Mar. 1 - Wuhan

River traffic at Wuhan

Up at about 6:00 this morning to get ready to head into Wuhan.  This city is the capital of Hubei province.  It has the biggest population in central China.  The Han River comes into the Yangtze River here.  It is a major transportation hub, and has dozens of railways, roads and expressways passing through this city, which has a population of about 9.1 million people.  The city is considered the political, economic, financial, cultural, education and transportation center of central China.

Getting ready to leave

It was cold here today.  There was a bit of drizzle at times, and the temperature was about 4 degrees with a wind blowing.  The smoke coming out of the boats' exhaust stack was blowing upstream, the same direction the boats were traveling.  When we left for our half-day tour, it was not raining, but the wind was quite cold.

Entrance to East Lake Park

Fun sign with English translation

We drove for about half an hour to East Lake, which is the largest lake within a city in China.  We stopped at East Lake Park for a brief look at this area (about 20 minutes).  Then we boarded the bus and drove for about five more minutes to the Hubei Provincial Museum.
 

Hubei Provincial Museum

Main wall at entrance

This museum contains the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, an actual tomb that was discovered and determined to be from about 2500 years ago.  Our guide, Harry, was great, but there were so many guides talking to their tours, that he was difficult to hear.  Both of us left the tour group and wandered on our own, looking at things that interested us.  Most displays in the museum had Chinese writing, but also English translations, so we could at least tell what the items were.

View inside the museum

Tomb of the Marquis

There was a photography museum there too, which we walked through.  The photos showed a chronology of China, from Mau Zedong (Mau Tse Tung?) rule up to present times.  Most of the photos were large 20"x40" black and white photos showing the various leaders meeting with various worker groups at different times.  It was interesting to look at, but after a while, one photo begins to look like another, so we didn't take too long to walk through the exhibit.

Lisa, our tour group leader found us some Pepsi Zero (we asked her to pick us up some Coke Zero a couple days ago, so she thought we might like this, too).  We didn't need any more, but took those because she had already purchased them for us.  It is very nice of her to look after us so well.  Today, we started taking some chocolate bars with us on our tour, to give to the driver and the local guide at the end of the trip.  I'm not sure if they understood what we gave them, but they were certainly pleased to get recognized.  We also gave one to Lisa today.  Faith told us that they like our chocolate bars, so we brought a package from Costco.

Where our ship was docked

We were back at the ship about 11:45 am.  I thought they were in a hurry to get away, but I'm writing this at 12:30, and we are still sitting docked.  I wonder if one of the buses is not back yet.  They are very careful to ensure that everyone is back on board before we leave.

We left Wuhan while we were eating our lunch, traveling upstream toward Jingzhou - a trip of about 23 hours.  We are getting farther away from the big cities now, so there isn't as much industrial activity along the shore, and although there are still lots of boats, there are not as many as there had been, farther downstream.

Interesting Ship at Wuhan

Dinner was a traditional sit-down Chinese dinner.  We all sat at the table with a lazy-susan on it, and the dishes were brought to us.  When we first sat down, there were a number of dishes already on the table, and it didn't look like much.  We figured we might be hungry when this finished.  However, this part turned out to be the appies.  We went around the lazy-susan and took a portion of each of the items.  There was a menu, but it wasn't very accurate.  Lucky for us, we have John and Alice (a Chinese couple) in our group, and Alice was able to tell us what each of the dishes were.  They have been a great help when during the trip.  When the staff or others on our tours don't understand what we are requesting, Alice has always jumped in and spoken Chinese to let them know what we are looking for.

After the appies, they started bringing the main dishes out.  This was the part where we decided that this cruise, being their first of the season, was a training cruise for the staff members.  The cooks had some trouble keeping up, getting the items of the menu correct, and getting things in the right order.  However, the food was very good, and if we didn't care for the taste of something, we didn't have to eat it.

Donna's birthday celebration

About an hour in, everything stopped, music started to play, and they invited everyone who had a birthday on the cruise to come to the front and get recognized.  Donna, one of our table mates, had a birthday a couple days ago, and she was the first one called up.  She had to put on a party hat, and received a cake.  Each person was called up, and received the same thing, and then everyone sang Happy Birthday to all of them.  It was a lot of fun.  Donna had the cake cut up for us, and we each got a piece to try.  She also had a piece cut for Lisa, our tour guide for the cruise.

We figured that we were finished, but they started bringing more food, after we had the cake.  Strange, but true.  They brought some curried chicken, then the dessert fruit, then rice, and then some vegetables (yes, things were out of order, but by this time, we were very full, so not much of this was eaten.  After that, we sat around and just talked among our group.  We like them, and they are easy to talk to.

Both of us were quite tired by now (it was after 9:00), so we headed back to our room.  Dawn found a movie on TV (Argo) which we started to watch, but before long she was asleep, and I wasn't far behind.

Feb 28 - Jingdezhen (Porcelain City)

We were up early this morning.  Breakfast was scheduled for 6:30 - 8:30 and we were supposed to leave by 8:00 for the 2.5 hour drive to Jingdezhen.  I had my phone plugged in overnight to re-charge, and sometime in the middle of the night, it started receiving emails (someone must have turned on the internet access by accident).  It beeped for a lot of times, and when I looked at it in the morning, there were 41 emails waiting,  Strangely, I was able to get a few emails out from my phone before we left, so did have some communication with home.

Gavin - our local guide

We were still cruising at breakfast, but we figured we would be in soon because we were to leave the ship at 8:00.  It was expected to be a rainy day, and it was pretty overcast when we walked to the bus.  We were introduced to our local guide - Gavin.  He was a friendly, knowledgeable guy, with a good sense humor.  On the 2.5 hour drive, he talked for about 2 hours of the time, telling us about the history of the area we were traveling through, and answering the many questions different people had about the country and this area.  It was quite interesting.

Rest Stop

We stopped at a relatively new toilet rest stop, and most people got out to use the facility.  I am happy
that I am male, not female, when seeing what the facilities are like.  Faith had told Dawn to use the handicapped washrooms whenever possible, so she didn't have to use the "squatties" that seem to be common here.  At least men have urinals, but if you have to do anything else, it looks like those "squatties" are the order of the day.

Our bus

When we arrived at Jingdezhen, we drove right to the parking lot, disembarked the bus, and walked quite a ways to a brief presentation by a group of girls playing porcelain instruments.  They played 3 tunes for us, none of which were Chinese tunes.  The 2nd tune was Jingle Bells, and all three sounded really neat. 

Porcelain music

It appeared that the only instrument that wasn't made of porcelain was the cymbal.  The drum was even of porcelain, although it looked like a regular drum skin was being struck.  It was a small theatre, and by the time they started, the place was packed.  We were standing at the front, which was lucky because the chairs were behind all the standees, so those folks couldn't see anything.

Porcelain potter

Painting with cobalt

From there, we went into one of the workshops. We saw a potter spinning some bowls on a wheel.  From there, we saw where they finished the inside of the bowls, then another station to finish the outside.  Next was a station where an artist painted the pictures on the bowls with cobalt.  Then there was a station where the glaze was applied.  It is quite interesting to see how precise and talented these artisans are.  The next stop was to view some large items that had been created - there were big bowls, very big urns, huge pots, and various sized pots.  It was quite interesting.

Finisher

Finished pots

Then we went in to the kiln area.  Here we watched some workers glazing and finishing the ceramic pottery, prior to it being fired in the huge wood kiln.  This kiln was a wood fired kiln, and there were huge amounts of wood for the fires outside the building.  They had shaped some houses of this wood which was superbly stacked to look like houses.  Along the walls of the kiln building were stacked many, many rows of wood for the fires.

Some wood for the kiln

Finally, they took us to the store where purchases could be made.  There were 4 different grades of porcelain there.  This area is famous for it's white jade porcelain, which is extremely white and valuable.  Then there was some green porcelain (with a green shade in it), some red porcelain (with a shade of red in it), and the everyday porcelain, which we looked at (and of course made some purchases).

Lunch Restaurant

Rock Cod - before

After that, it was back to the bus to drive to the restaurant for an authentic Chinese lunch.  There were 9 courses in all, most of which were quite good.  There was even a rock cod, which had it's head and tail attached.  The first drink was included in the meal, but if you wanted more, it had to be payed for.  Fortunately, that meant until the bottles at the table were empty.  Each table was set with a couple bottles of beer, a bottle of 7-Up, and a couple bottles of water, so for the most part, all ten of our group were fine.

Rock Cod - after

Following lunch, we set off to return to the ship, but first we needed to stop at one more market.  This was several streets of stores, all of which seemed to be selling the same things.  It was pouring rain by this time, so even though we were out of the bus for a fairly short period of time, we were quite soaked before re-boarding for the trip home.

It was a quite uneventful trip back to the ship, raining hard all the way.  When we got back, it was a short walk from where the bus dropped us off to where the ship was docked, and the rain had let up some.  It was still raining, but not as hard.  We were cold and wet by this time, so were happy to get back to our room to get out of our wet clothes.  We had a couple hours before supper, so we watched the rest of a movie we had started the night before and only got about 15 minutes in before going to sleep.


Tonight, we feel quite tired, and are heading to bed early.  The ship cast off while we were eating, and our journey up the Yangtze River continues overnight.  Tomorrow, we will be in Wuhan, where we will be going to visit a museum.

Porcelain Music

Feb. 27 - Mount Jiuhua

Woke up fairly early this morning.  My back was sore and even though it was only 6:00 am, it felt like time to get up.  We were showered and ready to head for breakfast, just after 7:00.  Wouldn't you know it, today, breakfast didn't start until 8:00.  Oh, well, that's life.

Where we docked

After breakfast, we had lots of time before we were to leave, so we took a tour of the ship.  Starting from the top (deck 6 - the Sun Deck) we walked around there.  It is quite nice, but would have been much nicer if it were sunny.  Unfortunately, it was foggy and cool, and we weren't able to see much.  Even the boats passing us going the other direction were difficult to see.  We were talking to an Asian girl who is on our trip (Lisa from Abbotsford) when we noticed that our ship was turning toward the other side of the river.  We weren't sure what this was about, but it appeared that we were going to stop beside a couple barges that were moored at the end of a pier with big cranes, one which was loading a boat with long poles.

Well, we did stop there, and after the ship was tied up, some folks got on board.  By this time, Dawn and I had gone to our room because it was easier to see from there, what was happening.  We watched for a while, and then decided to continue our walk around the ship.

We went from the top floor down a level which is where the Cheers Bar is located.  This is where we had our first introduction to the briefing for the day, and is basically a big lounge where there are performances on stage at times.  Not much else on that level, except for the area for the VIP guests (those who had rented the big, expensive suites - one the same size area as our house when we bought it) and we weren't welcome there.

On deck 4, we first encountered the ship's artist.  He was painting figures (animals and people) on the inside of small bottles.  He showed us some that were finished.  They were signs of the Zodiac, so we could have gotten our birth month horoscope characters.  He also had a number of embroidered pictures, many which were very cool to look at.  If we had a way to get it home, we may have purchased one because we like them so much.

There was also a small shop there that had pearl necklaces, and another small one that had candies.  Moving down a deck, there was another small store that had dresses and scarves.  On this level also, there was  a photography stand where photos taken at the Captain's Welcome Reception were available to view on computer monitors, and for purchase, we assumed.  We didn't go, so didn't stop to look.

The next deck down, deck 2, was our deck so we didn't stop there, except to watch a camera crew interviewing one of the ship's staff.  They were at the bottom of the steps we had to go down to get to the first level, so we watched for a while.  Interestingly, they were touring the ship, too, and also went on the bus tour to Mount Jiuhua.  Apparently the mayor of this area was there.  They must have been doing some sort of promotional video for the cruise ship.

On the bottom deck was a swimming pool, the spa, some Mah Jong game rooms, and the movie theatre.  There wasn't much to see, so we went back up to our room to wait around until lunch.

Buses waiting to pick us up for the tour.

Policeman stopping traffic for our tour.

After lunch, we were off to Mount Jiuhua (a place with 98 temples in a small area, which is quite a tourist attraction).  It was an hour and a half bus ride to get there, but because the mayor was with our group, there were police at every light, holding traffic so we could get through, and making other cars and trucks pull over so we weren't held up.  Quite nice to have a police escort, when

Rice paddies

you are on the right side of the law.  We did get to see a part of rural China; the houses, the farming, the somewhat primitive examples of

Scooter truck.

people washing clothes in the river, and a number of small towns.  We took lots of pictures, but had to stop because the battery for my camera was running on empty.

The area we were going to was way up a steep, winding mountain road.  It was likely similar to the many logging roads we see built on the sides of mountains in BC, but here the roads were paved and there were large mirrors on each sharp corner and switchback.  There were temples/monastaries built on the side of steep cliffs, built in strange places up the road, and when we got to the top, there were hotels, many shops, as well as a number of different temples scattered all around the area.

Getting off the bus at the mountain.

The tour was to hike up to a few of the temples, but we decided to not go. 

Carrying in some goods.

Instead, we spent the hour and a half walking around the area, looking into shops (and purchasing a few things).  In this small area, there were at least 5 banks, at least 2 of which had ATMs.  I needed to get some more money for the rest of the trip, so we decided to ake a withdrawal if we could find someone at the bank who could translate the Chinese words in the machine for us.  At the first bank, our card wouldn't work.  Our PIN was supposed to be 6 numbers, not the 4 we use, and were told work in China.  Here, the girl who was helping us pointed us up the street to another bank.

Clouds moving up the mountain and the temples.

At this bank, another girl spoke a bit of English, and she helped us out.  This machine would take our card, so we were able to get some more money.  Hopefully, we won't have to withdraw any more before we leave this country.  This girls was also very helpful, and we both took her picture when we were finished.  Then it was on to look into and through the many shops.

Girl from Bank.

Lisa, our tour guide, told us that in the height of tourist season, as many as 64 000 people might visit this little place in a day.  That is almost the entire population of Kamloops, going to a small place like Aberdeen Mall, only driving up this winding road with other "crazy" drivers coming down.

Chinese baby leading his parents around.

Dawn and I stayed in the town square, while most of the rest of the group went looking at the temples.  They told us to meet in the square in an hour, but they were going to look at

Monk - enjoyed having his picture taken.

3 different temples.  The last one was up many stairs (some said 1000 steps), the last section which was very steep.  They looked around at the monastary there, and then came back down.  They were about 40 minutes late getting back, and even then we weren't finished.  We had to walk back to where the bus was going to pick us up, but first looked through another temple on the way to the bus.  Then it was back on the bus, drive down the steep, winding road, and head back to the ship - another 1.5 hours.  Again though, the police were basically ensuring that we did not have to stop many times due to traffic lights.  The main road was very straight, wide and smooth, so it was quite a bit different than what we were expecting.

We arrived back at the ship a little late, so got to our room and headed for supper.  Although we were late, we were earlier than most of the others, so there was no lineup for the buffet.  Nice.  Had an enjoyable meal, talking with the others in our group.  We like all of them, but especially like Ross and Donna from Saskatoon, who are just normal folks and not trying to impress anyone (hopefully like us), and also John and Alice from Burnaby, a Chinese couple who have lived in Canada for about 30 years.  The others are nice, too, but some seem to be trying to impress and "one-up" the others with the things they have done.

After that, we decided to head to our cabin and get ready for an early morning tomorrow, when we leave for the Chinese Porcelain town at 8:30 am, and a 2.5 hour drive from where our ship will be docking sometime during the night.

Feb 26 - Traveling to Nanjing (Southern Capital)

Cargo ship going down the river

We were still sailing when we got up in the morning.  Went for breakfast (bacon is great, and had an omelette of some sort) and visited with our table partners for a while.  Back to our room to try the internet again.  Still not working so I went back to reception to see what they could do about it.  I had to bring my computer and the girl walked me through things.  Now it worked - wouldn't you know it.  So, back to our room and try again.  I was able to get to my emails, and started to read some of them.  Again, it quit.  However, I was able to get to the club website, and finally able to get to the Royal Bank site.  I was able to logon to the site, and get to my accounts, but when I tried to send them a message about our VISA card, the internet stopped working again.

This was bothering us both quite a bit, because we needed that card for things we had to pay for, specifically at the end of the trip to get off the boat.  Finally, I decided to phone VISA.  I had to use a phone provided by the ship (a cell phone) that cost 30 Yuan a minute (even though it was a collect call to VISA).  Well, the call was almost 12 minutes long, but they ironed it out and our card was re-activated.  The cost is about $70 CAD for that call - OUCH!!

When we arrived a Nanjing, about 5:15 pm, we were off the ship right away and onto our bus.  We met our new Nanjing guide, Christina.  She had quite a bit more of an accent, so was a little harder to understand.  And of course, the sound system on the bus had an echo that the driver couldn't turn off.  It was interesting.  Christina liked to talk, and it was work to understand her.

Entrance to Confucius Temple

The ship docked quite a ways outside of town, and the drive to the Confucius Temple was supposed to take about 40 minutes.  However, it was rush hour in Nanjing (population about 6 million - a medium sized city), so it took longer than expected.  The outskirts of the city were pretty seedy looking, but as we got more towards the center, it improved somewhat.  I still wouldn't want to live here.

We had to go through a city-wall gate (Nanjing used to be the capital, and there was a thick wall built around the city that was 32 km long) one of 30 gates in the wall.  Then we arrived at the temple, which turned out to be mainly a market.  Apparently where the temple was built, a market always was built all around it, and that is what it is today.

Lights in the market

Pagoda at entrance

I'm beginning to realize that the reason we are brought to these locations is so that we will spend our money.  There weren't the pushy people outside trying to get us to purchase knock-off items, and the grounds were very clean - people going around and sweeping, picking up debris, and just keeping the grounds tidy.  Going into a shop was also not too bad, until it looked like you might buy something.  Then, a salesperson sprang, and followed you around for the rest of the time in the store.  We don't bargain easily, so we must have looked like easy "marks".  They pointed at a price, and we just accepted it as the price.

KFC in the market

Rickshaw driver

It was dark by this time, but the area was lighted (sometimes gaudy lighting, but it worked here).  It was difficult to get photos, but even so, we managed to get a few that showed the area.  Interesting to find a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Hagen Daz,
and other shops like this, along with many stores, some higher end, and some not so high.  We just had to stop in to a couple trinket shops so that we could make a purchase or two.  ;-)

We only had an hour here, so before long it was back to the gathering place, and walk back to the bus (about 5 minutes).  We're with a pretty friendly group, so it was easy to talk with people.  One of the couples on another bus was on the Sweden tour for the World Junior Hockey Tournament, so we met and talked for a while.  They are from Salmon Arm and have also signed up for Finland in 2016.  Their names are Doug and Lorraine Ibbitson.

The ride back to the ship seemed faster, I imagine because the traffic wasn't so heavy.  I still wouldn't want to drive here.  They are crazy.

We were one of the first buses back, so were into the dining room fairly quickly.  Good thing because the line got very long once everyone was there.  They keep that room very hot, so we don't want to spend any more time there than we have to.  It was another good meal.  We didn't eat too much heavy food because it was later in the evening (about 9:00) and we didn't want it weighing on our system while trying to go to sleep.  The ship got under way while we were eating, and we continued our journey upstream, heading to the next place, Mount Jiuhua.

Nanjing from our balcony

Feb 26 - Tour of Shanghai

We woke up a couple times during the night, but were able to get back to sleep.  We did have to set the alarm, because our tour was leaving at 8:30 am, and we wanted to make sure to have breakfast before we left.  Breakfast was good again, with food that we enjoy.  We are trying to not eat too much, but I fear the bacon tastes too good, and I may end up over-indulging at times (okay, most of the time).  Lisa came around to the tables to pass out our boarding passes (we needed these to get back onto the ship when we returned) and to tell us that the forecast for the day was rain and about 10 C.  We didn't bring our umbrellas, so we could have rented one from the ship (but didn't).  Consequently, by the end of the day, we were pretty wet as we were outside quite a bit over the day.

Shanghai Museum

Once off the ship, we boarded a bus that would take us around the various places today.  We met our local tour guide who described the things we saw.  His name was Shawn, and his parents live in Mississauga, Ontario.

Security at the Entrance

Our first stop was to the Shanghai museum.  We had to go through security here, similar to the airport security.  If the bell rang when we walked through the machine, we had to get checked with a wand, and show what was in our pockets.  Cameras, and other items of any size had to go through an x-ray machine.  There was a lot of security all over the place at the entrance, and

Security all over

throughout the museum.  The building is four levels high, with various exhibit themes on each level.  We only had 1.5 hours here, so we couldn't see everything, but we saw enough before we got tired of looking.  We took quite a few pictures, which we may not look at again, but it is pretty neat to see bronze weapons, tools, instruments, etc. that were around more than 2000 years ago, just in that one exhibit hall.  In all it was an interesting tour of the museum.

From there, they took us to the Shanghai Silk Factory.  There we learned about the silkworm and how they produce their silk.  We learned about single cocoons and double cocoons,  The singles are used to

Silkworm house

Starting a thread from a coccoon

produce the fine threads that can go up to 1.7 km in length.  One thread is about 1/8 the thickness of a human hair.  They spin threads together to make larger threads, and then they weave various items from the silk thread. We saw clothing of various sorts, along with some beautiful rugs.

Pulling the silk from the cocoons

The double cocoons are used to make the silk duvets that can be

Stretching the silk to duvet size

purchased in Costco at various times during the year.  They could also be purchased at this factory.  They had some women working to show the process where the cocoons are stretched out to make a pocket that is about 10 inches across, after starting out smaller and being combined with other pockets until they are about 8-10 cocoons thick.  After that is complete, these pockets are then stretched by 4 women, pulling and stretching each of the pockets until they are the size of a bed duvet.  The one they showed us was about 70 - 80 layers thick, and they go up to over 100 layers and more before they put them into a cotton case.

A loom for weaving a rug

Of course, after this display was the push to purchase things.  They had a lot of beautiful items made of silk, and I have to admit, we spent some money there.

From there, we went to lunch at a huge restaurant,.  It appeared to be much more like a huge banquet hall/convention centre, and was set up to accommodate our whole group, plus other things that were going on.  It was a Chinese meal served around a round table with a large lazy-susan.  All the food dishes were placed on the lazy-susan and it was rotated so that everyone had a chance to serve up what they wanted.  It started with some appetizers (tomatoes, lotus root, cold noodles) and then

Lunch at the restaurant

they started bringing larger dishes (egg-drop soup, pork sweet and sour, beef, Chinese fries, and other things we weren't too sure about).  It was similar to the meals that we go out with Kim and Pat Eng to eat once in a while in Kamloops.  It was enjoyable, and when we were done, there was time to go for a walk if we wanted, but it was still raining so we went outside and then came back in to wait for our bus to move on. 

A corner of the market

The next stop was an outdoor market.  They warned us here about the people who would tempt us to buy things
that weren't what they seemed, and also to be careful of pickpockets.  We spent about an hour there, and when it was over, we were quite happy.  It was too crowded, too close,

Our group meeting place

and the vendors very aggressive.  We couldn't even look at something without someone trying to get us to buy it and more.  Getting into the market and then back to our bus, required us to walk across a busy street.  There were crosswalks, but it seems that pedestrians who hesitate are especially low on the "food chain" with the drivers.  Dawn would have walked in front of a car that was not going to stop, and another man would have walked into a bus, if his friend had not grabbed his arm.

The candy store

By this time, we were more than ready to head back to the ship, but there was a scheduled trip to a higher end shopping mall, so we had to go there.  A number of us sat on the bus rather than go shopping, but most of the folks went to the mall for about an hour.  Apparently there were no bargains to be had there, and not many had bags of items when they returned.  Then it was back to the ship - about a 20 minute drive from where we were, but once again, in rush hour.  The driver certainly got us around the traffic very well.

There was some time before dinner, so we decided to write our journals (for me, this blog is it).  Then we went for dinner - again it was good.  Some things were different, but overall, we didn't mind the food.  After that, we decided to head back to our room and think about going to bed.  When we walked through the lobby, there was another batch of passengers who had just arrived.  This was what the ship was waiting for because shortly after we got into our room, the ship started off, up the Yangtze River.

I had inquired about the internet, and we got some help getting our computer attached.  It was not very fast, but I was able to receive some emails.  I read one from Christie and responded, and then it stopped working.  It costs 100 Yuan for 24 hours (about $20), so for the amount we got to use it, this was quite expensive.  I tried many, many times to get back online, but no luck.

Our VISA card had stopped working after our first big purchase in the morning, so this weighed pretty heavily on our minds.  Each time I woke up overnight, I started to think about it.  Not sure how we are going to solve this dilemma.  More about that tomorrow.

River Traffic on Yangtze River at Shanghai

Feb 24 - Fly to Shanghai and Board our Ship

Our airplane on the flight to China

We flew out of Vancouver International Airport at about 1:00 pm, after having to get our plane (an Airbus 330-200) de-iced.  That is an interesting experience, and from the amount of snow coming off the wings, likely a good idea.  After getting all the snow off with power washer type machines spraying a pink solution and what looked to be hot water, they sprayed some green stuff on the wings and then we sat for about 10 minutes - I guess to let the let this stuff set.  Once we began our take-off run, all the green stuff blew off, so I'm not sure what it was, but it seems to have done the trick, because we made it to Shanghai.

The flight was long (almost 12 hours), but we kept ourselves busy watching movies and eating.  They have a good selection of movies, mostly quite new.  They even had 3 of the 5 movies I had downloaded from iTunes, so I didn't watch them in case I wanted to watch them later.  We also kept an eye on our flight path which was quite an interesting picture.  It showed the route we were following in 3 dimensions, so as we flew along, we could see where Prince George and all the cities along the route were located.  Our flight took us North West along the inside passage route between the mainland and Vancouver Island, continuing that direction, even after we passed Prince Rupert.  A short time after that, it turned more toward the West, as we flew out over the Bering Sea.

Sometime during the trip, we turned farther in the west direction, and then started moving south, flying along the Russia coast, south over Japan, past North and South Vietnam, and the over China.  The flight monitor we watched showed us flying about 10 000 plus metres high at speeds of up to almost 900 km/h.  The temperature at that altitude fluctuated, but was mainly about -56 C with winds fairly calm.  As we moved south down the Russia and Japan, the winds became much stronger, going up to about 150 km/h.  On the monitor, it showed the path taken over Japan and south was in quite a jiggly line.

When we neared Shanghai and started going down in altitude, we got down closer to the tops of the clouds, and then finally into the clouds.  It took a while, but we got below the clouds and then could start seeing some of the land below.  It appeard to be on the river because there were patches of land that appeared quite muddy and wet, and then patches of water with boats on it (it was getting a little dark at that time, but still daylight.

The weather was cloudy with drizzle rain, and the temperature was about 10 C.  Finally we touched down at about 12:30am Kamloops time, about 4:30pm in Shanghai), and it seemed like there was a lot of taxiing to finally get to where our airline parked the plane (about a 10 minute bus ride from the terminal).  It is a huge airport with planes, trucks, buses, and lots of other vehicles driving around in what must be some sort of order.  At one point driving to the terminal, while waiting for some sort of signal that we could cross the taxi-way, there was a line of vehicles 3 buses and 2 baggage trains across, going in our direction, with about that many waiting to cross the other way.

As always, collecting our baggage, and entering the country was a bit of an adventure.  We did have to go through immigration, but we didn't have to have any special security checks done.  Then, through the exit, and out into the airport where our tour group was being met.  We first had to walk a gauntlet of people who were looking for de-planing folks, and that was like we were under scrutiny from everyone.

Lisa Wang - our tour guide

Lisa, our group's tour guide for the rest of the tour, met us and directed us to where we should wait.  Dawn and I were in group 3, which was also our bus number.  They have 11 buses for this cruise, so I assume that means there are 11 groups that were met.  Once everyone was accounted for, we left the airport to drive to our ship - during rush hour in Shanghai.  A 40 minute trip ended up taking a lot longer than that.   Our ship is quite large.  It is 7 levels high, with deck 2 being our room deck, and the first level with passenger rooms.  Passenger rooms go up to deck 5, and there is another deck above that.

We got to our room, which is very nice.  It is very similar to the rooms on ocean going vessels, but a little different.  There is a sitting area with a small couch/fold out bed, a huge king-size bed, a desk, a small fridge, a failry big bathroom with a shower plus a tub.  The downside is there is not a lot of closet space.  Dawn says she would give up the bathtub for a bigger closet.  It has a beautiful view across the river, to the west side of the river.  There are all the huge high-rise buildings (more than 10 floors) with all their lights.  It is a pretty spectacular skyline.  This is the financial area of Shanghai, and land is pretty expensive.

Part of the view from our cabin

We were getting quite tired by this point, so went to the dining room to eat.  We have been assigned to a table with four other couples, who we will eat with for all of our meals.  They are also one of three table we will be bussing with for our tours.  Meals seem to be buffet style, and although we didn't try everything, what we did eat was quite good.  Certainly I think we will get by with eating food we like, as well as trying other food that we don't know what it is.  I don't think we will lose much weight on this trip.

After dinner, we went back to our room to unpack and try and fit everything in.  We were supposed to go to a beginning of the tour lecture at 9:00 pm, so went up to the lounge on deck 5 to listen.  Not a lot of folks were there, and after about 15 minutes, Dawn suggested we go back to our room as I was falling asleep (and I suspect snoring a bit).  Then, it was off to bed.  A long and tiring day, but we are here.