We were docked in Mao Ping his morning. We normally have to walk up lots of steps to get to our transportation for our tours but at this port we were pleasantly surprised to see that they had cable cars to take us up the hill.
We had an early morning tour to the Three Gorges Dam project, the largest hydroelectric power project in the world. I am not much on these types of tours but it was very impressive. We normally would have gotten to go through the locks on our river cruise but the locks had been under maintenance earlier in the month and ship traffic had gotten backed up so they weren't letting cruise ships through there yet.
After our Dam Tour we went back to the ship briefly for just enough time to eat lunch. I had joked earlier that our lunch was going to be hamburgers. I was presently surprised to see that was one of our options on the buffet.
After lunch we boarded a bus for about an hour ride to the train station. We rode the bullet train from Yi Chang Dong to Han Kou which was the stop for Wuhan. It was about a two hour ride. We actually got to the train station early and had to wait for a bit. When they did call our train, we got up immediately to go to our platform. We had to go down an escalator, walk down a very long hallway, walk up lots of steps and almost run to the first car because they were blowing the whistle ready to go. I am not sure why they didn't give us more time to get there, but we did all make it on.
The car was very nice and roomy. They had booked us first class which only means bigger seats -- no free drinks or anything. The train stewardess came down the aisle with the cart of drinks. She just went up to the front and back out without saying anything to anybody. Somebody motioned for them to come back so they did. She was able to buy bottles of water from them and the lady across from her bought some kind of flavored water. The lady asked if they had coffee and they said no. The stewardess then left the car again without saying anything to anybody else. Then she came back through with cups and a coffee pot and went to select people. I thought it was coffee and she told them it was a dollar which is about 16 cents US money. When she got to Terry he told her he wanted some so they poured it in a cup and it turned out to be hot water. He told them he wanted coffee and they motioned the other direction. We thought they were telling him he needed to go to the dining car to get his coffee. After they left him with the hot water, he got up to go to the dining car and he met them coming back his way with his coffee. They told him to go back to his seat. When he got to his seat, they gave him 2 cups of coffee and he asked how much and they said ten dollars each. He got out his money and they just took 15 from him and said that was ok. I really don't know what was going on but it wasn't long until one of our tour guides came and said the train people said she needed to come sit with us. Nobody else caused any more problems. It was all really comical.
When we got to the train station, we had quite a walk to our bus. They had said it would take us a while to get to our hotel but it was very quick. We were staying at the Shangri-la for the night. I was a little disappointed. It wasn't nearly as nice as the Shangri-la I stayed at in December. We had a buffet in the hotel restaurant that night. They had lots to chose from but I didn't know what most of it was.
When I stayed at the Shangri-la in December I joined their club. I asked the front desk if I could get points for my stay and they quickly put the information into the system and when I returned to my room after dinner our fruit plate was there along with the daily newspaper. The only problem was that I had on my profile that I wanted a local newspaper and this one was in Chinese. I guess I need to change my profile before we get to Bangkok Shangri-la!
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