Claire: 'I do!' Tabie: 'You do?' Claire: 'I do!' Tabie 'You do!'

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Our last morning on the boat and it was actually a little bit of a lay in for once, with us not having to be up and to breakfast until 7am. The boat had cleared all of the locks over night and when we looked out of the windows we were actually someway down stream and we could no longer see the dam from the boat. After a quick breakfast we were off the boat by 7.30am and we were driven to see the dam from land. Unfortunately, considering how wonderful the weather has been on the Yangtze, today it was back to the typical Chinese smog and haze, and we could only see part of the dam from the two vantage points we were taken too. Nevertheless the dam was pretty impressive and it was easy to forget when looking at it how many people have been displaced because of this structure, and I am still undecided as to whether I agree with what they have done.

The bus took us from the vantage points of the dam and we moved along the riverside and towards the city of Yichang where we will be spending the night. Yichang has very little to offer and if it were up to us we would have got straight on a train to Shanghai, however we thought we would get into Yichang later than we did and therefore run the risk of missing the train. However in the end we got to Yichang at 11.30am and had the whole and night to kil. We were met by a rather annoying tour guide who could not speak clear English and who made the process of getting to our hotel all that more complicated. By the time we did get to the hotel we were frustrated at the thought that we could have left here today and been on our way to Shanghai, and we were also hungry and grumpy. We dumped our bags in our (rather nice) hotel rooms and headed out for food. After grabbing some grub, wandering around and realising that the guide books were correct in saying there was very little to do in this city, we headed back to the hotel and had an afternoon of photo swapping (James the netbook has been invaluable, thank you), book reading and watching Chinese table tennis and baskatball on the TV's in the room. In the evening the six of us headed to the local mall and had some food in the upstairs food court before raiding the supermarket for fruit, crackers and pot noodles for our long (23 hour) train journey to Shanghai tomorrow.

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