Un-Lost Memories - A Morning on the Banks of the Yangtze

those 3 days of lost photos from my 2 month trip to Asia aren't lost forever!  They have been recovered by Kroll Ontrack data recovery services.  I sent my failed harddrive to them and they were able to recover 99% of the data on the drive including all the photos and my entire music collection (12 years of collecting like a mofo and 400 gb+).  This all comes with a price, $960.  Yes a thousand dollars.  I found out that they had to have it in a "clean room" for like 20 days slowly imaging the drive.  Its a room where they wear radiation like suits and its like outerspace level sterile and clean.  they sent me a list of all the files they recovered and it was all there.  I mulled it over for a few weeks and determined that it was worth it alone to get all my music back.  If you think you can just download music these days take a look again.  That fat german a$$hole megaupload messed it up for everyone, making the value of my music collection alone worth the money.  the price is including the 10% western digital discount.  I was quoted an even higher price at "we recover data.com", like $1,800.  over the next 4-5 posts ya'll can determine if it was worth it for the photos too.  Now join me on a journey back in time, an amazing morning on the banks of the Yangtze river.

we docked for the morning at this town.  most people zipped off on small boats to check out narrower parts of the river.  I stayed in the little village 

go on, have fun saying in your best southern american mixed with chinese accent, "yerp, that thurr be a fried fish".  try it.

why did i take all these food shots at a weird angle?  I ate a fair amount of this stuff.  pretty sweetness.  how many hardboiled salted/soysauced eggs did i eat on this trip?  i don't know, i love egss.

this meat looks past preserved

don't know whats going on here

i saw all the grandmas from our boat buying this tea so i got some too.  its not bad.  now that i got these photos back i can see a sign back there that would probably remove the mystery of what this tea is if i only read chinese.  anyone want to tell me what it is?  or at least tell me the pinyin so i can look it up?

stolen portrait of the Chinese breakfast club

it would have been cool being on one of those little boats down there but i liked what i did too.

jumped on that advertising opportunity 

the landscape was amazing.  you have the life force of china flowing below, that has cut these gorges over the centuries, set against lush farmland full of green leafy produce.

and with all that nature comes these huuuuuuuuuge scary creatures

i could imagine that it might be satisfying to be tending to your field that overlooks this.  probably more so before tourist a-holes came and muddled everything up but you know what i'm sayin'.

couldn't decide which was a better photo.

horrible pic but every where are just baskets full of awesome

what's this stuff drying on the roof?

not as charming.

tea

time to board guy

not as charming

that was my room for 2 nights.  Now its over to a bus to take us to the 3 gorges dam.

i would like to think that this badmitton shuttlecock give you street cred in china whereas in america it would get you punch or your pants pulled down at least.

you could walk up the stairs or pay a fee to ride up in these blue things.  the fee was probably like 20 cents or something but when you're in china you end up getting caught up and then it's the principle of the matter.  or else i would have just hired a guy to follow me around all day and take photos for me and change my diapers for like $15 a day if i was going to play with how much an american dollar can buy you in china.

This is is just another of many many bus rides i took and would continue taking in china and asia.  only the worst bus ride ever in my life was coming the next day.  this bus was taking us to the 3 gorges dam, the biggest power station in the world.  but actually the biggest dam in the world is in canada, the Syncrude Tailings Dam Mildred MLSB.  never heard of it or most of the dams on wikipedias list of 10 largest dams.  china doesnt even have one on the list.