Meng Da Hotel Jingzhou

... flooding along the river. The
dam is expected to reduce this flood devastation to once every 100
years.The dam is located in an earthquake zone. It has been built to
withstand a 7.0 rector scale earthquake. Research shows that an
earthquake of 6.0 could be expected sometime within a 100 year
period. The negative impact and those who have paid dearly for this
dam are those people who have had to relocate (the relocation cost
to ...

... sur une bonne partie du chemin ! Finalement nous avions l'impression d'avancer ! Après quelques heures Samvit commençait à avoir froid et Karine a pris le relais pendant qu'il s'est entortillé dans le sac de couchage, ce qui était plutôt confortable ! Pendant ce temps, Karine qui aussi avait froid râlait évidemment car elle, quand Sam conduisait n'avait pas eu cette bonne idée et c'était gravement gelé tout le trajet ! Samvit : « J ...

On the morning of the 11th we arrived at the Dam site and left the ship. This was something I was really looking forward to since I was a kid. Everybody was excited but only Mark, also an engineer, was getting any buzz out of it. Everything about this project is staggering. Most of the figures are so big, they are incomprehensible but in 2009 when it is finished, it will produce 22,000 MW which is more than 4.5 times the entire Irish electricity ...

Arrived in Wuhan after a very bumpy and smoky bus journey, got chatting to the locals on the bus, well it was more like sign language with a lot of nodding and smiling, and eventually found our hostel at around 12:30am, thanks to a really nice taxi driver. Checked in and just crashed for the night before our flight to Shanghai

... Yangzi. Unfortunately now that the river is no longer able to naturally flush this away, the fear is that it (along with all the other stuff collected from elsewhere) could all collect and stagnate within a 400mile cesspool. Other less headlinegrabbing impacts include the silting up of tributaries, and closing the migration routes of many fish and rare species such as the "fresh"water dolphins - all in all having rather a significant effect on the whole ...

... of which exist in the city both in different districts. We managed to work out which one, and then we were off, a long ride across the city. The flag fall on the taxi was just Y3! Every city it just keeps getting cheaper (Y10 in Beijing, Y6 in Xi'an), but being a stupid hour of the morning the per km fee wasn't as cheap as usual. We got to the area we wanted to be in though we couldn't find the hostel. The driver ...

... water on the boats!! So now we are on dry land its good to eat actually cooked food!! With regard to the pushing incident gail told you about,well we got on the back as they all fought to be at the front,however......when it came for our boat to leave it turned around and it became apparent that they had pushed and fought their way to the back of the boat and we were at the front!! How I laughed!!! How I wished I spoke chinese to tell them all what I was laughing at!! Oh I have ...

On the 15th we started our long 18 hour journey to Wuhan. It was a decent train ride and I finished up Utopia and started on the Simirallions. For dinner I had some noodles the local store at Yangshou had sold to me saying they were vegetarian. I just didn't put the oil and liquid seasoning on as a precaution. They were good enough to eat and along with the bananas I was happy enough with dinner. We got to Wuhan about 4 ...

... in a highly excited state as most cruise boats stop here for just a couple hours first thing in the morning, so they have to compress a days trading into about 15% of the normal time. We pass by to a chorus of a thousand hellos and I practise the Chinese word 'buyao', which means 'I dont want it'. We climb a hill behind the city where there is a temple where one can perform various rituals that influence your soul's destination in the afterlife. I ask Wei if she's superstitious and ...

... creatures swimming and wriggling about, dying to get on your plate. The Chinese definitely have an egalitarian attitude towards animals and consid** it grossly unfair that west**n countries choose to pick on just cows, pigs, sheep and chickens to eat. Virtually any animal is consid**ed game and we've unwittingly eaten the odd mouse or two! We wanted to try our luck at speaking Mandarin but the fact that ev**yone in HK speaks Cantonese meant that even if we did have the pronunciation ...