Yangtze River Cruise & Showdown in Yichang.

It's around 5am local time, we're sat in Macau airport departure lounge, there's free Internet and there's an hour and a half before we board, perfect time to update y'all on our (mis)adventures.

After leaving Chengdu via 6 hours on a hard-seat train (its as it sounds) we arrived to the dizzying lights of Chongqing. The city itself is rather uninspiring, although it keeps you fit with its myriad of steps everywhere due to the city being built on a rather large hill. We spent a relaxing three days not running around seeing sights (as there aren't any) and instead organized ourselves onto the majestic sounding '4-day river cruise of the Yangtze river and it's 3-gorges'. We boarded the ship at around 9pm on the first night, as we approached we were greeted by a band, could see large comfy beds and a rather glamorous looking restaurant through the windows and well turned out smiling staff waiting to welcome us aboard... this is the boat that could have been... We were directed round the back to a smaller boat, our 'beds' were less than 6ft in length and the mattress comprised an MDF board with a folded dog blanket and a sheet for comfort and we were sharing with 6 Chinese people (1 of which spoke minimal English - "You put the ballbaskets?" [do you play basketball?] he enquired of me) who farted and snored in their sleep as if they were training for some sort of world championships.

We tried to get some sleep but, due to the end-to-end layout of the beds, Nikki spent most of the night trying to rebuffed a small Chinese woman's attempt to play footsie with her, and I resisted all urges to kick a different small Chinese woman in the head. (Tempting, I know.) At about 5am without the use of any kind of alarm one of the small Chinese women sat bolt upright, spluttered something and our cabin sprang alive with activity. How we missed English manners of asking if we minded the lights being turned on when our retinas burned with the sudden onslaught of strip lights on our tired eyeballs. Once they had all got ready in about half an hour they sat on their beds for an hour and a half until it was time to depart the ship. Meanwhile we lay in ours for as long as possible, removing ourselves only to straddle the squatter toilet in the en suite bathroom trying to get a shower from the head that was strategically placed directly above it. The warm water hitting the bowl gave off a lovely aroma of stale (excuse the language) piss. We disembarked the boat to a rather eerie looking dock at 7am and clambered up the steps to Ghost City. Once at the top our assigned guide, who spoke little to no English, pointed at a different guide, who spoke no English, and said "Maybe you follow him". We quickly gave up on this and explored the temple dedicated to death and the afterlife ourselves. It was quite interesting in a comical kind of way, especially when we unknowingly stumbled into the theme park area. It consisted of a haunted house style attraction that made scary 'oooOOOoo" noises and had things jump out as you walked around.

Once we were back aboard the ship we whiled away the rest of the day playing cards. The next day we were awoken after another sleepless night at 6am once we docked at 'White Emperor City'. This used to be a peninsula but, due to the three-gorges dam raising the Yangtze's water levels by 100m, is now an island. We walked round not really know what we were looking at, but getting some impressive views of the first of the three gorges. On the way back to the boat we heard an almighty screaming and, after following the sound, found out that it was coming from some pigs that were being lifted up a large step by their ears and tail from a boat to a truck. We sailed through the impressive gorge shortly after, enjoying the steep cliff walls that surrounded by mountains that went up beyond the clouds. After travelling the 8km gorge we transferred to a smaller boat to explore the little three gorges, which provided stunning scenery, the winding river banked by peaky hills. After a couple of hours we transferred to an even smaller (wooden) boat, that carried about 20 people, to explore a small tributary while the guide sang to us and we witnessed a rather scary looking woman opposite us consume a whole skewered baby pigeon, head and all!

After returning to the previous boat we were ushered off at a 'traditional' village that had been relocated further up the river banks due to the rising water levels. There was nothing original about the village, it was more evidence of the Chinese approach to conservation! Everything was completely new and the village consisted of lots of small shops selling local arts and crafts goods (read: tourist crap). We returned to the boat and continued our tour of the river, the only thing that spoiled the beautiful scenery was the incessant high pitched commentary in Chinese coming through the loudspeakers that lasted the entire 6-hour trip! We rejoined the main ship that had docked further down the river at a small town called Wushan which we had the chance to explore. There wasn't much to see apart from the largest display of public line dancing we've seen yet (about 400 people). The boat remained at Wushan dock for the night and set off in the early hours of the morning where we were again woken at around 6am when we passed through the second gorge, and the third gorge at 12.30 in the afternoon. Our cruise came to an end at 2.30pm where we transfer ed to a coach that took us the rest of the way to Yichang. We immediately booked our coach tickets to Guilin, found a hotel and collapsed for a couple of hours.

We went to get some food in a random restaurant right next to the hotel after waking up still a bit worse for wear. As we blindly ordered (no English menu) and started eating the owners son tried to take a photo of us (this happens quite often but never in a restaurant) - Nikki put her hand up and stopped him so he got bored and walked away. Then his Mum (the restaurant owner) picked up the camera phone and took one when we weren't paying attention - we were REALLY pissed off having told them 'no' once already so we got up and left leaving almost the entire meal without paying. She chased us down the street ranting at us as we mimed that we weren't paying cause she took photos and we'd asked them not to. She grabbed my arm and I pulled away then grabbed my t-shirt and then grabbed Nikki's bag and wouldn't let go, I literally dragged her down the street by Nikki's bag while a bigger and bigger crowd grew! Luckily the concierge from our hotel came out and spoke some English - the woman was shouting to the crowd that we'd "ran" off without paying (we'd walked down the street!) Nikki got really upset and left to go to our room, I stayed with the concierge and the onlookers to try and sort it all out. After LONG talking and ranting and gesturing between the concierge, the restaurateur and the crowd, none of which I understood, the woman let go of Nikki's bag and we were told we didn't have to pay for the meal. Towards the end of it all of the crowd had turned on the woman and were shouting at her and telling her off for making us so uncomfortable! Later that night Nikki realised that the woman had actually left nail marks and broken the skin on my wrist where she'd grabbed me! It was such a weird experience, it made us realise how horrible it must be to be a celebrity with it happening all the time - after visiting china you can understand why sometimes they kick off and smack the paparazzi!

The next couple of days in Yichang were rather uneventful apart from the woman who approached us in the park asking us to help her with an e-mail she had received from the UN awarding her a $500,000 grant in exchange for her bank details. We tried our best to explain it was a hoax, all the while she insisted we should ring them on her behalf to give them her bank details. We eventually escaped after telling her we had a bus to catch to Hong Kong in a couple of hours. The following day we boarded our bus to Guilin.