We had planned aneasy day today.After breakfast, we packed up to leave Hangzhou and got a cab to the station.It was really easy getting a ticket and we were onto a very smart train to Shanghai.It only took about 90 minutes going at over a 100 mph - the fastest train we have been on all trip since the Eurostar. We arrived in Shanghai at the south station,miles from anywhere.It needed a long tube ride to get us into the centre and our hotel.After being in the la...

The train journey to Hangzhou was good - a new train and quite quick - so quick that we could have done with it taking a couple of hours more to catch up on sleep. We ran the gauntlet of rapacious taxi drivers and eventually persuaded one to take us to the hotel arriving at 7:30.a.m. It was in a quiet street just off West Lake - Hangzhou's main attraction. The place was next to a school and all the kids were flocking in for their pre-school activities. One of the...

We woke up next morning with the ship berthed downstream of the dam but not being able to see it in the mist. It was a quick breakfast then off to the dam site (Fran complaining she never gets a moment on the cruise - I'm obviously too easy going as tour leader). After 2 sets of security, one of which I got into trouble for bringing my Swiss army knife (what did they think I was going to do, scrape the dam away with it??), wearrived at the dam site. Unfortunately...

We awoke to 5 star luxury which started with a good breakfast. Most of the people on the ship are on guided tours of China - we were in the misfits group which consisted of 6 Germans and 2 Australians. We were lucky - this table probably had the lowest average age of the whole ship. The first day on the cruise was a bit slow - some interesting lectures on the gorges and the dam project and a quick primer in mandarin. The afternoon was a tour excursion to the ghos...

Today was the start of the cruise down the Yangtze. First, we had to get from Chengdu to Chongqing - a city about 350 kms away. As we had booked the cruise as a tour, they threw in the ride to Chongqing (on the bus though). We were picked up at 9:30, and taken to the bus station (well more of a back street really). We were last on so were up the back. He took off after 5 minutes (even though the bus wasn't full) and drove to the outskirts of town. We parked here,...