Yangshou, The land of Mountains

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Well, despite our complaints about the facilities at the monastery we did enjoy our stay there, you'll understand why when you see the pictures. We also went and spent half a day at the local hot springs resort and had all the hot spring pools all to ourselves (+ 1 Chinese couple). It was a beautiful and peaceful setting and we had 2 showers afterwards to compensate for the one we missed the day before!!

After the Monastery we spent half a day on a bus getting to Chongqing to start our Yangtze River cruise. Chongqing is the engine room of East China; although it does not have a skyline as impressive as Shanghai or Beijing, it does have a huge 32 million inhabitants, the most populous city in China. The journey was very bumpy as the bus driver decided he didn't want to pay the toll on the highway and drove off road instead - Many a four by four would have whimpered at some of the terrain we travelled over. It did give us an interesting drive through some of the parts of China the tourist board do not want you to see!

The River Cruise was interesting if a little damp! The Mighty Yangtze is an impressive river, only beaten in size by the Amazon and the Nile. The 3 Gorges Dam project, which was the final destination of the cruise, was engineering at it's boldest. This will be the biggest dam in the world on completion in 2008 (just in time for the Beijing Olympics 😉 ) and the Chinese have funded it entirely themselves! A lot of international lenders were put off by the relocation of 1.2m people and the ecological impact of the project. It will however mean that an impressive 24% of China's electricity will be hydro powered. Although given China's thirst for energy they may need to build another one soon as well as continuing to build more coal and nuclear powered stations. In fact, China adds on average, one coal powered station a week! The 3 gorges themsleves are very impressive. When we went through the first one it was a very misty day the other pictures are a lot clearer.

The boat we stayed on was a huge commercial cruise boat and had a Karaoke bar. The Chinese tourists were very impressed with our group's musical antics and we featured in several several Chinese holiday videos. After 3 days on the boat we took a pit stop in Yichang. It was really nice to be able to have hot showers instead of the tepid ones on the boat and to walk around our room without bumping into each other.

The next day was a travelling day and we spent 5 hours on a bus - which was freezing as the driver did not know how to switch the heating on!! However he did know how to use the DVD player and so we wathced White Blondes and Himalaya to keep our minds of the cold. We'd recommend Himalaya - good movie. Our bus ride took us to a train station for yet another overnight journey. The train was the most basic so far and we had the pleasure of lot's of Chinese people staring at us as our compartments did not have doors!! 13 hours later we are in the delightful province of Guilin, in the resort town of Yangshou - the city of Mountains. The battery on our cameras have died so we can't post a picture but we are literally surrounded by lots of mountains. It is very very picturesque! We're off to a Chinese cooking school this afternoon and exploring the local countryside tomorrow and we may even treat ourselve to a massage hmmmm.

Our next post will be from Hong Kong where the tour finishes.

Keep posting your comments - it's really nice to hear from all of you.

Nikeeta and Rahim x

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Photos

Delightful Scenery on the River
Example of one of the many Rock faces

A Statue at The Temple Of Hell, Ghost City
Ghost City was one the numerous stops on our cruise along the Yangtze

Statues Depicting Torture at The Temple Of Hell, Ghost City
The Chinese visit this temple to pass the three tests in their quest for eternal life.

Taming Nature, The Three Gorges Dam
The largest Dam in the world.