Carol's Travels

This morning we checked ourselves out of the ship by turning in the room keys. They gave us a receipt so we could go past the security people. Ellie, our city guide, took us off the ship into the rain. This is the first time it has rained enough for people to be carrying umbrellas. Venders were trying to sell umbrellas to anyone not carrying one. China Focus had arranged for porters to carry our luggage up the long stairway.   

Disembarking our ship, Yangtze Gold 3

Chongqing is the biggest city in China. It has a population of 32 million compared to Beijing’s 23 million. Its territory is huge. It starts at the second half of the second gorge in the Yangtze River. The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world. Chongqing was built on a hillside, so it is very colorful at night with all the lights. The city is famous for “spicy hot” food and women. People get lots of exercise climbing all the hills. 

Rainy Day in Chongqing

Another guide took us to see Huguang Guild Hall, then Ellie took us to the square in front of a Three Gorges Museum to take a picture of that building. Then she took us to Wan Yu Restaurant for another delicious lunch. Very thin rice cakes with black mushrooms, thinly sliced pork, with hot chicken broth poured over it was one of the tasty dishes. Another was smoked pork (Chinese bacon), thinly sliced large white mushrooms, and green onions.

She took us to the airport and checked us in. I was in charge of keeping the Tibetan group visa. On the plane Paul and I had all three bulkhead seats on the right side. As we neared Tibet, I started taking pictures of beautiful cumulous clouds and mountains. 

Tibetan Mountains seen from plane

Aerial View of Lhasa, Tibet

When we landed in Tibet, I showed the group visa, and we all showed our passports. We were met by our guide, Tenzin (Ten for short). He has the same first name as the Dali Lama. He told us that 85% of the water in Asia comes from Tibet. It has a population of five million. 2.5 million Tibetans live in other parts of China.

The main crop is barley for making barley flour and barley beer. They like to drink yak milk mixed with barley flour too. They raise sheep, goats, and yak. Yak are considered to be treasures. They can use yak hair for tents. Yak is also a medicine for arthritis. Yak carry equipment up Everest.

We have been given tips on how get adjusted to the high altitude. I feel a bit light headed and lethargic. We went out to dinner at another excellent restaurant this evening. Now I will try to sleep in this large king-sized bed that has the best mattress since our first hotel in Beijing!

6575 steps, 2.79 miles

Today was a relaxing day. After breakfast we went to the bar on the fifth floor to see two videos about the Yangtze River. It showed the places we visited on this cruise.  

Then a little while later we went up to see the ship’s bridge. That was a bonus tour because we had bought all three extra excursions off the boat. I was surprised at the large size of the bridge. 

 
Then we went to lunch. After that, we disembarked the ship to go on the Ghost City Excursion. I took my trekking poles this time because I knew there would be lots of steps. There were more than 600 steps to climb. The steps were much easier to climb than they were yesterday without the trekking poles!  

Laughing Buddha in Ghost City

 
This evening was the Farewell Banquet. We sat in groups of ten at four round tables in the dining room. The servers brought dish after dish after dish of Chinese dishes. The cooks went to a lot of trouble to give us such variety. They have served us high quality food during the entire cruise. 

Our table at the banquet

9538 steps, 4.06 miles

When we got up this morning, the ship was cruising through the beautiful Wu Gorge and Goddess Peak. This made for a very pleasant breakfast when we watched this scenery from our sixth floor dining table.

After breakfast everyone on the ship boarded a ferry boat to cruise through the Lesser Three Gorges. Jan, our English speaking guide took us out to the side deck, so that we would could hear him. He said the woman speaking Chinese over the loud speaker inside the ferry would be talking loudly inside the ferry the whole time. He was right!  

Lesser Three Gorges

Jan used to live in a smaller city that got flooded by the Three Gorges Project. He is sad not only for losing his home, but for losing the beautiful small river where they would go white water rafting. The government gave everyone money to buy one of the new apartments. When one was purchased, though, the price included only the basic shell, not things like windows, electric wiring, and kitchen appliances. He had to hire plumbers and other workmen to make his home livable.  

Soon we got on a smaller boat operated by two local boatmen to go through the Mini Three Gorges. This was an extra trip that we had purchased. The river here was a lot narrower, and the rock formations were very beautiful.

The Three Gorges project was very political when it was planned and built. The government didn’t spend the extra money to make sure that the fish could continue swimming downstream. Now there are hardly any fish left. The water is not clear any more, but it is now green. It is sad that people throw trash in the river. The water is about 250-300 feet deep. At that location, it was 1/8 of the distance to the top of the mountain. Jan feels sad to have lost all of that natural beauty.

We came back to the ship for lunch, then we watched the beautiful scenery as the ship cruised along the Yangtze. At 3:30 we went on our last optional tour. We had a cute little guide who spoke very good English. She didn’t hurry us along as we climbed 360 stairs to get up to White Emperor City. It was my least favorite tour from the ship, but our guide was good. At the end of the tour, she asked me to fill out an evaluation form for her. I wrote down all the positive things about her, then I put an A+ at the end. She was very happy with the evaluation! 

Rich person’s coffin up high in cave

We had a relaxing dinner this evening. I am really happy to be eating all of our meals in the quiet VIP dining room. 

Yangtze Sunset

 
10,294 steps, 4.38 miles