The Timid Tourist Takes on China is my personal travel journal of our trip to China and our cruise through the South China Sea with stops in Shanghai, China, Okinawa, Japan, Keelung Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Nha Trang and Vung Tau (Ho Chi Minh City), Viet Nam and Laem Chabang (Bangkok), Thailand. The nine day pre-cruise tour took us from Beijing to Xian, the Yangtze River (including the Three Gorges Dam), Wuhan and back to Beijing. It is a story of discovery in some very unusual and exotic places and includes pictures of many of the places we visited.

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01/25/2008

EXCERPT FROM The Timid Tourist Takes on China:

Sunday, October 28, 2007—Yangtze River to Fengdu 

            I awake first at 4 a.m. when someone in the next room hits the wall. Then I wake again at 5 and am wide awake at 6:30 when I hear Bob’s phone buzz with an incoming text message. The Ohio State game must have started at home where it’s still Saturday. The score is coming in.

            We are up at 7 and hear traffic on the river. Other cruising river boats are leaving their berths. We see the Viking River Cruise boat go by. It looks really nice—a lot better than ours and ours is better than most. Fred told us that our boat, the M.S. Yangtze 1, is only a year old and is considered the best of the fleet on the river. I don’t think he was comparing it to Viking.

            From our balcony, we can see that the river runs fast. If you fell in, you would be downstream a mile before you surfaced. The water is brown but not terribly littered. It is smoggy/foggy still and the air smells. We won’t be spending much time out there unless the air quality improves.

            Breakfast is a buffet: curry noodles, dumplings with onions, fried egg on toast, wide-sliced bacon, fruit. The coffee is wonderful. I’m surprised at that and grateful.

            We are passing a lot of coal barges. Power is generated mostly with coal which adds a lot to the smog problem. China is hoping to get more hydro-electric power with the dam project thereby improving air quality. Why isn’t Al Gore here?

            Chonging disappears quickly behind us. We pass people fishing with large scoop nets and washing clothes (!) in the brown river.