DFR Travels: Terry and the Pirates on the Yangtze River...

Wednesday, April 18. Pleasant but smog...

I am a bit mixed up regarding dates and blogs because of the fickleness of the internet connection so I am just going to write and try to get some pictures off before the ship moves again.

We had an early night: I believe that we were on the verge of exhaustion from 11 days of intense travel. There is so much to take in it is difficult to digest. We were delighted to get on board around six last night. The registration was chaotic but organized. There are very very few people travelling alone, most are in groups so we had to try harder to figure out what was our schedule etc. Eventually we got it sorted.

We eat in a dining room that is a few decks up from the main dining room that is buffet style, very nice though. For some reason our tour organizer is on a different status level than most. I did not know this when booking, it explains a lot as to how we have been treated. Ignorance is bliss!

This ship holds about 440 people and has a very mixed lot, there are about 140 from the western world: Aussies, NZ, UK, USA, two from France, Holland and Canada, that is us! The rest are from Hong Kong and mainland China. There is one table for six independent travellers, us, an Aussie couple from Perth and a UK couple from Henley.

We love the idea of the scenery coming to us as we sit and enjoy it although there is a small shore excursion each day of some sort. It appears that we can relax a bit and catch our wind. There was an unexpected perk for us and that is eight pieces of laundry per day, lovely...

The smog situation is quite bad, I suspect there will not be many pictures taken with blue skies. However, the photo opportunities are everywhere. I cannot look outside without seeing a photo in my eye.

I hope I am able to get a couple of photos away even though we have only been up and around since we have docked at a village as a tour goes off an an expedition to visit some mountainous area, it was optional and we chose to just enjoy what is around us in peace and quiet.

Hope this gets through.