Alison: We stayed in our first hotel of the trip in Yichang and though it was a pretty basic room, we loved it! Such a nice change from the hostels we had become used to. The best part was the bathroom which we were pleased to see had a western toilet. The previous accomodation only had the traditional Chinese toilet aka a fancy hole in the floor that you have to crouch over....we like to call them crouchers :-) These toilets are pretty much the norm in China and we have just had to get used to them. You can imagine how awful public toilets are. The bathroom also had a bath which was the first we had seen in China. Overall the hotel was good though we discovered it was in quite a dodgy part of town.....it was difficult to sleep with such bright red lights shining through the curtains ;-)

Nigel: The main reason we went to Yichang was to see the three gorge dam. The dam is situated on the Yangzi river and was about 40 minutes away. The dam is a massive project and it has been recorded as being China's greatest engineering feat since the great wall was built and is classed as the biggest dam in the World. The building of the dam has had some critisism as it cost triple the original budget, with a total final cost of coming in at around $75 billion (50m pounds). A fact that we read before we arrived there, was that if the dam ever failed the town that we were staying in would be flooded within 30 minutes. So top floor it was for us when checking in. We also adventured down to the water front and whist we were there we saw two old men strip down to their Y fronts and start washing in the filthy, muddy river. The river was that muddy it was surprising that they were dirtier than before they started.