The boat was very comfortable, although the food was unremarkable with the dining room service inattentive and slow. Fortunately, we were only held captive by the dining room staff during dinner since breakfast and lunch were buffet style. So, most of the time this poor service wasn’t an issue. I liked our stateroom very much and our cabin steward was very good and very efficient.
The biggest disappointment is the river itself. The scenery must have been awe inspiring at one time, but the devastating pollution of the air and of the water, plus, the incredibly ugly and depressing towns that we glide by, are extremely disheartening to view. It made we wonder why anyone would pay money to see this.
This ravaged land is a prime illustration of China’s great leap forward. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not being a smug American here, because the Lord knows we have devastated our landscape, too. However, you would have expected China to learn from our mistakes. They haven’t and are left with streams that run red with silt and city/industrial waste. People appear to treat the river as a dumping ground, too, since incredible amounts of garbage float by each day.
We had a shore excursion to the “ghost city” of Fengdu. Most of Fengdu was moved across the river because of the flooding caused by the Three Gorges Dam. The temples left at the top have become a type of tacky tourist attraction.
The passengers were separated into smaller groups. Our group consisted of our six post-tour participants and a collection of European/Australian tourists. We were urged to take the chair lift for 20 Yuan up to the top. Since the line for the chair lift was enormous, we elected to walk up, although we were discouraged to do so by our guide. She claimed it would be an incredibly difficult climb of 600 steps. We ignored her.
As it turned out, the walk was dead easy. If the road had 600 steps, they must have been very small ones. The walk took perhaps 5 minutes. In fact, we beat most of the people who stood in line waiting for the lift. What a scam.
The collection of buildings are a necropolis modeled after the Chinese Hell in Taoist mythology. The guide claimed it was built over 1800 years ago and I have no doubt that the foundations could date back to that period, but many of those buildings are of much more recent vintage and the pagoda structure is absolutely brand-new. The biggest tip off that this was a tourist attraction had to be the guys doing new construction as we toured the place.
After enduring about half of the tour, with lots of shopping opportunities along the way, we bailed out and returned to the ship. Need I say that there was the usual gamut of souvenir shops, etc. on the way back? It was a total waste of time, although I guess the exercise was worthwhile.
