Catriona Ford
Hey I'm in my hostel in Beijing and since using facebook in China is such a nightmare I'm setting up a blog as a safe place for my photos =DCat in China
Travel Blog Posts
Yangtze River Cruise and Other Assorted Wanderings
Published: August 5th 2010Asia » China » Hubei » Three Gorges Dam
August 5th 2010
Where to start this time? We've been so busy over the past few days! We left our hotel in Yichang at 7 in the morning and took a tourist bus to visit the Three Gorges Dam. This mighty re-enforced concrete barrier curtails the world's third largest river, the Yangtze forming a massive reservoir causing a hundred metre difference in the water levels on each side of it. A massive lock system is in place to allow ships to pass through and the dam's purpose as a hydroelectric power station makes it the world's largest electricity generation system. On the bus we shared with a Chinese tourgroup we we're treated to an hours worth of some daft bint hollering down a microphone in Chinese so loudly that we all wanted to kill her pretty quikly and according ... read more
August 2nd 2010
Agh Really need to update! I'm in our hotel in Yichang, which is where we will board our boat to cruise the Yangzte river and we're off to see the Three Gorges Damn tomorrow =) We spent our last day in Shanghai visiting a beautiful Ming style garden and I went to a tea house and tried jasmine and other floral teas, served in tiny glass crucibles from a glass teapot which really showed off how fantastic the teas looked! they tasted amazing as well and I have bought a box of floral red and yellow tea =) Clare also bought a little trundle suitcase in the old quarter market (which promptly broke - twice) which she is finding much easier to carry than her holdall. We left Shanghai via a 22 hour train journey to ... read more
July 28th 2010
Shanghai Acrobat show = FANTASTIC nuff said Cat xxx Clare: then we had pizza and pasta, and I had kiwi on mine. (also great!)... read more
July 28th 2010
So my first experience of an overnight train turned out to be really good =) 6 passengers per cabin which isn't as cramped as it sounds. I was sharing with the Australian couple from my tour group (Glen & Lisa) and a Chinese family, including a little old lady who kept trying to start a conversation with me in Mandarin which was good fun =) I slept through most of the 11 or so hour journey, much nicer to be able to lie down than be jammed upright in a plane seat, mind you my experience on the bottom bunk was quite different to Clare's on the top. She could barely sit up and got very sleep and is currently zonked out in our Shanghai hotel room as a result. As before the hotel is lovely, ... read more
July 27th 2010
So (somewhat sadly) this is our last day in Beijing! We have packed in the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall of China, Summer Palace, Silk Market and Snack Street (more about that later) as well as tourings the labarynths of Hutong streets in search of bargains and historic buildings. The Silk Market was so fantastic that we have been twice, and bought fans, parasols and beautiful pure silk items including scarves, ties and kimono style dressing gowns at ridiculously cheap prices XD. Bartering was great fun and we appreciated the air conditioning so much, reckon we might have settled for paying more if we'd been more hot and harassed! Snack Street was also interesting, quintessential pagoda'd chinese buldings complete with lanters crammed with street stalls selling anything on a stick including frog, lizard, spider, ... read more
July 26th 2010
(From Yesterday) Hey, I'm not used to the whole blogging thing and feel like a bit of a muppet! Anyway we moved from the New Dragon Youth Hostel to the Tianrui Inn and managed to get spectacularly lost in the three street journey, while carrying our luggage and in 35 degree heat! Which was entertaining to say the least. The hotel was lovely when we got there though, Clare is most excited by the free flip-flops =D. We spent the rest of today at the Temple of Heaven which was really interesting. The Temple of Heaven is where emperors of both the Ming and Qing dynasties made sacrifices and offerings to both Heaven and their ancestors. The iconic main building was for offerings of rice in hope of a bumper harvest but other sacrifices of animals ... read more
Tot: 0.057s; Tpl: 0.002s; cc: 10; qc: 63; dbt: 0.0368s; 1; s:notus w:www (50.28.61.183); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.5mb
