Zhanghua Hotel Jingzhou

... un Mac do pendant un long moment ! Vraiment si on doit décrire en un mot la province du Hubei ce serait «gris » ! Il faisait froid aujourd'hui et le ciel était menaçant ! Samvit a conduit la première partie du trajet, les routes étaient belles et en bon état comparé à ce que l'on a rencontré précédemment ! Le moteur n'a pas surchauffé et la moto était rapide et puissante aujourd'hui. On a presque fait du 80 à l'heure très ...

... river. There a two massive 5 stage ship locks that can lift a 10,000 ton ship up the 100m in about 4 hours. Only one is in operation right now but eventually, one will take traffic going up and the other will take traffic going down river. There is also a ship elevator which will lift a 3,000 ton ship the 100m in about 30 minutes. The ship will sail into a massive tray of water and the elevator will lift the tray, the water and the ship totaling ...

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

... claudia stayed on only to only narrowly miss getting gobbed on by one of the monks. walked down the the bus station to get a public bus to chongqing. it was a big coach but got packed at the stop after ours. it was not a trip i'd want to repeat. smelly people and so much hacking and spitting going on behind us. i didn't want to turn around to see where it was going! it was a case of shove in the headphones ...

So we got the bus from Yichang to Wuhan, and it only took 4 hours, but yet again I failed to get any sleep, just dosed a little, 'rested my eyes'. We were dropped off in the middle of the city at 5 in the morning. Nothing was open, it was dark and completely dead. There were a few taxi drivers waiting at the bus stop so we tried to tell one where we wanted to go. This was quite a challenge as our hostel was on a road ...

... and then onto Wuhan. Of course this was simply a polite gesture on Suzie's part as I could get the ticket easily myself using my fluent Mandarin skills - yeah right. The plan was soon starting to look doubtful though as I was told there was no local buses to take me to Yichang when the boat docked and only extortionately priced tourist buses on tours to the dam which I wanted to see but didn't really care to tour ...

... hands along the concrete walls and metal doors :)WE HAVE TOUCHED THE THREE GORGES DAM !!!! Adam here now,well gail has covered the sightseeing side of things, so that just leaves me really to say we have eaten basically pot noodles for all our food for the last 4 days!!! Fantastic or what, rehydrated dehydrated food for 4 days yummy! The reason? well food on the boat was expensive , pot noodles (they are at least 3 times bigger than in the uk mind) were cheap and you get free ...

... is used for freight. I also got to meet Kainan's cousin, Lulu (sp?). She is studying English at the university here. I was a little surprised. I also meet a few of Kainan's aunts and they all are great cooks :) I had some great homemade vegetarian food as well. I think it was the people that made my time in Wuhan so much fun and not what I saw. I will have to definitely come back and visit the next time I am in China.

... 3 days. As purveyors of all things luxury, we avoid the restaurant, which rumour has it is overpriced and serves disgusting food, and head to the upper deck observatory to eat from our supplies of luxury goods brought onboard. The boat heads off at 8pm and we sleep well until the early hours of the morning when the a/c is turned off. At 6am we are herded off the boat along with the 400 other passengers to the first of the main attractions: Fengdu, the City of Ghosts. Street vendors ...

... w**e bett** used to block out sound than wat**! The backdrop of a calm ocean was relaxing and a shark net had been fitted, which we found quite re-assuring. Th**e are seem to be a lot of v**y peculiar, repulsive creatures cruising these wat**s - judging by the quantity and variety of seafood on off** in the street markets and stalls around town. Restaurants c**tainly are a feast for the eye as they invariably have a dozen fish tanks outside on the pavements with a curious range ...