Blogs from Yangtze River, China, Asia - page 8

We were warned about not drinking too much this morning as the toilets on the ferry are "squatties". We take a ride down the Shennong Stream where we transfer to peapod boats. The Shennong Stream is a tributary of the Yangtze River off of the Three Gorges area. We were told - and I read - that today is when we see the famous hanging coffins. I was glad I was on the right side of the boat and had just taken out my camera as I caught sight of a wooden box resting lengthwise inside a hole in the cliff. That was it. There were to be no other coffins. My picture is dark as I didn't have time to turn off the flash -- but at least I saw it (many didn't). The monkeys ... read more

27th January - Chongqing to Wanzhou...The longest bus journey....EVER! We set off early morning in darkness for our supposed 4 hour bus ride to Wanzhou. From here we would be setting sail down the Yangtze River through The Three Gorges. How little did we know! The bus journey turned into a 15 hour nightmare! No one else on the bus spoke English and the problems began when the motorway appeared to have been shut due to bad weather. After taking a detour we then hit standstill in the middle of nowhere! We jumped off the bus to try and find some food but as very little was available we bought all the Oreo Cookies available in the street stall. After several hours not moving some of the people on the bus began raising their voices at ... read more

The Yangtze Cruise Over 3 days we took a very interesting cruise along the Yangtze. It was misty or raining most of the trip but we did get some dry spells where the view was breath taking. There are sheer cliff walls and plenty of trees and vegetation growing on the mountains where soil has collected. There are countless mountain streams winding their way down the mountain. There are beautiful green farms almost vertically up the mountain. I cannot imagine how they work the land. It is just one post card view after another, and there are not enough words to describe it all. On our second last day we took a motor launch through one of the gorges and then went on a 3km sampan ride. It was incredible. There are 5 crew on a ... read more

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 ... read more

Monday morning we went to the Shanghai museum where there are lovely collections of jade and bronze artifacts dating back to the 34th century bce, and exquisite examples of traditional and ritual Chinese furniture carved out of beautiful woods, folk art, and some very very old carvings of Buddhas. Of course, the largest collection was ceramics. The light was dim throughout the museum and my pictures are not as sharp as I would like but you can see some of the wonderful things we saw. I was particularly impressed with how perfectly some of the old jade had come through the last five thousand years. A jade scepter in the shape of a hand axe was as perfect as it could be. The carvings were amazing. After the museum we headed over to our lunch destination, ... read more