lads who were drinking and singing to beat the band.

The lads then did a duet and every second song was another warbled Chinese ballad from the drunken Chinese lads. I got up and sang what I thought was going to be ''Stand by Me''. Turned out to be a magnificent Chinese pop version of Stand by me, with a video of this girl getting her make up and hair done throughout. :D I had to do a lot of adlibbing and a bit of 'clap your hands everybody' style shit to fill in the gaps with no words. The two lads came over and stood by me for a bit of the song which was hilarious. We were drinking some mad fishy smelling alcohol that Evan had purchased, which we mixed with Sprite to give it quite the delicate flavour! Finally Michelle rose from the dead and the 4 of us moved to the top deck where we all drank more shite and sang and joked. The lads even did a bit of beatboxing. Well I never.

Day 3 consisted of getting up at 6 am and going to see some dam project that no one had any interest in.
We did get an English guide for this one - i.e Mandy & our driver Mr. Chan. So at least we got a few facts for this bus trip. Think this was cos there were two G Adventure tour groups on our bus so maybe they had paid for an English guide and we just got ''lucky''??
The dam was impressive as far as man made schemes go but after seeing such natural beauty at the gorges, it seemed a bit meh. We bid adieu to Mandy & Mr Chan and the 4 of us bundled into cabs to get to Yichang train station. We were aiming to get the 1.30 train to ZhangJiaJie - aka AVATAR LAND - a magical place full of supremely tall sandstone and quartz stacks. Supposedly Pandora in the movie Avatar was based on this place, although James Cameron denies it was and maintains it was somewhere else in Hubei. But who cares! Let's name it Avatar Land anyways :D Tough nuggies Mr. Cameron. There's even been talk of naming one of the stacks Halleluyah Mountain.

Anywho at the train station, the queues were milllles long and there was no way we would get the train on time. So Michelle decided to play the dumb foreigner and went up to the wrong desk to ask for 4 tickets and it worked. HUZZAH. We headed off to ZhangJiaJie full of excitement!