By 7.30 this morning we were passing through the Qutang gorge, the first of the 3 gorges, and even though it was hugely misty and raining, we all stood on the top deck and watched the fantastic gorge walks come, then disappear into the fog. It was really impressive but could have been so much better had the sun been out and we could actually see the tops of the amazing mountain range and gorges surrounding us! The Qutang gorge is only 8 km long and is home to the...

We were woken up early this morning with Chinese music that was being piped through our own little speaker, just above our beds. Crap music, a chinese man speaking very broken english, and it was 6.45.....gooood morning!We wer'nt feeling tip-top as you can imagine, but crawled into the shower and attempted to put the room back together, grabbed some brekkie consisting of eggs toast and chicken sausages and got ready for our first venture off the boat. After s...

Chongqing/ yangtze river 3 gorges cruise. #1. Up early packed and left the mix hostel to head for the start of the 3 gorges tour. Got the underground from our station 'wengshu monastery' to the north train station and a 3 hour bullet train to Chongqing. We were picked up at the station by a random Chinese woman and taken to the centre of the city as part of our tour. Chongqing, from the fair amount that I saw, was a bit of a dive. It's unbelievably built up an...

A few days into our Chengdu stay, Az and I went to meet chinese at the hemp house reggae bar (pretty much our local now!) for a few beers and a catch up, its only 10 minutes and 12kwai (£1.20) in a taxi away. After a couple of drinks and the usual arabic banter she asked if we were hungry, we had eacten just before coming out so said no and returned the question; 'no, not really. so lets go get some BBQ food...' haah in true chinese style! For some reason they e...

It's a sad day........ The original source mint shower gel has finally run out........ Haha time for some funky smelling chinalized stuff, it's just not gonna be the same! Good to speak to you all earlier, off to bed now as got to get up early to catch the fish in the morning :) happy days Xxx