The Mighty Yangtze - Part 2

morning came and I awoke on the river





oops looks like i forgot to edit this photo.



















people drying their clothes on the upper deck.



just what i wanted to see, costo on the yangtze.





at one point auto focus went out of whack for the rest of the day



i couldn't believe it when i looked out my window and saw this.



goodbye strangely beautiful port town.





He is impressed neither by your "boat" nor your "clothes".  "They are not pajamas, and that is not a boat".







this is exactly what our boat looks like.  Not new, kinda gritty, but i like it.  It give it character.







time for tears.  The highlight of the trip ended up being the "Lesser 3 Gorges".  It had the best gorge action.  Only as soon as we got on the smaller boat to go upstream to check them out the bootleg Korean battery I bought crapped out.  this happened one night in beijing also, both times while i was filming video and then it crapped out leaving mirror locked up for hours, which was a little disturbing.  So i missed all the photos, here are a few crappy ones from my unacceptable HTC Wildfire S phone.



Right after I took this the battery crapped out.



river is more narrow getting us closer to the action.  gorge action



glass walkway



after a while we had to board an even smaller boat like this to continue into narrower gorges.



this tour guide guy was singing.  he later extorted us for 10 rmb by giving us all a crappy keychain and asking for money.  the guy on the left bottom corner with the nice nikon camera?  he looked at me every now and then with my $4000 hanging around my neck wondering why I wasn't taking any photos.  it's because I'm an a-hole who's battery died and now i have to carry around this heavy $4000 piece of garbage all day.



when every boat went by here a guy in this shack would play a little diddy on a gourd flute.  what a horrible job.  once our boat passed you could hear him doing it again 20 seconds later when the next boat and the next boat and the next boat etc... passed.



gettin' even narrower hence the need for us to get into these smaller boats.



this dumba$$ was hated by many people.  on the mid sized boat we were on before there were stairs leading up to the captains bridge on the front of the boat with a chain over them.  a bunch of people were sitting low enough on the forbidden access stairs so the captain couldn't see them and they could enjoy the sun and a view higher above everyone else's heads.  Only this dumba$$ comes along and goes too high on the stairs, gets into view of the captain who then sends out the signal to the boat crew to clear those peeps off the stairs thus ruining the sun and breeze and view and nice times that everyone was having.  His wife was mad at him too.  It might be easier to swallow if he just didn't have the face of a dumb@ss.  I mean look at him.  Oh and he's up there because they boat guy was letting people put this stuff on and take photos.  I like how it was just a chance for him to be on display at the front of the boat and have that stupid look on his face while receiving scornful looks and hatred from everyone including his wife.





after we got out of the gorges and headed back to the big ship the weather was awesome and there were many picture opportunities.  So mad that i missed the best part of the yangtze river cruise because of that battery.



back on the big boat with a real battery.



the smaller boats were trying to sell us crap but we were way up on the deck, how were they gonna get us anything if we even did want to buy it?  we were pulling out of the dock too.



the captain stuck his head out of the command center and shook his fist at the pest boats and said something but they kept right on with their little outboard motors maneuvering in and out for 30 seconds until we really did pull out and continue down the river and then they ran away.



more drying clothes