Leaving Zhengzhou

Here we are in Wuxi, (that's like "Woo-shee") on our way to Shanghai, on our way home to Oz for a bit of a holiday.

Of course these things are never as simple as they could be! Not the least of our problems being, when we were finally installed on the sleeper bus with our 26 pieces of luggage safely stowed in the luggage hold underneath - not the kind of bus we had asked them to buy a ticket for, we wanted one with 20 wide beds and one aisle and they had bought us tickets for one of these horrible ones with 30 skinny beds and 2 aisles and no toilet ... but we were ready to cope with that anyway ... well the engine was running and we were just about to farewell our minder who had seen us onto the bus when she informs us casually that this bus doesn't actually go to Wuxi as such. It was a bus to Shanghai and we would be dropped by the roadside somewhere out of Wuxi!! In the early hours, with our luggage.

"Just tell the driver when you want to get off," she said brightly. They seem to forget so readily that we are deaf, dumb and illiterate in these situations.

So anyway, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on mobile phones we managed to get a Chinese friend of our Australian friends in Wuxi to talk to the driver and arrangements were made ...

Then they drove to a bus garage, and we sat in the (hot!) bus for an hour while they put it over the pit, presumably for a service. Then they went to a petrol station and we once again waited while they filled up ...

We stopped a couple of times during the night so everyone could go to the toilet. Around midnight we drove down an alley beside a shop into a backyard full of tall grass. The bus turned around and then parked in the alley. Everyone was woken up and told to get off and move around, and they locked the bus. There was hot food available, and an outdoor sink where everyone went to freshen up. Out the back through the tall grass I headed for the toilet – a small roofless brick building. Most of the men from the bus were standing around in the tall grass, all facing different directions; only ladies need a building!

And finally they did drop us somewhere out of town ... the bus driver was great, he stayed with us to make sure we were ok - after a few anxious moments our friends turned up with a minivan.