Japan to China sea crossing

“Move your bags we have a leak” said Stu. Move my bags? I’m still asleep, how can I move my bags? “Seriously, wake up and move your bags, we have a leak I say,” he says. “We have a leak, you say?” I say, “A leak? A leak!” I jump up and hunt for my shoes, “where are my shoes?” I fret, as if getting my feet wet, or worse, dirty from the grimy floor, is all I need to worry about. How about getting the rest of my body wet as the evidently rising water creeps up, trapping us in, gushing up to our mouths and nostrils? We are after all on a somewhat semi ancient boat, half way between Japan and China, and all Stu is worried about is our bags. What about our lives? I’m more precious over them!

It turns out the gushing water is in fact a burst hot water pipe but none the less it instills little faith in me on the health and safety status of our ferry. Come morning time, the water is cleared inside but outside it is more than choppy and my poor churned up tummy, still reeling from the effects of my virus, just doesn’t seem to be acting as string as it should and after an hour or so of nausea, it totally gives up and I give in to sea sickness. Brilliant, right at the start of my day as well. Fortunately I manage to sleep practically the whole rest of the day so times passes pretty quickly, until we feel ourselves motionless. Sadly, we have stopped sailing for all the wrong reasons. Thinking, along with the rest of the passengers, that we are about to embark, we sit and wait patiently for the doors to open. After all, they haven’t been open anywhere on the ship at all and some fresh air would do us a treat. No such luck, after two hours pass by we finally work out that we are actually still a few hours form our destination but bad winds are preventing us to get into port there so no disembarkation today. Brilliant, another night of the over heated, stuffy, rocky, leaking, ancient boat! And apparently there is o guarantee that we will dock tomorrow morning either its a sit and wait game and with little entertainment to keep us occupied and no fresh air to be had and my poor tum still feeling a little weary - it isn’t going to be much fun! Fortunately dinner of rice and emergency curry (vacuum packed emergency curry sauce poured over rice) isn’t as bad as you might imagine it to be and we have a few pennies left to spend on drinks , cookies and icecream. Isn’t as bad as you might imagine it to be? That was just the first few hours of delay. With another night under our belt, more rice than one stomache can take, hours of kids with endless energy running around, manga cartoons on repeat and only half an hour of Mr Bean for company, things were not looking so good. Especially by the time we realise that we will be spending our second non scheduled night on board - the thoughts of what could be offered for a second emergency dinner were enough to keep us entertained for all of about two seconds, Somehow it seems as if our travel to China had been doomed form the start....