Cruise to Magnificent Three Gorges Dam, BaiDi Cheng & Beautiful Sceneries down the Shennong Stream (Yangtze River)

Day 18:

The trip started off with us assembling very early at 6.30 a.m. and a long bus ride of 5 hours before reaching the city of Three Gorges.

Our first destination was the Three Gorges Dam.

Upon reaching, we were given a small talk on the history and the overview of the dam.
They even have a stimulated model of the whole dam.

This reminds me of the talk I actually had at Singapore's Marina Barrage.

Students listening attentively to the talk given by our Tour Guide.


After the talk, we were given time to go look around and take pictures of everything outside.

Me at the highest peak of the dam. Haha.

Group picture with the dam behind us.
Alvin, Mingyu, Xanier, Erwin. :)

Me and the dam behind.
This dam is huge compared to the one we have at Singapore, Marina Barrage.



After which, we had a walk around a park near the dam.


Some very beautiful flowers nicely placed outside the entrance of the park. :)

I love this picture because it shows how neat the trees are planted.
Very nice view.


We finally boarded our long awaited cruise.

Nice corridor leading to our rooms at Level 1 of the ship.

Our room number: 107. :)


Now lets take a look inside the room!

Well at least there is a television, however we only had one channel to watch.
Other channels didn't had coverage.

Edy and our beds behind.

Look at the toilet!
It's bigger than what we have in our hostel but very squeezy.
& like what Zhong Rong said when he came to our room.
You need yoga to close the door from inside.
Because it's very squeezy.
Hahaha.

Day 19 and 20:

We awoke at 5.30 a.m. to get ready so we could have breakfast at 6am.
The tour guide had warned us about the food before we boarded the ship.
Well, the food on board the ship was acceptable to me.
After breakfast, we alighted from it and headed to see BAIDI CHENG.
The breeze was very strong there and the weather was perfect.
With nice sceneries and perfect weather, what more could I possibly ask for? Haha.

The long bridge we have to walk to get to the other side.

While walking the long bridge.

Me posting with the long bridge behind me. :)

Take a look at this flag!
It has my surname & it's green in colour.
My favorite colour. :)


After that we transferred to another boat and travel down the Shenong Stream (Yangtze River).
As we were travelling down the streams, the sight of the mountains at both left and right are very beautiful.

I could just stand there all day and admire the scenery with the relaxing breeze blowing against my face.

View from inside our cruise.

Some random shots of the beautiful mountains.


After which, it was time for lunch!
How they actually annouce that its time for lunch and informing people on boat that it is ready for lunch is by using speakers to annouce throughout the boat.

A painting on our way up to the restuarant in our cruise to have our lunch.

Our lunch!
Everybody was famished because the portion for breakfast was rather little.
We practically finished up everything. :)

Take a look at this picture of a mountain.
Does it looks like a footprint to you?
It's actually a left footprint on the mountain.
So cool.

This would be the picture of the day.
Look at the reflections of the mountains. :)

A shot of me taken by Polim's DSLR. Haha.

We then alighted from our boat and headed to small boats upstream of Shengnong River.

Me and Edy on the sampan as we were rowed upstream.
The people rowing us up the boat is really fit.
I can tell its super tiring and difficult to row upstream against the flow of the river.
The tour guide on the boat with us told us that we could call them "Huo Ji" which means boat workers.
To them, its a very good respect to them which actually means good brother to them.

You could actually see them using paddles to row up the river.
After reaching a certain depth, the captain and the vice captain of the sampan use long bamboos to push the sampan forward by thrusting it into the ground and pushing it foward..
At this point, the depth is actually about 4 - 5 metres.




As the depth gets more shallow, the water is more clean and clear.
Edy actually tried drinking it from the river by scooping it up with one hand.
Then, when the water is too shallow, the jump off the sampans and pull us upstream with only strong thick ropes wrapped around them.

Their footwear is actually straw sandles.
The one we wore during our water rafting at Lulin Shan.
The difference is that their design is actually very nice.
Too bad, I didn't took a picture of it.
I believe most of their sandles are customized made.
Straw sandles actually protect the sole of their feets and make it less slippery while walking on the wet rocks as they pull us up the stream of the river.

They are very fit and they only earned 30 for each trip.
At the end of the trip, we all gave some tips for them which are little to us but actually helps them alot and long way.

Our tour guide singing a folk song to us.
She said last time in their town, if the girls do not know any folk song, the girls would not be able to get married.
Also, when you like a girl, the most common gift over there would be the stones(pebbles) near the upstream of the river.
The guy would slowly and carefully picked the most beautiful one before giving it to the girl he likes as a token of love.

Reflections:

While on the boat, I was actually relaxing on a chair and having a chat with my friends. Something caught my attention, I saw a old women allowing her grandchild I suppose to actually do her business there at one corner of the ship. She was apparently oblivious to any onlookers and didn't care about the shyness. The scene which happened was at level 2 of the ship and the nearby toilet was at level 1 of the ship. Surprisingly, I didn't only witness one of such scenario. While back on the cruise, we were actually admiring the sceneries at the roof the cruise when we saw the same thing. This time it was a grandfather which help her grand-daughter to pee over the railings onto the floor of the roof. The reasons I would be guessing at this kind of scene would be; One, priority are given to young children, so at the sight of onlookers, they would just turn a blind eye to it. Two, they were afraid, on the way to the toilet, the grandchildren would not be able to hold it in and let it out on the way there. Three, they are lazy and anything goes for them.

Goodnight world!
It's time for sleep.(Its currently 2.30 a.m. !)

Oh yes, the weather is turning cold these few days.
It has been raining for the whole of yesterday.
People are starting to fall sick.
Get well soon, Yoke May(flu), Alvin & Jarold (headache). :)
As what Mr Loh said, you just have to keep yourself warm and drink more water.
Thats all we have to do to prevent ourselves from getting sick.