Row, row, row your boat........

Our boat is an OK looking boat...no big white luxury cruise liner but a lot more attractive than some of the tin cans that seem to be sailing people up the river! These boats have four people in a cabin (maybe more) have no hot water and rank showers and they don't give you any food on the boat so you have to bring your own. In contrast mine and Amy's boat has double cabins with teles showing movies all through the day, our own bathroom pod and a buffet meal breakfast lunch and dinner...and all of our excursions are included. This may give off the impression that we are rich kids on tour but in fact this luxury came from the 50p jar...thanks Madtin Gravy...bearer of the 50p jar :) and James Maggot for all his contributions!

So we get on the boat and head to the top deck to watch polluted Chongqing disappear in the distance. We spy three other foreigners and the rest are chinese. We perch on a picnic table and await for our departure...and then the foghorn starts...it's like the chinese roads where the vehicles beep at each other for reasons unbeknownst to the rest of the world except now we are on a boat and they feel the need to make noises at every moving object going past...unfortunately me and Amy have sat right next to it and are now partially deaf :)

Our first port of call is lunch and we meet the, not three but four westerners who are also imprisoned on the boat with us for the next threee days! There is Hazel and Grant (from Scotland) and Heather and Tom (from Kansas State). We are destined to get to know each other a lot better since we will do the tours and eat meals together for the next few days. After lunch Amy and I take advantage of the hot (not sunny) weather and go and sit on deck before our first excursion...we take this to mean that we will be safe getting off the boat in our skirts and flip flops...not so, we get off the boat and it starts to rain, then pour then thunder and lightning...since we are the most unprepared six for this kind of weather we all purchase some very attractive and brightly coloured ponchos from the touts in the streets...these were cheaper than umbrellas (by about 10p) so we opted to, as Grant put it, look like giant condoms walking up the side of the mountain! That's right, todays excursion, in the thunder storm was visiting the Ghost City which was not so conveniently situated up a mountain.

Anyway, of our guide trots, completely unbewildered by the weather and we all follow on. The Ghost City is the place where the chinese believe you go after you die to be judged and either sent to heaven hell or to be reincarnated as an animal or a human, this is a mix between Buddhism and Taoism. We reach the first temple and have to shout "Ha-Hun" at the top of our voices to make our path through the City more easy, second stop the bridges you cross before you reach the Gods to be judged. Couples had to go over in nine steps and single people had to go over it in five steps. Stumbling at this point means you are a bad person and are nervous about meeting the Gods. So off Hazel, Grant, Tom and Heather go. Then it's mine and Amy's turn...the mixture of the rain, cheap flip flops, the lack of partner to hold onto and the unfairly low number of steps means me and Amy slip and slide over the bridge...oops! The idea of the couples going together in nine (lucky number) steps is so that they have luck in finding each other in the next life...although if one of you is a dog and the other is a human, im not sure how the laws work with that one ;)

Next station - Gates of Hell...which you have to step over right leg first and don't touch the wood...simple enough. We walk past the statues of all the wrong-dooers and come to the temple where you get judged. Here you have to balance on one foot on a small pointy stone for three seconds and read the sign on the door...again simple, or would have been had we not chosen the cheap flip flops in the rain scenario! Lastly there is the Homeward looking tower where you get to see your family and home for the last time and the corridor of statues being tortured in various different ways and all thats left to do is get down the mountain in record time to catch the boat thats about to leave!

We make it and are supposed to go straight to the captains welcome dinner but get waylaid by the idea of showering. A good idea since the ponchos weren't made to let your skin breathe too easily, i.e. us = big balls of sweat. We make it to dinner and then head off for some evening entertainment...Chinese folk dancing! Brilliant...and in the interval - musical chairs!! Grant eventually volunteered to get up and take part with three others, the funny thing was the music had lots of rests in it, so every time there was a break in the music, the four people would attempt to sit down and then get right back up again when they realised it wasn't and official 'stop'!

We soon noticed how the Chinese rushed off after the meals and didn't really come out of their rooms unless to eat or go on an excursion, so after the show, we were left alone in the bar feeling guilty about keeping the staff from their beds...and off we trot to get some sleep.

Day 2 on the boat went a lot like breakfast...excursion...lunch...nap...captains farewell dinner...the excusrsion was a trip down the Three Gorges with a mini tour of the Lesser Three Gorges but this bit got cancelled since the rain had caused the Gorge to flood. So we had to entertain ourselves with watching dead dogs float by, trying to spot monkeys on the mountain and being awed by how much of the scenery is going to be destroyed when they finish the Dam Project and flood the river some more...another 40m to go they said and they have already flooded it by 100m. People are being re-homed and cultural landmarks are being lost to the project.

The evenings entertainment was karaoke! A joy to sit through...we would have taken part had the ship not been going through a lock at the same time and standing outside in the cold dark and rain had been more appealing! Another hour of keeping the bar staff up and back to the rooms.

Early start on day 3, breakfast and excursion in quick succession - today we are off to visit the Dam site...the Ugly Dam site it should be called. It was a big concrete block in the middle of the river...from this tour I learnt that they are 2/3 of the way through finishing it and it is supposed to be finished in 200-9, they will have a ship lock and a ship elevator for boats to cross through and that's about it really. The guy who built the Dam got shot because they found cracks in it and he said that it was normal.

Then goodbye to the boat and hello to Yichang and a couple of days of being in limbo!