Yangzi River Cruise

---

"Hello Mango, Hello Banana, Hello Lychee" ... this is what we've been hearing everyday since we arrived in china... everywhere u go. Women come up to u with baskets of fruit trying anything to sell them to u .. even when your sitting inside a pub. It can be quite annoying sometimes but amusing all the same.

Our last update was from Yhanshou, from there we took a sleeper train to a place called Yichang, the train wasn't too bad and i'm finally getting used to these squat toilets although i do have to brace myself for it everytime, its the smell more than anything thats the worse.

And over to Gareth ...

We arrived in Yichang that morning and took a 4 hour bus ride up to the Three Gorges Dam.
Its bloody huge, 185m tall and 2.3k long
They reckon by 2009 that the water level will be 175m above sea level which will mean 2 million ppl will have to relocate. Its hard to understand whether the people are happy about it or not but after going through some of the smaller gorgoes and seeing where they live they can't be happy. They are to reolocated to big cities which are purpose built higher up. The photos will show it all. But as for the boat trip, it was very relaxing and really really beautiful, we were very lucky with the weather.
We stopped in this town known as ghost city which looked like a WWII bomb city. Dee and myself walked all around this own city, saying hello to the locals not knowing whether they were happy or sad even though most smiled. And some of the kids were happy to pose for shots. Its funny because we seem so strange walking through they to them so i guess not many foreigner walk through the city. It was slightly intimidating particalarly for Dee cos of all the dogs!! But we had a couple of beers with a few local shopkeepers who were so happy that we buying from them.

Eating on the train was fun as the menu was all in chinese and no english people on the boat other than ourselves. But we managed it somehow, some good and some very strange. But the beer was cheap and the card games were fun at night.

Its a strange country in terms of censorship, for example, u can't access many websites like BBC and a few others. It seems in some cases that have an opinion and expressing it can be quite dangerous. The chinese tour groups dont get to see the small villages that are being torn down and a lot of information is kept from the average chinese person especially with regard to the Yangzi dam project.

We have now arrived in the town of Chendu which has a population of 11m. We tried some local chinese dishes this morning which were amazing. Tomorrow we are going to see the Pandas so should have some good pics from that.

Will update again soon.. hope you are all well.

Lots of love,
Deirdre + Gareth

If u want to read our other journals (not thats there many) click on the link 'Journals by D G ( Deirdre and Gareth ).
Also, we have some photos up at http:danholt.no-ip.comdeirdre from our last weekend in Canberra. I can't access this website in China hence why i can't upload anymore .. boooo

Also, u can add comments too if u like.. thanks christy for yours! gareth says to send him a mail.

---

Photos

Yangzi River Dam
Us

Yangzi River
The guy who took us upstream on a little wooden canoe

Comments

[lynno]

hi guys,...
hey fockers, so fantastic to hear from you and all your travels, sounds soo amazing, you are extremely lucky.i did have an essay of an email written to you both in work one day but i went and deleted it by accident,was totally cracking!!!sorry- o.k so the story with the house and landlord is as follows---- moved everything out on the fri evening and left the house spotless.i also left a long note explaining the situ to them like, that i had contacted the tenancy agreement place and i have a right to the full bond back minus the water bill which was only about $450 , i also said that i was giving them the space and discerpency to look around themselves on sat morn and that they needed to get in contact with me regards to bond etc...up until last thurs i had heard nothing from them so i decided to call the bond place again, i explaine the full situ and they checcked it out and said the bond hadnt been touched yet and they gave me the landlords number and our bond number, very helpful and totally on our side.. so i decided to email the landlord and also sent the same letter by post to him so he would know we meant business. a day later i received an email from him explaining that he was still away, will be back on fri(last) and was very glad i had emailed him as he didnt know anything that had gone on..can you believe that, brook never told him anything.so going to call him today as he rang me yesterday but ken had the phone, kinda dreading getting into all of this again, but desperately need the money... there you go. let me see what else, oh yeah living with caroline and her exboyf geoff is a nightmare.we cant stand them, ive never before in my whole entire life seen ken like this about any one ever, its bizarre.you know how easy going and chilled out ken is about everyone and everything, its just mad.im sure hes told you about them. thank god we only have 3 weeks left with them.. heading to rotorua this weekend as was meant to go last but weather was way too bad. have one of my leaving doo's for work this thurs, as andrea flies to england next week and thats the last ill see of her. myself and ken are both finishing up in work on the 1st july, because we are going to be XPAT reps for andrea the week after on buses for the lions from 2pm till 1am every day.should be a great laugh, free food ,drink and laughs and should make a bomb out of it as we are on commission... has ken told you that we have paid for our flights home..really looking forward to it. 9days in oz, 1month in thailand(2 of those weeks spent on koh samui and phagnon beach), 5 days in dubai and finally 5 days in london.. gotta go now as am busy with calls, love you both loads and miss you more, take care and keep the travel blogs coming. love lynnoxxxxx

[Nick]

Hey guys - thanks for finally sharing this with us! Sounds like you're having a great time (except for the dogs). Whats your email address? [e-mail]??

[Daniel]

correction to web address
If anyone was trying to see pics on the danholt website it seems to have chopped the slashes, I will try and put it again here: http://danholt.no-ip.com/deirdre Hope to see lots more pics up there guys as soon as you can

[Ruch]

hey there
this email popped up in my inbox and was a tad surprised... good to see yous typing away. Will see you sson in my part of the world. Am meeting Amy in Vegas tomorrow.. very excited. Absolutely love Microsoft HQ in Seattle and this country.