XIANAMEN DAY FIVE…ROCKING AND A ROLLING

I am not sure if its me or the people on this boat.  I know that because I am taking antihistamines I am particularly cranky.  But it seems this boat is full of old men know it alls.

Yesterday,  we were heading down to deck five to where the gang plank was.  This old dude was standing with his wife in the aft elevator area telling everyone that you had to go down the middle set of elevators.  You see, on the big ships there are elevators forward, midship and aft.  But on these little ones there is no mid ship.  And all the old people didn’t know this.  

So I stepped up and very kindly explained, and even showed them on the map that is right there, that there is no midship and we were to disembark near the aft elevators.  

Well he acted like I had shot him.  He sucked in his breath, stuck his British nose in the air and “I say miss, I was talking here.  You cawnt just come along and insert yourself into a private conversation!!!  I have sailed many a sea on many a ship and I like to think I am somewhat more experienced with sea issues”  or something like that.  He was very loud and snotty.  I apologized, like the good Canadian that I am but a lady stepped up and said that I was right..just look at the map!  Hahaha...buffoon!  He would have had them all wondering around in the wrong place.  He was pretty embarrassed and hurrumphy..I kind of felt sorry for him.  No I didn’t.

Yesterday we got off in a heavily customed/immigration Chinese city.  A very beautiful city I might add.  Clean and very modern.  The shuttle bus puked us out in the middle of nowhere on a very busy impossible to cross road.  Spod and I wandered down until we found an underground tunnel to take us across.  Within minutes we  found a Starbucks, KFC, McD’s, Burger King....we picked Starbucks.  I ordered a latte...but the milk here in China (and they use the same milk on the ship) tastes like a combination of evaporated and dried skim milk.  Blehh!  Good thing though because that cuts out all cream desserts, lattes, mashed potatoes from my eating list.  They were already cut off but now there won’t be any temptation.

We found a bank of China to exchange money.  Oh my God!!!  We were in there for almost an hour!  It took forever to get them to understand what we wanted, and that all we had with us was a copy of our passport, the ship kept the real one, and while we were going through all this an old lady and an old man got into the most horrible shouting match/fight!  I thought they were going to kill each other.  Crazy people!  Meanwhile out in the lobby where there were many ATMs, a young boy was helping his mother at one of them and she kept screaming at him and hitting him.  And the Asian ladies can be very very screechy and loud.

We walked all over the place and took a few pics.  I tried loading them onto fb but they just wouldn’t go.  The internet here on the ship is really bad.  And apparently in Japan, due to heavy regulations, the ship has to keep changing satellites to try to find internet.  Xanamen is a University city so there were a lot of good looking young people there.  There are soooo many rich and extremely well to do people in China.  Some of the older people try to cling to the old ways but they are being totally eclipsed by the rich.

Today it is Taipei in Taiwan.  We have an excursion at 12:30.  Its breakfast time so I am going to venture out and see if I can pick a fight with another old dude.  TTYL   Ps:  We were heading up for breakfast just now and half way there it dawned on us that Spod forgot to put his ears on (hearing aids) and I forgot to put in my teeth.  Jeez!