Blogs from Yichang, Hubei, China, Asia

Liz and I woke up in our hotel room and stumbled down for breakfast still in our pajamas where we stuffed ourselves, took some extra biscuits for the train ride today and then headed back to bed for an hour. We showered, repacked our bags and were downstairs to meet the others by 11.30am. We chilled in the lobby of the hotel for an hour (giving me a great chance to get some blogs uploaded!) before our guide came to escort us to the train station, a pointless task for the station was literally 3 minutes away and we would have found it ourselves. Before we knew it it was time to board our train and we are currently chilling on it, reading, blogging, playing cards and dozing. This will literally be the way it goes ... read more

This morning we had a slow start as we didn't need to leave for the airport until 10.30. I ventured out to the local shopping area and luckily met up with Chris (from Scotland) and Mel (from Australia) who were also venturing out. Our goal was to find the chemist - after successfully crossing the road - not an easy feat in any Chinese street as white lines on the road don't mean anything - we then faced the battle of miming what we needed to purchase. Chris wins the prize for acting and we successfully located vitamin c, throat lozenges, cough medicine and cold and flu tablets. As you can probably guess, someone has come down with the flu so we are all starting to feel a throat tickle and Greg had a bit of ... read more

Hey guys, this is our first post. We've been here in YiChang for about a month now, and we've decided to keep a blog so that it's easier for everyone to keep up with us. For anyone who doesn't know, Brad and I are both English teachers at the Three Gorges University here in YiChang, and during the first week of October will be our first opportunity to travel outside of the city. We'll be traveling to Xian, and we'll try to take lots of pictures. I'll be putting up pictures of our apartment soon, and some of the city. I've also taken some short videos that I'll try to load soon. Anyway, thanks for following us, we hope you enjoy it!... read more

So we departed the boat, and fortunately Hong had a map of the town, which showed that the train station was only 3k from the dock. My miles/kilometres conversion skills leave a bit to be desired but I think thats about one mile. Most of the other passengers were already sorted and got straight on their buses. The taxi drivers wanted to charge us 100Y for a mini-bus into town. We didn't want to pay that much for something that was so close, and there were no public buses. They were all bastards and were talking to each other telling each other not to take less than 100 (I understood that much!) Fortunately, one of the lovely boys who worked on the cruise was just starting his holiday, and we saw him. We managed to ask ... read more

Three Gorges trip for May break.... read more

I uploaded a bunch of pictures to the old entries, if you want to look. Some guy is smoking right beside me right now, so I'm going to head out.... read more

I am currently in Yichang after going on a cruise down the Three Gorges. There's this really fancy looking internet cafe, unfortunately, everyone in it is smoking so it's hard to breath, so this will be fast, even though it deserves more time. Took a 13 hour train ride to get to Wuhan from which we caught a five hour bus ride to Yichang. Orginally going to spend a night in Yichang, but the boat was only leaving on the day we arrived, so we headed out right away. We saw the Three Gorges Dam before heading off on the river (it was really big and grey) on this fairly nice river boat. There was no hot water until about after 12, so I had a lovely cold shower. In the morning a bunch of people ... read more

Heut morgen um 10:00 spuckte mich der Zug hier aus. Wieder einmal eine von den kleineren Stadten. 4 Mio und unbekannt. Nur der Dreischluchenstaudamm, der hier 35km um die Ecke gebaut wurde kennt die ganze Welt. Ich hatte mich schon einmal bemueht ein Ticket zu bekommen, das war jedoch aufwengig und vor allem teuer. Erst sollte es 150.- euro, dann 220.- euro kosten in dem Reisebüro in Xi'an. Dann hatte ich beschlossen einfach hier hin zu fahren und Glueck zu haben. Hm, ich hatte schon einen Alternativplan in meinem Hinterkopf......aber es hat funktioniert!!! Da die Stadt nun wirklich nix zu bieten hat, werde ich morgen um 11:00 mit dem Bus zum Damm fahren. Habe dort den Nachmittag Zeit mir das Monster anzuschauen und mir meine eigene (bereits bestehende) Meinung zu bilden. Um 18:00 geht ein Faehrschiff, ... read more