Cruising the Three Gorges (27th to 30th Oct)

Flights taken : 9       Number of times its not been a foggy/smoggy day in China so far : 2

We took a very early fight from Xian to Wuhan which was very pleasant (we were even given a Chinese type sandwich). We then drove for about 4 hours to Yichang which is where we could pick up our cruise from. We visited the museum in Yichang and saw lots of stuff they had managed to excavate before a lot of the area flooded due to the Three Gorges Dam project.

We boarded our cruise a 6 decker called “Presidents Cruise Number 2”. We upgraded to a balcony room (mainly so Chris could smoke on it!!). The cruise is Chinese 5 star luxury (so really for us that is 3 stars) it is comfortable and we have a bathroom in our cabin and the most comfortable bed we have slept in so far (the Chinese like very hard beds). The only problem with the boat was when it docked other ships would tie up along side us which rather negated the balcony view (unless you want to have 23 Chinese people waving and pointing at you). It was also noisy with the engine from the other boat and this made it difficult to sleep.

Anyway we spent 4 nights on the boat; they had a fab laundry service so we were able to get everything washed. We learnt how to play Majong one evening and though complicated with some difficult Chinese characters to recognise was a really interesting game. The food (3 meals a day) was also great. Every morning they would play music into our cabin to tell us to wake up and get down to breakfast. There would also be lots of announcements telling us when we had to go on trips and eat dinner. We even got a phone call when we did not turn up to one of the evening functions. We came to dread the tannoy greeting of “hello dear guests this is your river guide Ruby speaking ..”

It was really nice to relax on the boat and admire the scenery of the Three Gorges as we sailed past. Certainly some dramatic landscape with amazing cliffs rising out of the river.

We took 3 trips of the boat during the cruise. The first one was to see the famous dam.  It definitely was a feat of engineering but again the weather was doing its Chinese thing and was foggy and rainy. However we did admire the locks we would be passing through later.

The second trip we went on was down the Shennong Stream in which we sat in a traditional sampan and were paddled along the river (along with 100s of Chinese tourists). They also demonstrated how they used to pull the boat along with bamboo ropes (this was before the dam and the rising of the river level). The guide we had was really nice and sang traditional songs to us on the boat on the way back.

The final trip was to the ghost mountain in Fengdu. This was a kind of ancient tourist place which was supposed to be haunted and had all sorts of superstitions attached to it. There were also Buddhist and Taoist temples on the mountain. The main temple at the top of the mountain has lot of models supposedly depicting hell. However there was a bridge that if you managed to step over in 9 steps you would not go to hell and you were a good person so we felt OK.

We disembarked from the cruise at Chongqing which we had never heard of but turned out to be a major city of 33 million people. It is in Sichuan province which we had only heard of because of the spicy food. However Sichuan is also famous for its Pandas. We were taken to the zoo in Chongqing and managed to see about 5 different pandas that looked really well cared for. It was really nice to see them so close up; they seemed more interested in eating their bamboo rather than us. The zoo was in the middle of the city so was surrounded by the traditional Chinese high rises which was pretty weird – the occupants of the flats must have got a great view over the giraffes.

We then went to Erlin Park in the city; this is supposed to provide panoramic views. Unfortunately like most days (apparently normal in the autumn and winter) it was foggy/smoggy. However we met an artist who for a small fee wrote our names out in Chinese type writing and then laminated them (we were very impressed with his entrepreneurial skills).

We then went to the airport to catch a flight to Kunming (population only 8 million!).