China Day 21

Blogspot will be bit shorter for a few days as we are just relaxing and enjoying the luxury of eating, sleeping and doing the occasional shore excursion on the Yangtze cruise.

The cruise ship is a pretty large vessel and very well appointed. The food is great and the staff very friendly and attentive. We left Chongqing last night and woke up this morning at Fengdu where we had our first shore excursion after breakfast. That was quite the experience as there were about 6 cruise boats in at the same time and so there were thousands of people doing the tour of the Mount Shuanggui garden/temple area, broken up into groups of circa 10 - 15 people each with a guide who sported a mini speaker system all speaking at the same time on front of whatever statue, plaque, garden etc we were looking at. It was quite hilarious but annoying at the same time as there was no way you could hear your own guide over the cacophony (remember hairy mclary?) of sound.  There was a temple at the top remembering Confucius so at least it was a change from Buddhas. 

Back to ship by the standard shuttle bus (All this confirms why we dislike organised tours) and had a talk on the history of the Yangtze River and the 3 gorge dam project which was enormous. The rest of the day will be a well earned rest with a Captains reception this afternoon and a no doubt very good dinner tonight!