Preparing for the adventure

Now it was time for Don and me to do our part to get ready for the trip by handling the details that we could control. As preparation for the trip, we bought books about China and did extensive Internet browsing about weather, health issues, political climate, venues we would visit, and of course, visited the Tauck website for this particular tour which contained much good advice for visiting China.

Although Don and I have always taken language guides with us (sometimes two, one small one for each of us), we did not buy a Chinese language guide. We had learned in Japan that translating the Kanji characters on signs was almost impossible, even with a language guide and our Tauck tour directors gave us a printed mini-guide with the necessary Japanese vocabulary for tourists: hello, goodbye, thank you, please, toilet, taxi, etc. And many Chinese words and phrases have completely different meanings depending on whether your voice falls or rises on the syllables using tone and pitch.

In Beijing, we were given a small card to carry with us with the most important tourist vocabulary. All of the hotels supplied cards written in Chinese for us to tell taxi drivers, etc. where we wanted to go and where we were staying.

Next, we checked with the Center for Disease Control’s website to see if we needed to update any of our vaccinations or medications for the trip. The CDC recommends seeing a health-care provider who specializes in Travel Medicine and, if you have a medical condition, share your travel plans with any doctors you are currently seeing for other medical reasons.

All of our immunizations were up to date and we didn’t need any special medicines this time such as Malarone for malaria. But we did ask our doctor to give us an antibiotic such as Cipro for emergencies including a possible bacterial infection, or bladder infection. It's not possible at this point to refill your prescriptions in China, so we made sure that we had ample supplies of all of our prescription drugs.

When we travel, especially abroad, we like to be prepared as much as possible for any medical situation, so we bring aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol PM and Aleve for headaches, airplane sleeping, and my arthritis; vitamin pills, Uristat for urinary infections, diarrhea pills, antacid tablets, cold medications such as Dayquil and Nightquil along with an assortment of band-aids and antiseptic cream. Since we weren’t traveling on rough seas, we skipped the seasick pills.

American over-the-counter medications and health products are not easy to find in China. Quantities of tissues, hand wipes, and sanitizing hand cleanser were on our high priority list. We even brought some paper face masks in case the air pollution was very high in the cities. We didn’t need to use ours, but friends who traveled to China a few years ago did. Although we didn’t see many people wearing masks, almost all of the street cleaners and other outdoor workers had them on.

We had been warned by friends, the Internet and travel guides about the lack of Western style toilets in China, especially when we were not in our hotels or first class restaurants. The standard “toilet’ for the Chinese is a porcelain enclosed hole in the floor where they squat which as you might imagine is not a comfortable pose for arthritic knees.

Some Chinese restrooms do have a handicap toilet. This is Western style, but the tourist waiting line for is usually long. In many of the tourist sites outside of the cities, the toilet areas were very wet, so we did as the Chinese ladies were doing and rolled up our pant legs. As I did in the past when traveling on safari, I brought along a product called Urinelle, a cone shaped paper device which enables a woman to stand up to urinate. But using one of these takes some practice and I prefer to track down the elusive Western toilet if I can. Unless you know exactly where to find the Western toilets, (or are willing to assume the squat position) you sometimes may find yourself crossing your legs! Even even if the toilets are Western style, many restrooms do not supply toilet paper, so always have tissues handy.

I have a problem with standing for long periods of time and found that often when a tour guide stops to point out the particulars of a site there isn’t a seat or bench in sight. I grow weary in long security, immigration or customs lines and they never have places to rest and therefore decided to invest in a seat cane. I didn’t want one of those insubstantial metal tube affairs with blue canvas or black plastic seats that are commonly seen being used by travelers. I am not an “insubstantial” person and could picture myself ignominiously tossed to the ground. Also, these canes usually come in only one height, so walking with them can be an annoyance if you are tall or short.

But finally I found a perfect seat cane: a comfortable octagon shaped rubber cushion seat cane made of birch wood that came in three heights. The orthopedic handle made it a good walking cane, short enough to fit in an airplane’s overhead bin and weighing two and a half pounds.

One of the men on our tour who had had hip replacement didn’t usually use a cane, but after a few days in China, he bought an adjustable hiking staff which he found helpful when trekking over rough stones or navigating steps without railings. (I have a pair of these which I bought last year for our driving trip out West. They worked especially well on dirt paths and inclines)

Page Four of Yin and Yang on the Yangtze>>