Yichang Taohualing Hotel

... and I walked down to the river front, thinking I'd walk off my meal... and what a great option that was. The entrance to the waterfront was flanked by two bandstands with pagoda-style tiered roofs, decked with fairy lights, and there were people singing to an assembled crowd in each. This whole length of the river was lined with pretty street lamps, lighting the way for the many locals out for their evening ...

... do pretty much the same itinerary as us but for a little more cash and they fly instead of two of the overnight trains, we didn’t mention to them that it was us who stole their bus from Guilin station) as well as some Chinese tourists and were delayed for ages waiting for 6 passengers that, it eventually turned out, had already cancelled. It took about 90 minutes to get to the cruise ship by which time I was at the absolute limit of how tired I could be whilst still ...

... those goals. It is safe to say based on the underwhelming excitement and lack of amazement that NONE of the Maaske Clan will enter the field of Archaeology. <br> <br>On one of the hotter days we all got refreshingly wet in the water fountains at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda with our friend Betty Lee. On the 15th (14th in the West) our three older children thought they had struck 'pay dirt' when they came across a theatre playing the latest Harry ...

A very comfortable and very warm night's sleep on board, broken by the piped music system and wake up call at 7.30am. As a mini cruise, there was a Tai Chi session at 7.40 and I went to try my hand. The young kung fu instructor went straight into the squat thrusts and knee squats and whilst my 'hands' may have been willing, my other joints definitely needed a bit more gradual easing into this 'gentle' (?) exercise. Buffet breakfast was good and with the French and ...

... but given the still rising level of the Yangtze, in a couple years the same trip won't even be possible (scenery-wise at least). The trip started out as most trips in China do, being nothing what I expected. I assumed meeting at 9 am meant I would leave from the hostel and walk down to the river since it was only a few minutes away and board the ship. However, the travel agent came to the hostel around 9:45, we walked down to the pier where we ...

... in Beijing and speaks Mandarin (pretty damned fluently from what we could guess!) and Melissa also speaks Mandarin as they both studied it at school. Their experience of the world and language skills at such young ages put us to shame. David loves to talk and, to give him his due, he's very good at it! He was a great laugh and he had an endless supply of genuinely interesting stories on all aspects of life and travel and they all gave us some great tips on our ...

... too inviting, so we cleared people off it and set about a new dance routine. It started off with us doing Tai Chi moves to the techno music, but when we forgot what the next move's were, we just blended it into a drunken version of the Macarena! Now, if we were in the UK, they would have put a straight jacket on us and whisked us away to a padded cell, but not here. Instead, the barman came over to us, dropped half a bottle of JD on ...

... a bath. Plus also they didn't have the banana 'ship' ice cream I wanted for dessert as they didn't have any bananas! Great. I then walked through a large square with people dancing samba and ballroom dancing all at 10pm at night. I carried on walking and tried to find an internet place as indicated in my Lonely Planet and eventually found it after going around in circles for over half-an-hour, on the first floor of a building and of course there were no signs to it English.

... what's being done to help the sturgeon, Mary looked at him in all seriousness and said "We are building a museum dedicated to them". (?!?) Michael had warned us that the boat was going to be icky but it really was disgusting! It smelt terrible and had mould everywhere. We spent the evening up on the deck watching Michael do karaoke by himself (the Chinese have no shame when it comes to singing in public) and then went to ...

... medication i am led over by a nurse who administers my first dose! Whatever happened to a bit of discretion for a guy whos got a really bad case of the runs, I think as i turn to wave goodbye the gaggle of 10 smiling nurses! Local entertainment is the obligitory line dancing in the town square; its funny seeing so many people so out of time! The tia chi is a bit more honned. We get an early night and I pray that my pills work as we have ...