To the Yangtze Princess

22/08/09 12:00 Filed in: 2009 China


Photos of the following are here: Saturday 22

One of the disadvantages of today’s trend for charging phones and other lumps of technology with plug-in-the-wall power bricks is that, by the time you have plugged in your UK-to-Chinese adapter and a couple of bricks, the whole caboodle is so heavy that it falls out of the wall socket. If this happens to you in China, fear not! The standard-issue hotel room gas mask tin is ideally sized to wedge under the humming mass of electrics. Not only that, but if the whole lot bursts into flames after a power surge, your gas mask is right there at hand, enabling you to make a rapid exit.

Fully charged, and not even smoking, we then began our long (4 hour) bus trip from Wuhan to the cruise ship that would take us up the Tangtze. We saw a lot of the local agriculture on the way: paddy fields, fish ponds, and turtle ponds. We also visited some very smelly loos at a motorway ‘service area’; these toilets came to about 8 on Ian’s smelly scale (with India’s worst being 10 or possibly even 11). And why limit yourself to one fly on the front of your trousers when you can have about 20 flies on the front and on the back?

We stopped at a large restaurant before we boarded the boat and had a splendid turntable meal (see above). Unfortunately this delayed us long enough for a very large thunderstorm, with torrential rain, to begin during our bus drive to the ship. We sat stationary for a long time whilst the guides waited for the storm to abate. It did a little and we all poured out of the bus and splashed our way down the unlit path to the ship, sometimes running through inch deep sheets of water crossing the path. Fortunately the ship’s crew were waiting for us with fortifying cups of tea.

The Victoria lines Yangtze Princess has four decks for passengers. Deck 1, the lowest, has accommodation and the dining room. Decks 2 and 3 have accommodation (we were on Deck 3). Deck 4 has the conference room/bar/dance floor. Our room was very pleasant, en-suite, and with two single beds (not bunk beds). Full steam ahead!

Ian