Day 11, 12 and 13

Having to gather at the gate at 12.15pm, we all had vegetarian brunch together in Han Hui’s room before we left. We took a 4 hour bus ride to a neighbouring city to board the cruise. As mentioned previously, the condition of their places aren’t exactly the best. Perhaps it’s due to them being a big country thus making it more difficult to manage as compared to our city state. Seeing how we’ve all been told of the video required for our IS component, everyone seized this opportunity to capture a lot of stuff. We barely stayed in our rooms other than when we had to sleep because everyone was running around trying to capture well-enough footages for the project.

Here we go:

The first night on the cruise, we all stayed outside to enjoy [or freeze, rather] the breeze and the night view of parts of Hubei and the mountainous areas. There wasn't much to do and we spent the time walking around the ferry. I can't exactly recall what time it was but all of us were called to the top when the ferry reached the locks.

Having briefly studied this in Introduction to Freight Forwarding, I found it rather interesting to see what I've learnt being enacted. The image at the top shows us entering the first ever lock and the bottom one shows the gate closing behind us.

After waiting for quite some time and seeing the water being pumped, the gates finally opened! Ok, no the bottom one isn't the image of the other side. It's just the first lock of 5 at the next part of the dam. Click here to read on how a dam lock works.

A few of us intended to stay up to witness the ferry moving through the locks but it took too long and we all headed to bed instead.

The view of the mountains in the morning. The morning after, we all left the ferry to get on smaller boats to get a little closer to nature at the Witch Goddess Creek. [ 巫山神女溪]

The view there took my breath away [and so did the cigarettes from selfish smokers]. It's uncommon to be this close to nature in Singapore besides Bukit Timah Hill. Sometimes, I dislike that we're a concrete jungle but home is home regardless.

Next, we went to 白帝城 where we snapped a gazillion more photos [of which I can't upload because I've exceeded the limit]. It was another breath-taking sight and I wished that my family was there with me just because.

Reflection: Having seen a side of Hubei apart from the busy streets and even busier people, I saw a side of the country that seems so peaceful and close to nature. Sometimes, when the going gets tough, all I want to do is get away to someplace quiet and pleasing to the eye - probably somewhere away from people and closer to nature. It's hard to find that in Singapore. There isn't exactly a space to sit and calm your nerves besides cafes. Not until recently, we haven't any sites that actually enables people to closer to nature besides reservoirs. But with spaces like the tree top walk and such, I guess us Singaporeans can get a little close to the flora and fauna that way. Like one of the NE Messages, we have turned a challenge [lack of land hence the need to clear areas for development. thereby leading to loss of forested areas] to an opportunity ['forest walk through reservoirs to make up for the lack of natural sites]. This isn't exactly a reference to the original NE message so I'll include it in another post k?

I shall end this post with photos taken at the 3 Gorges Dam. Having been a Geography student, I've learnt of all these things and I guess I threw all the information back at my teacher after the O Levels. But seeing all these things that I've studied for in the past in real life, it makes me happy to know that I graduated from school with not only a certificate but also some lessons and interesting facts that we sometimes hardly notice around us.

And I can't remember where exactly this was but we had a choice. To either climb up the steps or pay a few yuen to have something like a gondola lift send you up the slope.