Blogs from Yangtze River, China, Asia - page 2

We are now into day 3 of our Yangtze River cruise. There are an about 250 passengers on board plus about 80 staff and crew. The ship is rated 5 star but probably more realistically 4 star, still very well appointed and comfortable with two dining rooms, a large bar and an observation deck. Yesterday we had two stops, the first to visit the "Tribe of the three gorges" and second to see the enormous three gorges dam. The dam was completed about 16 years ago at a cost of US$23bn and 45% of that was to relocate and house 640,000 people whose homes were flooded by the dam. It is the biggest hydro project in the world producing 22.5 billion kilowatts which was 10% of China's consumption 10 years ago but now represents only 2.7%. ... read more

One night in Chengdu and we started with an orientation walk and a lunch which is famous in this region, it is a hotpot. It is basically a large cooking pot in the middle of your table with a burner underneath and then you pile in meat which in our case was beef and pork balls then you put in vegetables such as mushrooms, potatoes, bamboo shoots, herbs, potato noodles and quail eggs you then wait until it all boils and then dive in with your chopsticks. Or in my case a spoon. It was ok, not really our kind of thing but when in Rome!! Next we went to the local market for a scout round and then we met up with the rest of our group and got a couple of beers from the ... read more

From Shanghai, we flew to Yichang to board the Century Star. Besides us four Canadians, passengers consisted of two Australians, a small group of Germans, and mostly Chinese. The boat has a capacity of 306 passengers and we were told that there were 307 aboard.The breakfast buffet the first morning was a real eye-opener with people pushing and shoving as if they had not eaten for days. Our cabin was spacious and well-appointed however many of the Chinese passengers smoked, a lot, which sometimes made even our cabin uncomfortable. I was disappointed to find we hadn't left the pollution behind. The Yangtze is vast, third in size after the Nile and Amazon, and we sailed through some lovely scenery that would have been even better without the constant haze of pollution. From the boat we went ... read more

After spending some time at the hotel last night, struggling to hook up with the wifi, we headed out for the World Financial Tower on the other side of the river. It had been bucketing down and thunder and lightning while we were in the room. Thankfully it cleared up and the bright night lights of Shanghai stood out for us to admire. We caught a ferry from the Bund side of the river to the other. There were loads of people outside, trying to get photos and they clearly had no concept of personal space. When we were half way across it started to rain and it didn't stop for the rest of the night. That wasn't going to stop us though. We looked up and headed for the tower. As we drew closer, we ... read more

Saturday China is not a small country and when one travels, you don't do it by half!! We enjoyed a relaxing start at 9.30am and, at the airport, ticket and passport names matched perfectly (this time)!! However, one of our Antipodean cousins tried to go through Security with a Swiss Army knife in his hand luggage, no doubt frustrating our Guide and nearly causing a diplomatic spat between China and Oz!! The flight was a tad bumpy, but in just over an hour we touched down in Wuhan - 'this travelling is a breeze' we thought!! Two sequential coach journies of five hours and then ninety minutes brought us back to earth, so to speak. We boarded our Yangtze Cruise Ship @ 10pm in Mao Ping, ready for some much needed kip - boarding entailed using ... read more