DAM DAY!

We were lazy on the boat this morning, and stayed in bed until 10am. We caught the very end of the 3^rd big gorge while we had a breakfast of ramen noodles in a big bowl. Around 11 we were in the lake and approaching the dam. We got off the boat and boarded two buses to begin our tour.

The dam was HUGE and impressive – the engineering is mind boggling. They had to hire different companies, both Chinese and foreign, to complete it in order encourage integrity of the structure. We saw a model of the entire project and then climbed to see the dam and the boat locks. There are 5 locks from the upper to lower level.

We took the bus to 4 different stops, basically different vantage points of the dam. It was amazing how people pushed to get on the bus at every stop. Again, there was just no sense of personal space. We rushed a little because they told us we had to be back on the bus by 2. But then we sat on the bus waiting for one guy until 3pm. We ate an orange, which was some of the first fruit we’d had.

The bus brought us about an hour through the longest mountain tunnels I’ve ever seen, to Yichang, where we boarded another bus to get to Wuhan. Clark played scrabble against himself to entertain himself.

We arrived in Wuhan around 9:00. It’s interesting to see the different major cities – this one apparently gets really hot during the day, so everyone comes out at night. There’s more of a night culture. We found a nice hotel (Chinese) for a reasonable price. 2 rooms for 150 yuan each.

Sunia wasn’t feeling well and stayed in the room. Peter, Clark and I ventured out and walked around a bit, happening upon a little restaurant area. We had a dinner of fried rice, eggplant and potato, cauliflower and tomato, and street meat (beef).

Peter was wearing his ‘You sha shuo sha’ shirt, which means, ‘If you have something to say, say it! People feel the need to read this outloud and laugh at it. This happened everywhere we went. Apparently there are very few shirts with Chinese written on them, and the funny saying stands out. This is in addition to Peter being so tall, and a foreigner.

This was a great meal. It’s funny that it came from such a hole in the wall restaurant in Wuhan, a city I’d never heard of before.

We returned to the hotel via the red light district. Whoops! It was interesting that there were little kids (4 and 5) hanging out all around.

The hotel was fantastic with western toilets, clean showers and floors and big beds. It was a little piece of luxury in the middle of our trip!