Saturday 25^th July, 2020                    0400

All credit to yangtze.cuises.com for their professionalism in all of this. I am not in England where I would know exactly how to deal with consumer problems (including the County Court) and of course here I would be adrift.

The young lady kept telling me to hold fire for a little longer and I did, hoping against hope the cruise would happen, which as you all know will not.

But every night my dreams were of not getting a refund or because I “cancelled” less than a month before, only receiving 65% back.

Nope. The full amount has been refunded (well PayPal said it may take a few days) but I will get it back. I'd like to say I'd get it all back but I won't. I paid US$1600 for that executive suite and that's precisely what the cruise company is refunding.

But between me paying and my bank in the UK taking their slice and PayPal taking theirs, I have lost out more than £100 on the deal with exchange rates and fees. Even in a crisis the banks still find a way to screw you.

Anyway, everything booked by way of hotels and flights except Hefei to Chongqing. With only two nights there I don't want to land at ten or eleven at night, nor do I want to get up at five to catch the early bird. The flight I want currently costs about the same for two business one ways as a single economy return to the UK! We may well end up leaving at dawn but I really don't want to miss an approximation of an English breakfast seeing as I have already paid for it.

I will give it a week or 10 days to see if the prices come down.

Anyway, tonight I met Dean and his girlfriend of 9 years (yes really, in China!) for him to sort out my health code thing. No idea if he has but at least now I know how to pull up the green bollocks and failing that I have screenshots.

Once that was done the demand was to come and play dou di jhou. Well I didn't need any encouragement even though two high school students who spoke better English than my English majors were chatting with me at the bar.

Three hours later, well actually an hour later but I made him stay longer, Dean was pissed on – wait for it – TWO cans of Guinness! -we left. My net score after 5¥ a hand was zero, that's what makes it such a good game, nobody loses a great deal even if they are awful. I of course had to pick up the drinks tab due to the health code shennanigans which was ¥420, 80% of which was mine anyway. And it was my turn. And his girlfriend drove me home in her Cadillac SUV.

So I am still shitting myself over the green code and I will still have nightmares about getting to LHW and it turning red. I will be checking every day.

Time was, you had your passport and relevant visas and no concerns but now a bloody phone controls your movements. A red screen spells disaster.