We had to endure a 18 hour boat trip from Incheon port to Qingdao with no other westerners on board. Our Korean friends had dropped us to the port and when they saw the people we’d be sharing the room with they made sure we upgraded to a private room instead of a dorm room, which when we started to queue to board the vessel, realised that was a wise move. The people at the port looked rough and scary, and we had never, ever been stared at so much (or so we thought - this was only a taster of what was to come). It was a horrible feeling to be stared at to such a degree, unnerving and so uncomfortable that I resorted to hanging my head and getting thicker by the minute.

When we got on to the boat we found our cabin that turned out to be very spacious and not so bad at all. It had a little TV and fridge where we could leave the two bottles of vodka we’d bought earlier, chilling for later. We decided to go on a wee tour of the boat and found out that we had, in fact, saved our own lives by upgrading to the four bed cabin, as the dorm was like a mad man‘s bedroom. There were 14 mattresses lying in a military-like order on the floor. Each room was gendered (although it was hard to tell in both cases which room was which) and it truly looked like something out of a World War II camp scene. The people were stuffed in beside each other, uncomfortably close, all slurping in to their pot noodles and the smell lingering outside the dorm, made me wonder what the hell did it smell like inside?

So we ran back to our little cabin and cracked open the bottles of vodka, and as to be expected things started to get a little better. These people didn’t look so scary at all, in fact, they looked quite approachable, and within no time we had invited some of them over for a drink with us on deck. We met a Korean “English teacher”, and when I asked him his name, he couldn’t understand me, but that was okay because I had consumed a fair amount of vodka at this stage, and therefore I could talk for him and so I had a great conversation altogether. After some singing we retired to our room and closed the curtains on each of our little beds and headed to the port of Qingdao.

The next morning we woke up bright and early, ready for our first sight of China. We headed down to the showers and walked in to one big room full of naked Chinese women washing and then did a U-turn and headed straight back to the dorm. Sharing a shower with people who stare at me when I have clothes ON? I don’t think so, love! I comforted myself by thinking, if I’m going to travel I may get used to this not washing every day lark anyway. Then my friend came back, and said it wasn’t so bad, and if I’m going to travel I may get used to these circumstances. We were docking at 8.30am so at 8.20, guessing that most people would be ready to disembark I scurried down to the showers, and ran in to the shower room. Luckily, there was only one auld woman there who may have been blind as she didn’t seem to notice me, but by jaysus I scrubbed like I’d never scrubbed so fast. When I put on my towel I felt adventurous and that I had accomplished something. I felt proud and ready to take on the rest of Asia!

Laura Foy