Yangtze River – Fengdu, Card Games, River Tam Kills Everyone

We were woken up in the morning at 6:30 AM by loud music and announcements over the PA. After getting ready, our cabin mates disappeared while we were still groggily trying to figure out why they woke us up so early. Looking out the window, we saw Shibaozhai pagoda go by as we heard more announcements. This confirmed to us that we were past the Three Gorges and into what Lonely Planet describes as not very interesting territory, with at least 3 hours before arriving in Fengdu, where we were to stop for sightseeing.

From Three Gorges

From Three Gorges

Mary amused herself trying to read the Chinese schedule left behind by our cabin mates, and was pleased to be able to identify the symbols for Fengdu by comparing with Lonely Planet, and was pleased to determine the duration of our stay there by comparing the duration mentioned on the stop with dinner last night with the one for Fengdu.

We braved the provided boiling water for cup-of-noodles for Josh and coffee for Mary. Hopefully it won't make us sick. Though we've already had plenty of more sketchy things to eat and drink, so if we do get sick, we're not going to blame it on the boat water.

Spent most of the day playing cards, some on deck and some in our cabin. We also saw lots of other passengers playing cards. In fact, just about every available surface was in use playing cards. These are our sort of people! Oddly enough, they don't seem to deal cards, they seem to go around in a circle drawing one card each. It seems slow... but they were also sorting as they went, so it's probably about the same amount of time as how we do it back home.

When we arrived at Fengdu, the Ghost City, we verified with a few people the time we were supposed to be back at the boat, and then found our tour guide and group outside. While she was talking in Chinese to everyone, we stopped to buy a straw hat, and didn't notice when she moved on, since there were a bunch of guides talking to a bunch of groups in Chinese, and our guide is short, so we couldn't actually see her over all the other people in the group. When the group we were standing next to started moving, we realized we had the wrong guide! Up ahead we saw our guide and group aboard a bus, but couldn't join them, as we didn't have a ticket or know where to get one!

After some discussion, we found the ticket counter and purchased tickets for the bus up to the entrance. We were a little surprised, but very relieved, to find our guide waiting there for us with our tickets, having already sent everyone else on through.

We walked up the hill under the chairlift (for once not because we were too cheap to take the chairlift: we couldn't find where to get on), and ended up accidentally on a path that was closed with construction underway on the buildings along it. However, it was a pretty route up the hill and did eventually get us to the right place. The temples at the top seemed, as Lonely Planet had promised, like they were right out of a theme park... and not in a good way. We took our time since we had three hours until the boat was to leave.

From Three Gorges

From Three Gorges

From Three Gorges

Then on our way out, we noticed the big map of Fengdu at the entrance, and saw there was a whole other half that we had completely missed! These temples and statues seemed more authentic somehow, and were certainly cooler.

From Three Gorges

From Three Gorges

There was also a haunted house type tour thing, which we were encouraged to go on, but the guy wasn't sure if it was 2 hours or 2 minutes (not sure which word to use), so we gave it a shot and after 10 minutes found an intermediate exit—we didn't have anywhere near 2 hours left before the boat departed, more like 20 minutes!

From Three Gorges

We played more cards in the evening and were amused by the movie that our cabin mates were watching. It seemed to be a Chinese version of “River Tam Beats Up Everyone.” It was actually pretty easy to follow even without speaking Chinese, as there was very little dialog. Plus, some of it was in English: the bad guys were the CIA, and while they spoke Chinese, everyone pronounced CIA in English. Oh, yeah, and one of the starring actors was David Wu, which the Oregonians should appreciate.