You must of thought I had died or something similar but no my faithful readers, i have merely been busy. That, coupled witht the fact that there are actually very very very few internet cafes in China! So im going back to May 9th- a full week ago and my flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.

The flight itself was fine, Airbus somethign or other with about 4 of us on it- managed to sit by emergency exit for the extra legroom. As we were approching Bangkok there was a brilliant lightning storm that we were heading into but landed just short of it- lots of mega massive fork lightning etc accompanied with a dash of turbulance. I got a taxi to the hotel but the taxi driver got lost so we did a very strange method of me speaking in english to a bloke at the hotel on the taxi rivers phone and then having to point what I assumed were the right directions. Easier ways coud, i'm sure, have been fathomed. But amyways, i foun the place and being very tired decided to kick back and watch some TV and my goodness am i happy to have done that! Up popped the everton game, LIVE!!! At half time I popped out for some much from 'Tesco lotus' across the road and after that game, on came the liverpool vs west ham game! Now you may remember me mentioning the whole tired thing- well i ended up watching both games in full which took until about 2am. It was at this point that the biggest, loudest and probably scariest thunder storm I have ever seen decided to hit! It was crazy! I had a little balcony and as I stood watching the entire place flood it was so electric in the air that you could feel all the hairs on your head standing on end. very strange feeling.

The next morning I was crazy tired and had to be at the airport for 8:30am for my flight to Shanghai. I was a bit nervous because I seemed to be the only white face on the plane, and we boarded at gate C4! haha. But it was all good and 4 hours later i got off in shanghai! Now the chinese are not known for their queueing abilities and as 3 different flights all descended into the normal customs area pandemonium broke loose! Everybody had to fill out a small slip with questions such as 'have you visited mexico recently' and 'have you been in close contact with pigs' and then we all had to have our temperature taken, contact details noted and then signed off to continue through to immigration! I later learned that on some other flights from Europe men in white coats actually boarded the plane as it landed to take everones temperature! Crazy times...

By this point I was runing quite late so decided to get a Taxi rather than work out the Maglev train. After hundreds of close misses and near fatal accidents I reahed the hotel, only 15 mins late for the meeting! Not bad going. I met the rest of the group who are all really cool. I'm sharing with a Brit called Tom who is 25, thn theres two Canadians- Alanna who is 29 and Alexandra who is 21. Also Celine who is a German and 28 (?) and a Kiwi couple, Matt and Anna who are both late twenties and a proper good laugh. Oh and i nearly forgot Gary the good kiwi, their fficial stuffed mascot who has his picture taken everywhere!

On the next day (maybe Monday???) we drove out of Shanghai to a smaller ancient canal town called Zhouzhuang. At first ti looked a bit touristy and crappy but we had a really nice meal and got taken down a canal on a realy strage boat by a singing chinese lady! Was good fun... In the evening on our return to Shnaghai we went out to see an acrobats show. It was quite impressive- especially the last scene which was a 'cage of death' sequence whereby they ride 5 motorbikes around inside a small metal cage. In front of us was a large group of south koreans who not only arrived late but shuffled around and got up all the way through and then got up and left at the end before and encore or any clapping etc! Also the S.Korean lady next to me looked as though she was thoroughly bored so I made a bit of a point of clapping very loudly into her inner ear canal. Sucker.

The next morning we headed to the Airport for our flight to Yichang which, by Chinese standards, is a small city of only 7 million people. Haha. In the evening we went out to a local karaoke bar which was a really good laugh- had a small room to ourselves and rocked out to some classics. However halfway though a classy rendition of chesney hawkes all the lights went out! It was only about midnight so we looked out of our door to find the entire club and bar empty and desserted! As we walked out of the door allll the staff were crowded around waiting to go home! Aparently stuff shuts earlier over here... Instead we headed to KFC which promply shut at about half 12! Mental. Also what I forgot to mention is that when we booked into our hotel in Yichang we were told that some inspectors may be coming to check us for bird flu!!! They did come but only asked our leader, Dodo, a few questions about our general healh and didnt feel it necessary to break out the rectal thermometer ths time.

So the next morning we had a bus ride to the Three Gorges Dam which is the biggest project of its kind in the world. It was very misty so couldnt see a huuuge amount but from what I did see I wasnt actually massively impressed. The most impressive bit was this japanese girl sneezing, i cant even describe it but will give you all short rendition on my return. We then transferred to the ferry port where we would be "cruising" from for the next couple of days. When we got on the boat it actually looked alright, very basic cabins ect but nothing to complain about. The worst bit came however from lifting the toilet seat which immediately sent a smell round the whole cabin that woud stay for the entire trip. Not nice...

The next morning was Thursday 14th and we had an early start, 6am to be precise. Skanky chinese breakfast of spicy vegetables and dough thingys wasnt the best start either... We then got off our boat and onto another boat to sil into the gorge. We were the only westerners on a boat full of holidaying Asians and so we were quite the attraction! Lots of people wanted picturs of us all (mainly me :p) and yeah, was funny. We had another english speaking local guide for this journey and we saw some cool cliffs etc before we got onto another even smaller boat propelled with bamboo sticks for a tour of some other bits of the gorge. The interesting thing about the gorge was the fact that there are still villages etc submerged from the whole dam project thingy i mentioned earlier. It is now in its last phase but the water level is still going to rise another 20 metres which will again drastically change the whole gorge.

When we returned to our main baot we set off sialing again and entered the second main gorge which was really tres beau. Got some cool pictures. The next 4 hours were a bit boring to be honest and we did get a bit giddy from the entrapment feeling of being on a very small boat with not a lot to do. At about 5pm we sailed through another gorge fllowed by dinner and then all the Asian toursits got ogg to see a temple that wasnt included on our itinerary so a few of us wandered round the local town which was literally just one small street. We found a little pathway that led up a mountain so through we would take it and ended up taking some funny as photos ontop of this clif with a load of villagers watching and laughing at us! One of the local girls came down and joined in as well which was cool! We then got back on the boat and were 'treated' to a show by the ships staff. This consisted of karaoke, then a short dance, more karaoke, short cultural dance and then more karaoke and lots of semi drunk chinese. I dont know how they were drunk thoug because most of the beer here is about 3%- really craving a pint of oranjeboom! lol.Having said this though they were all very friendly- at one point the captain was introducing the show and gave us a special mention in both chinese and english and everyone turned round and applauded and thumbs up etc etc so we were like oooook but was nice all the same.

The next morning was another early start and we disembarked in Yichang- the same place we boarded (point being?) and headed for the supermarket to stock up for our overnight train! After a very nice lunch we boarded the train at about 1:30pm and settled down to some card games and general bits and bobs. The cabins were less like Thailand and more like motorail but each seperate 'cabin' had 6 beds but no walls or door etc so very communal feel to it all. The toilets could be smelt from both ends of the train and got progressively worse throughout the journey. skannnnk! I ate about 3 local style pot noodle things and some crisps and chocolate etc and headed to bed at about 1am after countless games of Yemen, chase the ace and the legendary MAFIA! A bloke in the next 'cabin' was snoring so loudly however that i thik i slept about 3 hours before being woken by Matt 'wakey wakey eggs and bakey!' (wtf mate???) saying that we were in xi'an and everyone was getting off. So quick wake up and grab bags and we were heading for the hotel! Luckily we could check in early so had a quick shower before meeting again to go se the city.

Our guide as I mentioned earier, Dodo, is from Xi'an so took us to the city wall by local bus where we rented tandem bicycles and rode 14km all around the best preserved city wall in china! It is a lot warmer here than Yichang- a nice 30 degrees or so today compared to a drizzly 20 or so in the gorges (but they were DAM GORGEous) rofl? no? hmmm... So anyways, after cycling around the wall we headed for the muslim quarter for 'lunch' which consisted of street food from local vendors! I found som nice sweet sticky rice thing and some nice oily bread concoction which was cool. After wandering around for a while we went up the drum tower which was cool and saw a rehersal for a drum show (cheap skates) and then ambled back through the city centre. Tonight we are heading for a 'Dumpling Banquet'- dumplings being the local delicacy so should be good fun. Still absolutely knackered through after 2 days on boat and night on train I am really looking forward to my bed!

But for now I shall leave you be, not sure when I will next write- on another overnight train tomorow nigh towards Pingyao (small place, possibly no internet) followed by Datong (similar story) before hitting Beijing! Until next time, take her easy xxx