Beginning of Our Cruise!

The night before, we had boarded this luxury Cruse ship at the town of Zigui which was up river from the 3 Gorges Dam. We were shown to our room # 310 on Deck 3. Shirley, our personal guide was in Room # 327, which she shared with another lady guide. Our room had 2 single beds, attached shower and bathroom, wardrobe, phone and TV.
Like other fellow passengers, both local and foreign, we spent the earlier part of the night enjoying the breeze on the upper-most open air deck and watching the ship slowly pull away from the portside as she set sail upriver. As the ship ventured further inland, it grew darker around us due to the fact that we were in a big and mighty river. Only the night navigational lights along certain points of the banks were visible. We chatted with a couple of travellers from UK and Australia. Then went back to our room for a good night's sleep. There was centralised air-con vents but somehow the summer heat was too overbearing and we opened the cabin's sliding window for fresh air. But we closed it almost immediately as insects flew in. Soon, the room temp stabilised and we were able to fall asleep.
We awoke at about 5.30 am, using our travel alarm clock. It was still dark outside. We washed up and decided to go up on deck to see the morning sunrise. Surprise! Not a soul was there! Where was everyone, we wondered ? Only when we entered the Dining Room that we knew. Everyone was already tucking into their Chinese breakfast. We were the last 2 to be seated at our table of 10. Breakfast was served at 6:30 am. I noticed that most of the people at my table ate very fast.! No foreigners at our table except us. It must be the style out here...I thought. No drinks were served at breakfast....that was unexpected. In any case, we brought our own mineral water but there was drinkable water in our room.

These were the 1st 4 pics I took of that morning. Our ship was berthed opposite Badong city. We were at the major confluence of 3 rivers.

Top pic: D2 on the sun deck .

2nd pic: D2 and Shirley with Badong town in the background.





Both of us on the sun deck of our cruise ship.

Our ship was berthed on the banks opp to Badong town.