Chongqing and the Yangtze River

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Well, we are actually in Thailand now as we have been really busy over the last week so unable to find time to update our blog....sorry.

Last time we wrote we were in Chengdu visiting the panda's and after we went on a cruise up the Yangtze. We sailed from a city called Chongqing, our thoughts on this town before we arrived was that it would be a small fishing village but how we were wrong. This "town" turned out to have the biggest population in China with a whopping 43 million people in the whole of the area, tower blocks everywhere built up the steep banks of the river. The boat that was originally booked for us had basic food and the rooms were small with the lovely Chinese squat toilets in the bathroom. Our tour leader asked if we wanted to upgrade to a better boat for 200 Yuan, about GBP15, no one in the group hesitated to upgrade!! By upgrading, although we had nice food and thankfully a nice bathroom, we found that we had a holiday camp style cruise.....morning call was at 7.30 for breakfast and when no one from our group turned up we then got a special mention over the speakers..."Would the GAP group please go to the dining room for breakfast"!!! It was only for 3 days so we could cope.

We sailed through the spectacular gorges however the river has already risen to over 150m and villages have already been submerged so we all wondered how stunnng the scenery would have been before the Dam had been built. Unfortunatley the weather was not great when we were on the cruise until the last day...it was cold and wet so it made us feel at home!! We sailed through the Three Gorges dam on the last day and had a quick stop to view the site... it was huge but a great big mass of concrete so not much to talk about unless you like dams?!

After rushing around China for the 2 weeks before it was nice to have a relaxing couple of days. We ended our holiday camp cruies in Yichang another massive city on the river before heading to our last destination in mainland China, Yangshuo.

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Photos

Shennong stream
We took a wooden boat up the little three gorges.

Learning to play Marjong
Everywhere we went Chinese people played the game Marjong sitting outside shops and their homes. We thought we'd have a go...

Comments

[David Cairns]

Yangtze Fun!
It's Friday and I have about 7 conference calls and meetings....and I just logged into your blog and read about you floating down the Yangtze and saw those views.....am off to find a rope and a chair! YOU DID THE RIGHT THING!