China 14 May 2018 Shanghai / Yichang / Three Gorges Dam

We had a VERY lazy start to our day, woke around 7am, breakfast about 9am, packed with our check-in bag out for collection at 10am, and finally checked out of the hotel at 11am and onto the bus for a half day tour before a late lunch / early dinner and onto the airport for our flight to Yichang.

The half day tour started with a visit to the Yu Garden Shanghai. The gardens were built during the reign of Ming Dynasty Emperor Jiajing in 1559 as a private garden for a Commissioner in the Sichuan Province and cover an area of 2 Ha. Entrance to the garden is via a zigzag bridge over a lake filled with carp and lined with bonzai trees. Like the last garden we went to it mainly consisted of buildings serving various business and social functions joined together by coverways over stone paving. For me the most interesting part of the gardens were above us. The rooves of all the structures and the tops of walls were adorned with many intricate carvings depicting scenes from all facets of life, farmers, armies, ceremonies, and mythical tales. There were lots of dragons carved along the tops of walls, some up to 20m or more in length.

After our tour through the garden we had free time to explore the busy market that surrounded the entrance and the gardens themselves. The people watching was fun as usual. There were lots of blackmarket traders trying to sell “knockoff” watches, shirts, handbags, etc on the sly, they were very persistent, but then so were we on our denial to them.

From there we walked to another shopping centre where we were “treated” to a demonstration and talk on the art of silk embroidery and silk rug knotting. I must admit some of the works done were very impressive as to the skill of the artists involved (did I really just say that?!).

From there we boarded the bus again for a short drive to our late lunch / early dinner restaurant. The food was bountiful but not up to the other places we have been, it just seemed to lack spice/flavour.

We then had a 1 hour bus ride to the Shanghai Domestic Airport, its just as big, if not bigger, as the International. Our tour leader had already checked us in so all we had to do was manouver ourselves through two layers of security, navigate to our gate holding area before catching a bus out to our plane, simple process. While in the holding area I partially recharged my phone. While it was charging I noticed a young boy staring at me, so I smiled at him. He hid his face behind his hand and gradually split his fingers apart to look at me before quickly hiding again when I looked and smiled at him. This game went on for a few minutes, and he ended up giggling and running between his mum and dad while sneaking looks at me. Things that amuse us. 🙂

We got the bus out to the plane then sat on the tarmac waiting for late passengers.   Our flight eventually started to taxi out on our way at 7:30pm and were in the air at 7:45pm, we didn’t stop moving between taxi and take off, the airport is huge! Our flight is about 2hrs almost due west.

We arrived at around 9:40 and were on the bus at 10:10pm for our 1hr30min drive to our boat.

It took about 1hr 15mins to get to our boat at The Three Gorges Dam, we had a fast driver. 🙂  Getting there we passed through around 8 or 9 tunnels up to 4.7km long.

The Three Gorges Dam area is of such strategic value to China that it is under military control. Occasionally they shut everything, including the airport and cruises down to carry out exercises. Not the best for the tourist industry, and a few companies have stopped offering tours here because of it.

We were on board our boat by11:45pm, had a quick orientation and safety briefing before heading to our cabin. By the time we were ready for bed it was past 1am, so we decided to have a slow morning and passed on the 8am optional tour and the 6.45am Tai Chi, there is always the next day.

Welcome to the family Billie & Vince, we cant wait to meet you both when we get home.