Sunday 27th August

We woke to a warm and cloudy day. The sun came out mid-morning. I’ve never seen it foggy, hot and sunny at the same time before!

Dave has found his favourite spot. He is reading a book called ‘A Painted House’ by John Grisham. There is a library on board – this was the only book in English. There was at least a few hundred books in Chinese! 

I am trying to take my reading slowly in an attempt to make my book last the trip. I’m mixing it up with magazines and the SMH online. I have decided, in the interest of my health, that I need to fly business class from now on ?. When we arrived into Chengdu I had developed ugly ‘cankles’ and flying again the following day made them worse. I’m trying to keep my feet up where possible, so a little tv watching from bed looking out onto the Yangtze River is my solution. There are two channels in English, however the signal is intermittent!

In order to minimise my swollen ankles, and in the interest of good health, we decided after breakfast to have a massage each. It was good value and actually pretty good  (low expectations remember!)

After lunch we watched the world go by a little more whilst we headed upstream to the three Gorges Dam.

The Three Gorges Dam is the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world. When they built it in the nineties it displaced 1.2 million people.  Whilst the local guides all seemed quite proud of that it did disturb me a little. Some people were moved thousands of kilometers away!

We were bussed to the dam and got the chance to have a good look at it. It was over 35 degrees and a few of the old folk struggled but it was pretty amazing to see from the top.

Once we were back onboard the boat it headed towards the dam to climb through the 5 locks to rise 100+ meters up to the other side.

Today’s Food

Breakfast: Buffet. Average. Dave ate more cake and toast with Jam.

Lunch: Buffet. One of the choices: Crisp bull frogs. No I didn’t.

Dinner: You guessed it, buffet.