December 12, 2014 – Phnom Penh Well, here we are. Still. More on that later. China Southern, our airline for this sojourn, turned out to be excellent. We rode in a Dreamliner over to Guangzhou, and then a new 737 to Phnom Penh. Good food, excellent seat-back screens with tons of entertainment. We were still […]
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June 4 – the Enamel Factory and The Wall It would be too much to ask, of course, that we could just go to the Wall in the morning when it was NOT 35C. Charley maintains that it’s too crowded in the morning and that if we go in the afternoon, we’ll have the place
June 3 – the Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square Beijing is turning out to be much more demanding than the river cruise. Our day starts with the mandatory wake-up call at 06:30, quickly followed by Death By Buffet at 07:00. Then it’s on board the bus at 08:00, and we won’t be back until
June 2 – Chonquing-Beijing Well, here we are in Chongqing, and it’s time to fly up to Beijing. Lots of hustle and bustle to get off the boat by 09:00. There’s something different every day around here. Today we had to walk across a series of twelve pontoon boats to get to shore! Because we
June 1 Shibaozhai Pagoda Well, today we BOTH have the scoots. The tour is a late-morning one to Shibaozhai Pagoda, a 12-story pagoda and Buddhist temple on another island in the river. This is a really cool place, and we quite enjoyed it, but it was also very much an exercise in bathroom management. A
May 31 White Emperor City We woke up to see mountain landscapes on both sides of the ship as we steamed up the lake. Wow, what a difference a day makes! Deb did her first session of Tai Chi on the afterdeck at 07:00 this morning, whilst I swilled coffee and watched the world go
May 30 Three Gorges Dam Today was our day to see the Three Gorges Dam and all of the associated paraphernalia. We’re leaving the flat coastal plain now and getting into hilly country. We docked in a city called Yi Chang, which is a nice modern mid-sized city of 4 million. There’s one section downtown
May 29 – Yeuyang Well, looks like we’re not about to lose any weight on this trip. The breakfast buffet is a weird mixture of eastern and western, but with a few blatant exceptions, it’s all good. There’s an Egg Guy and an Omelette Guy and a Soup Guy all making fresh stuff, lots of
May 28 – Wuhan and the Yangtse The next morning, we’re up in time for the buffet breakfast, which I expected to be a waffle, juice, and coffee. Instead, we were treated to an absolutely first-class buffet! It’s a 24-hour thing, so there’s everything from pork chops to Chinese food (duh!) to a fruit and
May 26/27, Vancouver to Wuhan This one is starting as The Journey From Hell. After two hours of travelling on buses and skytrains to get to YVR two hours before flight time, we found out that our flight was delayed two hours. So we got to sit around with our fingers up our butts (no
