World China Hubei Wuhan

S&D's Asia Tour

Yangzi River Cruise - Chinese Style Dec 5, 2005

We just finished our Chinese river cruise!!! What an event. We are quite exhausted after the 3 day trip.

It started out a little shady,at 8:00p.m we had to walk to our boat across about 50 yards of mud along the river bed to get to the dock... after turning down many men trying to hire us to carry bags we finally agreed to hire an older man for 3 yen to carry our bags to the ship (sonia felt sorry for him and wanted to give him some business)

When we got to the boat we went to the 'front desk' and attempted to check in. We filled out a form for our passport information... all wrong apparently because it took about 10 minutes of back and forth converation (if that's what it is called when neither can communicate to the other) and flipping through our passports front to back. Eventually we think they were too frustated by us and handed us the room key and our passports back. That's when we suspected this might be a long journey and we might be the only foreigners on this first class cruise.

We were led to our room by the old man and when we went in it was a nice clean small room. He put our bags down and I held out the 10 yen note I had in my hand and he said 'noooo' shaking his head and pointed to the other bills in my wallet. Apparently the price had changed to 20 yen. As this negotiation was going on there were several tour guides who were trying to recruit us to their tour group. Eventually we paid the man what he requested and turned the tour guides away and went to bed.

At 5 AM we were promptly awakened by a woman's chinese voice through our cabin speaker. Apparently there was an excursion to a local temple... we decided to skip that one. But did wake up in time to see a glimpse of the the temple.

After walking around the ship we went to the restaurant for breakfast... no food until 5:30 pm. Looks like another top ramen meal - chinese style. So we went back to our room to relax and watch some of the chinese DVDs we purchased the night before. We had to use our headphones because the cabin music and announcements were too loud. About half way through our movie (Last Emperor) we realized the boat was docked and the announcements were preparing people for the second excursion. We got ready and ran out to find by a patient tourguide's sign language that it was too late to join the group. 2 of 2 excursions missed so far. We did manage to snap a couple of photos from the boat of the temple before we sailed off.

Determined not to miss anymore excursions we jumped at every Chinese announcement that was made the rest of the day. The next excursion of the day began at 9pm with ambient temperature about 35-40 degrees. We saw yet another 2000 year old temple on the river bank. Amazingly enough, all of the chinese tourists were determined to see this excursion also. We slept well that night...

The second day of our cruise we were able to sleep in until 7:30 AM... we joined the eager tourists for a boat tour of the 3 small gorges. The boat tour lasted until about 2pm. The gorges were nice, beautiful scenery... But more enjoyable was the company we had on the boat. We met all of the 5 other foreigners on our cruise ship. We first met a German college student studying Japanese and Chinese in Beijing. A Irish/Spanish couple from Dublin on the 2nd month of their 12 month world tour. And a Mexican/Welsh couple living in Rome on a 2 week holiday in China. It was nice to know the other people were having similar experiences on the cruise ship. We all enjoyed our lunch with the street vendors. Please see pictures for detailed menu. Most interesting part was seeing how a man ate the the head and neck of a bird on a stick with a single bite. Oh how appetizing!

The best and most authentic excursion began at 9:45 pm that night, a bus tour of the Three Gorges Dam. This dam is the largest in the world and by 2009 will have raised the water level 175m, displaced about 1-2 million riverside dwellers and buried countless archealogical sites, but will be able to be seen from space and make as much energy as thousands of nuclear power plants. We were excited to see the dam. By 10:30 we had arrived at the dam location and taken some pics, by 11 we were back in the bus and ready to go. This is when the excursion gets exciting. We were dropped off at 3 other locations over the next 2 1/2 hours, including another temple, an aquarium and outdoor chinese theatre at midnight! By this point even the chinese tourists looked frustrated, tired and shivering. At the end we were huddled in masse in a hall waiting for our ship to arrive (for the first 10 minutes we didn't know what we were all waiting for, but luckily our tourguide found someone who could translate 'the boat comes in 30 minutes') In a cruel effort to force the tourists onto the street to finance the desperate night street vendors one of the workers turned off the lights in the hallway we were waiting in. 3 people turned on the lights (including myself) only to have the man promptly turn them back off and motion toward the doorway. So we waited in the cold dark hallway for over an hour with about 50-60 other people. When the boat's horn sounded outside there was an excited cheer from the crowd and we all pushed our way onto the boat. We were in bed by 2am.

At 5:30 AM the woman's chinese voice rudely awakened our sleep. Apparently the cruise was over and we had to evacuate immediately. We gathered our things and stumbled off the ship in a daze. After the 4.5 hour bus ride to our next town we have finally showered after four days and can find humor in the whole experience...

Thanks for listening to our long cruise story... we had to share.