Blarring anouncements followed by Chinese music woke us at 5:30 in preparation for the morning tour of the temple at White King Town. :gps:(GPS)::31.04427::109.54082:gps: We opted out of that one and went in search of breakfast. The Chinese eat dinner for breakfast lunch and dinner so we ended up with some sealed (read ‘safe’) cakes and snacks from a supermarket. The town was unremarkable and hot. All the stops require a long slog up from the river – it is obvious from the flood line that the river frequently rises at least 20m.

Back on the boat our new Auzzie friend (Elise) was proving very helpful. Having someone around who can translate makes a huge difference. She’s a university exchange student studying Chinese for 2 years. After a brief lesson on Chinese characters, which was very interesting, we can see some logic in it but it’s still all Greek to me (haha).

Our next stop at the Lesser Three Gorges :gps:(GPS)::31.10143::109.89240:gps: was brilliant and has made the trip worth while. Trading our tanker for a river tour boat we made our way up some utterly gorgeous gorges. It was incredibly hot and the haze meant that good photography was limited but WOW! The water was a beautiful jade colour – a welcome change from the brown muddy waters of yesterday. The Chinese have unfortunately started theme-parking the area with construction underway to build a concrete walkway high up along the cliffs in one section of the gorge.

Two hours into the six hour excursion we arrived at an apparently 1000 year old city (looks more like 10 years old). We were ushered around the restored old town centre as part of the tour group while the heat drove us into every shop looking for ice-creams. The town (endless blocks of flats) looks empty and very new – V suspects it could be one of the towns built as part of the relocation plan for the 3 Gorges Dam (will google it sometime). At the moment it seems to exist as a ghost town and a 60min excursion for tourist boats.

On the way back we stopped at a narrow section of the gorge and transferred to small river boats before heading up the actual ‘Lesser Three Gorges’. Even more stunning as the towering (800-1000m) gorge narrowed to as little as 30m. Unfortunately what would have been a peaceful experience was drowed out by the flamboyant and overpowering performance of the boatman. He was obviously telling some story of the gorge that the Chinese tourists appreciated and being the only NAs on board we were the butt of his jokes for sure. In any event we held firm and didn’t succumb to his pushy loud requests for donations – which had him targeting us for ridicule even more. Better luck next time chap! It was still an awesome ride (maybe 100 000 hotdogs awesome).

One of the people we chatted to on the boat was a retired Chinese-Malaysian guy named Goh. Very intersting and talkative. He lives in Malaysia but over the years has toured just about every part of China and South East Asia and has seen first hand the political and economic changes in the region.

The return trip felt infinitely longer with the tour guide’s rendition of Chinese folk tales bleeting incessantly from the boats PA system. It was a long day out in the sun – even the dodgy shower looked inviting, but the canteen menu less so. The Chinglish on the menu is classic – items like “Pull out a silk soil bean”, “The garlic burns the sheatfish”, “A round mass of food soup” & “Fairy whole duckses” sent us happily to our instant noodles 🙂

[Pictures: Stunning Gorges]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi