Today was another good day. We got up very early (well for a Sunday that is!) and went to find the bus to the 3 Gorges Ferry terminal. The bus set off. My goodness, my lady had a huge todo with the tour guide using the strange local dialect (which reminds me of Swedish). Big panic, we are on the wrong bus!!!
Wow, we sprint back to the bus terminal and make it just in time for the right bus!
The bus takes us to a small boat terminal. Wow, the terminal is next to a phosphate spoil heap. Actually, that's not quite true - the terminal is in a phosphate spoil heap. We pick our way over huge piles of phosphate ore. I make a note that my lady's region is famous for oranges, green tea and now phosphate.
We have a boat trip down the Yangtze. It is raining, my lady is cold (so am I!!!) and the Chinese are not good boat mates! But I am blown away by the beauty of the Yangtze. I take many photos. I take so many photos I panic about running out of SD cards! It's fun to see the ships going up and down the Yangtze. Hmm, breathing their fumes was less fun.
Eventually we get out and go to a small local restaurant for lunch. It's totally mad and very basic. But the spicy potato dish was fantastic. The rest was so-so. There is a temple there. There are some lovely buildings. I am sorry I have no idea where we were, so I can't tell you where it was! There are a 400 year old man and woman in glass cases - maybe like the one abigbutt saw in Changsha. And there is a 1700 year old tree. There was also a horrifying gents toilet, the one with no cubicle doors. I took a sneaky photo to amaze the folk back home.
As the only Westerner in Hubei Province I had the honour of being photographed with a very attractive young lady. My lady thought this was very amusing. I hope she puts the photo of me and her on her wall hee hee!
After that the mystery tour resumed. It was a mystery as I didn't ask my lady what the destination was. It was more fun that way. My lady ate several items of fruit on the bus.
We ended up at the 3 Gorges Dam. There is strict airport type security. I don't know why, as you're not going to blow up the dam with a rucksack sized bomb. We went to a visitor centre. I saw some first rate Chinglish. I took plenty of photos of the lady. The dam was OK but the weather was not, so it was difficult to get good photos. The massive ship locks are impressive. The main dam is not much to look at to be honest. The gift shop prices were outrageous. Come to think of it, the tour really was a trip round several guideshops that happened to have good views beside them. After that we went to two more gift shops. One was next to a small park with some of the equipment used to build the dam. My lady was hungry again. I bought her some meat on a stick and some kind of other thing. I gave it a miss as it looked like the stuff Homer Simpson buys at the Quick-E-Mart.
After the trip we had a rest in the hotel. In the evening we went to a Sichuan Hotpot restaurant. It was pretty good. My lady has an unbelievable appetite. I don't know where she fits it in as she has the body of a teenager.
My lady is very tired today and so am I, so not much is going on. Her mother is going to buy my mother a gift. I need to talk about important stuff with my lady. But I find it very difficult to talk about such stuff when she is here. I don't yet know the depth of her English vocabulary. When I write Chinese I like to write things several times to get a good translation. Wow, even talking about mundane stuff like travel plans has been tough going. My voice is also very bad, maybe too much pollution.
I should not get too disheartened though. The aim of this trip was to determine if I want a Chinese wife, and if so, if this lady is the one for me. I am satisfied on both counts. Whether I push for an engagement now or whether I wait until later in the year I don't know. I only have 2 more days with my lady. I think I will wait to see how the talk with her mother turns out. I have 17 days more leave left from work so a return trip is possible. Maybe I also need to think about stuff back in England.
I asked my lady about QQ. I am still certain that everyone has it on their mobile, so my fellow brothers shouldn't take any rubbish about ladies not having it.
My cough has come back. There is a motto - man with bad lungs no live in China.
