Blogs from Yangtze River, China, Asia - page 3

Vi wakes up with a bad cold. And it turns out that 4 other people have bad gastro-intestinal distress. After breakfast, we attend a presentation called "Country Side to River Wide" given by Luther, the same guy who gave yesterday's presentation on the Yangzi. Luther was born and raised on a small rural subsistence farm, but studied hard, went to college in Chungqing to study hospitality, and now is an assistant cruise director. He tells us the story of his life, explains the customs of his people, and highlights the contrasts between traditional life in the village and modern life in the big city, complete with pictures and videos. Very interesting and enlightening. Vi retires to our room to sleep and I spend the rest of the morning trying desperately to catch up with the blog. ... read more

We were again woken up at 6.20am with an announcement over the boat's intercom and zombies were in evidence once more shuffling up to eat a massive breakfast. For someone who normally only has a slice of toast and a cup of tea in the morning I was finding the volume of food I'd been having in China quite an effort and I assumed a bit of dieting was likely to be needed on my return to the UK! As we tucked into our breakfast our boat was starting to pull into our mooring spot, up against another cruise boat, and were treated to the sight of an older gentleman standing naked, bar his white Y-fronts at his bedroom window - completely oblivious to us! Not a pretty sight it has to be said, but pretty ... read more

Hello everyone, The Three Gorges Dam project was the largest construction project in the world. More of the Yangtze was made navigable between key centres. The increased water height also made it safer for ships to pass between the gorges. The project took seventeen years and cost 27 billion US. The damn is 2.3 kilometres long. There are 32 turbine generators. The electric produced is 100 billion kilowatt hours per year. This made electricity available to many more Chinese. The sale of electricity helps recoup costs. The project now employs 30,000 people during peak season. The locks are really impressive—five locks total a 113 metre drop. They need five to accommodate the pressure. It takes four hours to get through all five locks. 180 vessels a day use it. Each year 100 million ton of cargo ... read more

We arrived back at the boat after our fantastic tour to the Ghost City and were immediately treated to a hot pot demonstration by one of the chefs. One of the ingredients was dried mushrooms, packed into tiny boxes not much bigger than a standard matchbox. Once re-hydrated these turned into a huge pan full of jews-ear mushrooms! I couldn't taste the hot pot as it was meaty, but it was judged delicious by the others. Sadly we learnt that we wouldn't be able to stop off at the Shabao Zhai pagoda in the afternoon after all as not enough people had signed up to make it a viable excursion. So instead we settled down to a session of cards 'Beat up the Landlord' joined by the lovely Mr Wong in his red star hat. We ... read more

Day 17 We woke up after our first nights sleep on the boat to chinese music being belted out of the cabin radios at 6.30am! After dozing to the tunes for a while we got up and went on deck to check out our surroundings. At around 10.30am, we sailed through the first of the gorges called the Qutang Gorge. It was raining and very windy and in honesty we both felt a little unimpressed by the scenery particularly because it was so hazy with limited views. After lunch we transferred to a smaller boat and set off through the "Lesser Three Gorges". The weather had improved by then and the sun was shining and the scenery here seemed more impressive than that seen in the morning. As we sailed through the high rock formations that ... read more