Blogs from Chongqing, China, Asia - page 3

Geo: 29.88, 107.709We are in the Fengdu area of the Yangzte River today. You pronounce that like fondue – like the melted cheese pot. It is, to me, the most beautiful area of the river. The plants are more lush, we are sailing closer to the riverbank, the mist is heavy over the tops of the mountains. There is no way a picture or words can describe how amazing the view is from our room – constantly. There is also a slight rain today but it adds to the misty mystery.This morning was a relaxing but informative morning. After breakfast our tour guide had reserved a room for all of us to meet and have a discussion about the differences between Chinese culture and American culture. He has been a tour guide for 10 years now ... read more

8 Days with Shu Fey-Wednesday: Chongqing and the Pandas Before leaving Xi’an we took a quick trip to the Flying Goose Pagoda. Originally this pagoda was built to house precious Buddhist texts brought back from India by Xi’an’s most celebrated pilgrim, Xunzang in 645AD. He translated his stack of holy books from Sanskrit to Chinese. This Buddhist temple was in the best part of Xi’an and ended up being the cleanest, best kept temple we have visited. Since many of its patrons are well off, even when there was a fire 10 years ago, they were able to raise funds to rebuild without any problem. Even though it was smack dab in the middle of the city, with a Starbucks right outside the gate, it was as we have found at every one, a very peaceful, ... read more

Geo: 29.88, 107.709The 146m-long ship has 600 passengers over six decks. It is decorated a little garishly but it advertises 5-star facilities. (PS. Now in retrospect, the facilities were fine but the food was pretty awful. Our Yichang guide confirmed that the river cruisers were notorious for poor food.)We joked with a waitress last night and aim to get a Corona with a lime/lemon wedge from the bar. We managed a slice of lemon, but need more work to describe the wedge and its placement in the neck of the bottle. PS. She got the idea, but then they ran out of Coronas on board!The cruise highlights the Qutang Gorge, Wu Gorge and Xiling Gorge, collectively called the Changjiang Gorges. We'll hear more about the Three Gorges Dam shortly.We eight sang "Waltzing Matilda" in the cruise ... read more

We awoke following our fifth night on the Viking Emerald for what might be the normal gloom of disembarkation day; but, in our case our vacation is not over with nearly half of the major highlights still ahead of us. We settled our shipboard account and paid tips by credit card. Unfortunately, after paying the tour account, my bank declined the lesser bill for tips, no doubt wary of two back to back transactions in China. Fortunately, we each had two different credit cards with us, and Sharon’s card covered the tips. We also picked up the DVD for our cruise; which, Sharon is delighted since it captures me doing the hokey pokey in my red “Expedition Everest” hat. Arnold’s group is the last to leave the ship today, and our bags didn’t need to be ... read more

We cleared the five locks of The Three Gorges early into the morning. Because our entry was after 10pm, there was no shipboard narration for passengers. Although some might have been disappointed by the limited visibility at the Three Gorges Dam, it needs to be taken in perspective that we were pretty fortunate since many previous tours are unable to see the dam at all. We did look outside our cabin before we turned in, and saw that we were in the process of going through one of the locks. The entire transit takes about four hours. We felt that sleep was probably a better use of these hours. The morning onboard scenic cruising through Wu Gorge and the view of the Goddess Pic was rescheduled for 7:30am; so we decided to grab breakfast first. I ... read more