After a long but relaxing day on the train we arrived in Yichang at midnight and were immediately spotted by our tour guide. Our bags weren’t going to fit in the boot of the taxi so they were roped up (I thought it best not to get involved as I am sure I would have preferred two ropes) and five of us set off. We dropped a passenger off and we shortly arrived at our hotel, by this time our guide had given us an itinerary and we had reluctantly agreed to an early morning tour of the Dam Project but then he insisted on coming up to our room and we couldn’t get rid of him, a phone call to the poor guy in Chongqing who spoke quite good English and we were still none the wiser why this guy wouldn’t leave, so while I was having yet another circular conversation with John I took the mobile out into the corridor and made him come out there so he had to leave the room to get the phone back and then he still stuck is foot in the door!! I guess he wanted money but wasn’t directly asking for it. So we had a 5-6 hour sleep and dutifully checked out of the room and stored our bags ready for the 8am pick up expecting a bus but no the pick up was this crazy dude walking us downtown then catching a bus to the CITS office (government run tourist agency) then loaded on to a mini bus for the tour – no English spoken, though the tour guide did hand us a sheet of paper explaining how long the stops would be. The tour wasn’t bad, the building of this dam is a huge engineering effort, nearly as much as the Great Wall but unfortunately due to the mist we didn’t get the magnificent views we were hoping for. After the tour we basically had to waste 4 hours until the next pickup, so we headed for McDonalds for a drink and sit down and were befriended by a group of giggling 12 year old girls dying to show us their English skills, so we had a lovely conversation with them, shopped a bit then back to the hotel. I cheekily asked (with the help of my phrase book) for the use of the internet, the receptionist understood what I was asking but didn’t reply just got busy on her computer so I though fair enough and sat back down on the sofa. Then 5 minutes later she was back with a bit of paper with an English sentence on it, she had found the google translator, so we proceed to have a conversation with the assistance of the translator – another lovely exchange, I just wished my Mandarin was at a higher standard. Finally we were picked up, which again was another walk and catching a local bus this time with our big bags in tow and we again arrived at another tour agency and told we were to go with her. We had paid the balance of the tour by then but he was still hassling us to pay for additional tours on the boat and the price kept changing so we really lost interest in him and were happy to see the back of him. More waiting then another walk through the streets until we finally boarded a big tourist bus so we could wait on that for ages, finally we arrived on the cruise ship at 8pm. We were reallocated a cabin and established that we were the only non chinese people on board. Straight down to the galley for dinner, all the kitchen staff – about 6 of them stood around us, to check out my phrase books, Australian money and test out our limited language skills. The meal was good, the price was probably inflated by Chinese standards but was cheaper for us compared to what we had been paying in Beijing and Xian, our cabin on the 4th floor has a huge window with an endless supply of magnificent views of the river and the 5th floor is dedicated to a karaoke bar and viewing area. The next morning we arranged to join a tour to a smaller gorge, so we were herded into a smaller boat, instructed that we were number 3 and when we eventually joined a pontoon to board some row boats (ours was the third.) Even though we can hardly understand the other passengers there was a real party atmosphere, everyone seem to be chatting excitedly and madly getting photo’s taken and watching the video of the scenery that was outside all at the same time. The guide on the row boat NEVER stopped talking, the 4 oarsman really put their backs into their jobs and beat row boat 2!!, then to top it off we had a sing-a-long. Not exactly relaxing. While all this is going on our fellow passengers have become abit more use to us so everyone wants a photo of us, then the other boats saw this so they started taking photo’s of us and aside from all this the gorge was lovely. Not being able to understand everyone is not a big a problem as you would imagine, though I’m smiling like I’m in a wedding party and we have invented ‘The Chinese Mystery’ box for things we don’t really understand so we simply put it in that box and move on with our lives. Things that have recently gone into this box are – Why don’t they supply towels on this cruise ship? Why didn’t we get any hot water until day 2? Every day we add more of these endless supply of questions into this box. Any way we missed out on lunch that day as apparently it was served at 11.30 and was closed by the time I went down at 12.30. By 2pm another tour was underway but as we decided not to go we settled into the bar for some snacks and a few drinks and take in the passing scenery – lovely. We disembarked around 5pm for a stroll around a town and eat some corn on the cob and yummy roast potatoes – yes I’m sure I’m putting on weight but I was hungry! Dinner we pointed at someone’s dinner as a way of ordering and had another nice meal, though we were interrupted for a chopstick photo shoot. This morning we get to finally sleep in and hopefully get to lunch before an afternoon tour of the Ghost City.
