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04 July 2008
((written on the boat :-) ))And so to the boat… and the really adventurous part of my adventure. Having packed all (or most) of my belongings into an outrageously heavy rucksack, given out chocolates and email addresses, sung a few more songs at the KTV, and posted another hefty box of stuff home by surface mail, I found myself at the port with Dori and a room full of Koreans, waiting to finally leave Zhong Guo. Having struggled through security and immigration with my enormous amount of baggage, I and the other passengers (who are indeed not particularly numerous) were ushered onto a bus with a number of rather scary port officials carrying helmets and batons, and driven off towards the water’s edge. Having passed the Korean ferry also due to sail that day, we drew up alongside our vessel: an enormous white affair named ‘Utopia’, with pleasing-looking Japanese writing in blue on the side. Upon boarding, my ticket was immediately and helpfully seized, and I was handed my room key. After a lost moment (almost everything on this boat is written in Japanese) I was shown to my room on the uppermost passenger floor. The boat offers, I think, three classes of accommodation: Second, First and ‘Special’. Back in Qingdao, having looked at the ferry company’s website I had decided to go for Special. This was, I think, a wise choice. The basic accommodation is in crowded, dingy rooms with numerous hard-looking wooden bunks. It also doesn’t appear to have bathrooms. I have a two-bed room all to myself, with its own little bathroom. There’s a TV, two large windows with a view onto the uppermost deck, a desk, a table and chairs, a Japanese tea set and even an actual bath (as well as shower) in the bathroom. It is on the small side of course but all very clean and comfortable, and even slippers and a little bag of toiletries are provided! I have only seen one other person in the Special-class area so it’s all rather peaceful. Elsewhere on the boat are the usual sorts of things one finds: a bar/cinema room, a little shop selling knickknacks and food, a restaurant, several ‘lounges’, some ping pong tables, some exercise machines, and a room full of interesting-looking Japanese vending machines. We boarded at around 4:30 in the afternoon, but the boat didn’t set off until half past eleven at night. I had expected this, having read up on the trip beforehand: it seems to be done so as to time the arrival correctly. If we departed in the afternoon, we would get to Japan too early in the morning. The departure itself was rather sudden: I looked up at the window to notice that we were coasting away backwards from the heavy freight yards that I’d been observing all afternoon. There wasn’t much to see as it was so dark by that point. The only rather irritating thing about this journey so far has been that the decks are all closed off ‘due to rough weather’. Although the weather outside has been consistently grey, and the some of the waves around us are breaking white and foamy, it does not seem all that bad, and on every other ferry journey I’ve been on it has been OK to take to the deck and watch the water churn around beneath us. The boat will arrive tomorrow morning in Japan, and after the tedium of immigration and customs I will be free to explore Shimonoseki. Or as free as you can be with an enormous amount of stuff to carry. Actually I will be proceeding to the Post Office at the first available opportunity to send a whole lot more stuff homewards, and then probably having marvellous fun looking for an international ATM and doing other similar boring but important tasks. Apparently Shimonoseki is very famous for Fugu, but as Fugu is potentially lethal I think I may stick to less dangerous fare… utterly utter [
13:40 ]
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