After 4 days and 3 nights of cruising down the Yangtze River we finally had to disembark this morning and now find ourselves in Yichang, trying to figure out where we are going to go to next and how.

The President 2 was a beautiful cruiser and we thoroughly enjoyed our first ever cruise. We arrived onto the boat at 8am and were shown our room. The Presidential Suite was offered to us as an upgrade but at an additional US$400 to what we had already paid we kindly declined. We wandered around trying to get our bearings but the boat was huge so we made our way back to the room and settled in to watch Shrek on tv!

Each morning was an early start (for us) at 7am for breakfast. Then, each afternoon there was an outing, first day to Fengdu nicknamed City of Ghosts (ok, nothing brilliant), second day to the Shennong Stream which twists and turns it way through many little gorges (very beautiful) and finally this morning to the Three Gorges Dam (which i thought would be more stunning).

As the ship made it's way down the river we passed through the 3 famous gorges, Qutang Gorge, Wu Gorge and Xiling Gorge. These were spectacular and while the weather wasn't the best (there's a continual mist/fog/smog following us around China) the views were still excellent.

Since the dam was completed last year the river level has risen substantially swallowing up many ancient villages and towns (the river banks are dotted with new cities containing the people who had to be relocated, over 1 million) and it still has to rise another 30 metres before it reaches it optimum level in 2009. While you have to admire the construction and planning that went into such a project like the Three Gorges Dam, so much has been lost with the rising water levels that you find it difficult to agree with it's construction and i think that was the view carried by many of the passengers on board the ship.

We met some brillant people on board and while we seemed to be the only "backpackers" on board we still had a great time. We met Jeffery, an 83 year old English man travelling around China on his own for the last 5 weeks. His stories of travelling around Europe, Africa and Asia from the 1940's right through to the present kept us entertained as we passed through the dam locks at 12am last night. It's meeting people like him that makes travelling such fun.

Now, we have to find a way out of this city to Louyang or Kaifeng which we both 8-12 hours north of here. Hopefully we can get the train/bus tomorrow but with the Chinese National Holiday starting in a few days it's going to be fun getting tickets. We'll keep ye all posted.

P.S. Hopefully we'll get some more photos up soon, we are only about 3 months and 4 countries behind now so bear with us....