I awoke after another reasonable sleep, but the beds are incredibly hard so I don't think I am sleeping as well as I might. I felt significantly better but not 100%. I was hungry though, so ate some scrambled egg, bacon and toast (I think the bacon might have been a mistake, more later). This morning we caught a smaller ferry boat up a tributary stream of the Yangtze. The mornings here are always very misty to start with and this lasts for quite some time. It i...

I awoke feeling a little better but still not wonderful. I had a little toast for breakfast and some yoghurt. Note that on board there is our party of 18, and a party of 9 Chinese people and 110 staff!!! The boat has essentially 5 decks. The bottom deck through which we enter is the crew area. The first floor has the reception desk and the dining room and in the middle of the large reception area is a small shop as well, per usual! There is a spiral staircase t...

The day dawned badly! At 4am I awoke feeling really nauseous. So nauseous that I had to get up and try and throw up. Eventually I made myself because I felt so ill but this only helped for a short while and I had to do it again. I then slept very fitfully until dawn and at that point I knew I was really sick as the diarrhoea had started also! What a day to get it, travelling all the way to the Yangtze! I took some stomach tablets that one of the girls on the trip...

This is just a quick intermission blog: the food that we are having is actually very healthy. There is usually a very large ratio of veg to meat not only that but we are also walking literally a few kilometers every day, as well as the fact that, with the lazy susan we only get small portions each, spaced well apart. So in fact we are not putting on any weight at all! Surprise, surprise!

Up early and after brekkie headed off to visit the site of the terra cottawarriors. The site is outside of Xi'an some distance on the freeway. On theway we stopped off at a factory/shop where we saw how the modern versions are made, but the technique is thought to be similar to that used originally. Thisplace was really interesting and you could buy warriors of all sizes right up to full sized! The latter could be bought and shipped home for around Y4800 ($800)...