Yangtze river cruise

Trip Start Mar 01, 2007
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Trip End Feb 29, 2008


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Saturday, February 23, 2008

Another flight today.......arrived in Chongqing from Xi'an, would have liked to have spent a couple of days in this city, but only had time to visit the Panda's which was really special & we saw a 1 year old baby along with about 10 adults....now we would not have been happy with the way they were kept if in UK, but tried not to be too judgemental.

We were then whisked off to our cruise ship, to board & then go no-where for the evening apart from dinner, we did however have a chance to meet the other guests, this seemed to comprise of about 70 Germans, 20 Americans & about 10 other Europeans including us.
We went to an introductory meeting, the German guide seemed to talk for 10 mins & Fingfang, our guide said in English " it is very big" now, I don't think that can be right !

The boat was perfectly positioned to see all the fireworks going off all around for the start of the Spring festival, this seemed to go on for hours ! & added to the smog problem.....so the next morning our boat was delayed in leaving by 4 hours....
We tried to have a shower but could not get hot water so we called housekeeping.......they informed us that you need to let the water run for 10-15mins before it gets hot!!! Enviromently friendly or what?

Apparently 10% of the WORLDS population lives along the banks of the Yangtzee river !! that is a lot of people.
We were dissappointed with the start of the trip as it was very industrial & smoggy, but we got to know some of the passengers, had a few drinks & tried to stay warm.....this is not as easy in China as you may think, most of the time in Restaurants we had to wear our coats & even around the hotels....the only warm place (after an hour or so with heating on) was our room.....we think there must be a limit to the amount of electricity they can use.

Eventually, we got to the 3 gorges, these were amazing, and then moved on to the dam project, the size & scale of it is overwhelming. 01 Panda heaven
01 Panda heaven
 It took several hours to get through the locks to go upstream which was done overnight while we were asleep. The really amazing thing is that the river level will rise by 16 metres, flooding a large amount of small towns & cities, they decided that the answer was to move them up & build new ones !! this goes on for 100 of klm's & includes around 100 new bridges. Now the housing is what you would call "practical" with limited asthetic appeal......large concrete blocks. Entertainment was the staff singing and dancing.....they tried really hard.

Spent 3 days on board & was glad to get off.
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