Alison: Wuhan is another of China's furnaces and was supposed to be a small pit stop to break up our journey across to mid China but for some reason we booked 3 nights which was way too long. Whilst waiting for the train to Wuhan, Nigel made a new friend. A Chinese student walked in to the train station and his face lit up when he saw Nigel. He broke in to a run and then sat down opposite us. He didn't say anything out loud to start but was whispering to himself and twitching and blinking really fast. I was a bit scared! We tried not to make eye contact. When we got called up for our train, we remained seated to wait for him to go first....but he didn't. When we got up, so did he. He was trying to play it cool and not look too obvious but it was clear he was following us. Eventually he plucked up the courage to talk to Nigel and he was actually not too bad though clearly not the full ticket. We tried to lose him on the platform but out of the millions of carriages of the train he was on ours....2 beds down! Nigel slept with one eye open. In the morning the student was there waiting and he followed us off the train in Wuhan and out of the station. Luckily (and to Nigel's great relief) we managed to lose him at the toilets. I thought we were going to be stuck with him for the year!   

Nigel: Yes, as Alison mentioned it was only a pit stop, however, you could say it was 3 nights too many . Apart from the parts above about Wuhan there is little else to tell, except for one minor incident. We were told that the shops and all the good parts where on the other side of the river and we would have to take the ferry or catch a bus over, but by getting the ferry you would dock in the centre of town, which would be ideal. The bus for the ferry was the '717' and we were given the stop name. Easy.... After the 3rd stop names were non existent. Not to worry we said it would be clear when we get there. Mistake number two. So after about 20 mins or so and the fact we had crossed over the bridge we thought we wont be getting the ferry over any more. After a while we started to think maybe we should get off and walk as we had gone completely opposite to the way we thought the bus would go. We eventually made it to town and looked round the shops which was OK. We also knew where the ferry port was on this side and it didn't involve any buses, so we decided to head back as it was still light and we were tired. When we docked we looked at the bus stop timetable for bus '717' and it was listed. Yep thats the one which will run past our hostel. Mistake number 3. We ended up traveling for over 1.5 hours on the bus which also entailed going via the bus depot and waiting for the driver to have a coffee and cigarette break (any many laughs from the bus workers). It was also dark when we got off. One thing we would like to mention is that in the travel guide talks about how difficult it is to navigate around Wuhan on the bus, but as we are seasoned travelers now..... we thought we would be OK. Never under estimate the buses in Wuhan.