The Yaghtze River and 3 gorges dam and Yangshuo

We arrived in Chongqing quite late so made our way to our boat for our River Cruise, dumped our bags then headed out for dinner…..in an enormous restaurant that looked like it would seat about 200 people but we were the only ones there.  It was very odd!

So we were on the Yaghtze River Princess for the next 3 nights.  The cabins were quite cute, plenty of space and we all had windows looking out on to the river. The boat was bigger than I expected as I think it takes 100 people.  All our meals were included and that was quite an experience in itself. Breakfast and Lunch were buffets and dinner was table service.  Well those Chinese LOVE their food – just before the meal service was announced they would all be down there lining up outside the door and then all hell broke loose.  You had to get your elbows at the ready if you wanted to get your pick of stuff, and although it was open for an hour, if you weren’t there in the first 15 minutes you probably missed out on stuff.  It was kind of hilarious and kind of annoying all at the same time. 

The first day we had some Chinese calligraphy demonstrated to us.  Then we hit the gorges.  They were a great sight, however because the river had been flooded to create the dam I think they were a lot less spectacular than they used to be.  Basically there was some flooding of the towns along the Yagthze River and so the Chinese Government said that to “protect and prevent” the loss of life they would create the Dam which would raise the water levels in parts but also meant that over 1 million people lost their homes and their lands and were relocated to other parts of the area or further up the banks.  Its hard to get any Chinese persons viewpoint on it other than it was a good thing – they never seem to disagree with what the government does.  You could see the difference in the water levels when we eventually passed through the dam and it was amazing how much the river had been flooded.  I have to say that apart from saying it was great to see the gorges and they were quite spectacular the river cruise was very relaxing as we didn’t do too much. 

Later that day though we took a trip off the boat to Fengdu where there is this temple.  In honesty this was more funny than anything else.  Our local guide was rubbish and we could hardly understand him and the whole place looked completely touristy.  There were some hilarious statues though and a very funny collection of torture statues.

     

The next day was much better as the weather cleared up (most of the time in China it has been really foggy, murky and cold, not to mention the pollution (but being on the river we were away from all that). At first I didn’t think the weather was that great but then the clouds broke and out came the sun.  It was still freezing cold though on the boat as we were moving so lots of wind.  We had to disembark our big boat and get on to a ferry to visit the Lesser Three Gorges which was really beautiful.

    

That night we continued on to the dam.  To give you an idea of the difference in water levels we had to go down through 5 locks to get through it and it took about 4 hours.  

The last day on the boat we were up early to go and see the dam.  Erm what can I say about it – well we got another rubbish local guide who we could hardly understand.  However I did get to see the dam from another viewpoint. 

  

That day was FREEZING though. They forecast snow but it didn’t come during the day. The boat went a bit further down river and we drove after that to Yichang. We had a short walk around town, got a gourmet lunch from Pizza Hut, got our supplies for our 24 hour travelling and then I went back and hibernated in our hotel as it was soooo freezing outside and they had free internet access in the room :-)

So the next 24 hours are travelling – up at 6am and we ended up having to leave at 7am as the snow was definitely forecast for the next day and Olive was worried that with the snow they would close the highways. It was a good plan as we got on the road and it was fine……then the snow started coming down heavily.  The driver got notices on his gps that the highways were gradually closing behind us as the conditions got worse and we saw 2 really bad accidents along the way on the other side of the road.  I was just slightly worried we were going to crash as well – but thankfully we were fine (or you wouldn’t be reading this!).  On the road for 4 and a half hours and then we got to Wuhan train station for our next sleeper train.  We had about 3 hours to kill and then boarded our sleeper about 3pm for our 14 hour journey to Guilin – due in at 5am, which needless to say was of course late :-) But not by too much.  We found the public bus, and I think it would have been more of an experience if we weren't all so tired!    

Anyway the journey was well worth it as Yangshuo was my favourite place by far.  Very quiet, in the countryside, pretty, just what I needed - apart from it being freezing cold!!  Our Hotel, Lisa's Mountain View Lodge, we were not impressed with.  We had breakfast there although I have no idea why as the breakfast room had no glass in the windows so it was freezing cold and they were crap bringing out the orders. I think we were all too tired to bother saying anything though.  However, things did improve as the town is beautiful. As i've been posting this online in Thailand I've realised I didn't actually finish writing about China and the end of the trip so now I am trying to remember - however I have the main things it just might vary the order of things!!  We took a trip on the river that I can't remember the name of (oops!) on bamboo rafts (well they were supposed to be bamboo but they were large tubes of plastic!)  It was really beautfiul - however it was FREEZING cold again so I think it marred my enjoyment slightly. 

 The next day was a free day and we could take a kung fu or tai chi lesson - or a cooking class! Guess which one I opted for :-) It was great fun though and there was another 4 people from our group who wanted to do it, Maria, Martin, Rehka and Suzanne. We had to tell them what we wanted to cook so decided on sweet and sour, sizzling beef and dumplings, next was a trip to the market to buy the ingredients.  The teacher actually did all the buying etc so we didn't have to do that but we did go round the market, the most interesting bit was the meat section as of course, all the animals are there, alive as well as dead.

There was of course the weird and wonderful fish that had been cut up but their nerves were still working so they flipped about and you had birds that had been plucked and sliced open just displayed waiting to be bought.  There were cages and cages full of live chickens and ducks and rabbits as well - all of which I could handle. However one thing that will stick with me forever is seeing dogs available.  It was horrible.  They have them alive in a cage behind a stall, all jammed in, then I saw it in the different stages, one dead lying on the floor, then the next stage hung up and skinned but whole and then the next bit cut up in to bits.  And I managed to get all that in 5 seconds as I couldn't even look at it properly.  I don't know why but it just doesn't seem right to eat dog, and for whatever reason I could handle seeing the chickens and rabbits being treated the same way, I couldn't handle it with dog.  So, moving on from that not very nice experience, we went off to become chinese chefs!

   

 

So first up was our dumplings, using this really fine pastry that they already bought for us, but they were quite easy to make, its just fiddly getting them to look nice putting them together!

Then our sizzling beef, and then of course the sweet and sour pork! So what can I tell you about the cooking without going through the whole method which i'm sure you don't want to read! It was great being shown how to do it and when I had to deep fry the pork i managed to drip hot oil on our teacher - whoops!

     

So we had the afternoon free after our lovely cooking and went off to do some final looking around the shops.  That evening we had our final sleeper train quite late into Shenzhan.  By this point i'm an old hand at the sleeper trains so it wasn't too bad, got into Shenzhan early for a change!  Then as we are in China we have to depart the train and then cross the border into Hong Kong by foot! Eventually we get through, then have to do another metro train to get to Kowloon to our hotel.  I have to say it was a nice finish to our trip as if you compare my Hostel in Hong Kong to the Hotel we were staying in you couldn't get much more of a difference!  We got there quite late in the day so all headed off for a farewell lunch together.  I had plans for hong kong - unfortunately a pair of my trousers ripped halfway through China and although I got them repaired, they tore again, and I realised I just didn't have enough clothes still, so I had to trek off to Marks and spencers again to get myself well prepared for the rest of my trips! Strangely enough Suzanne on my tour was catching the same flight as me the next day to Singapore (although I was only stopping for an hour!) so we went to the airport together the next day.........next up Thailand :-)