In the morning, Nathan got up at 5:30am to see the sunrise and take some pictures. We then had another nice western breakfast before boarding a smaller boat to explore the Lesser Three Gorges. These three gorges are on a Yangtze River tributary, and the water is a much more pleasant color. We boarded the boat with our China PAC group (our adopted family of Canadians, Americans, and Poles), about 20 Australians and a local guide. We rode around for 2 hours before boarding an even smaller boat to continue on. The water was changing from an aqua blue to an emerald green, and we also started to see some wildlife. Monkeys were climbing around on the cliffs, and we saw a few goats with local farmers. As we rode by, these local farmers sang to us in very foreign and tinny voices. On our way back through we realized that these locals were paid to walk around and sing to us. The man with the goat would walk up a dirt path for 20 paces or so, turn around, and walk back. He repeated this all day as tourists rode by. We traveled back the same way that we came, and boarded our Dragon boat at about 1:15pm for a late lunch. Much to our dismay, the soup served at lunch was strangely familiar, tasting like a watered-down version of the previous day’s soup served at lunch and dinner. After lunch, we retreated to our room to read and sleep for the afternoon. Dinner was another formal banquet, this time called the Three Kingdoms banquet, modeled after a special banquet from 1700 years ago. In the evening we had more crew entertainment, but this time the games were not as popular. We started with another dance from the crew followed by a demonstration from the cruise chefs. One beautifully decorated a cake and the other carved an impressive fruit arrangement. The cake was sold to Elona for only 5 Yuan ($0.60 USD), and our China PAC group all enjoyed eating it. Allen introduced a game of Chinese musical chairs. Our friend Elona almost won, but conceded to an Aussie girl. The last act of the night’s entertainment was a fashion show of various Chinese periods and social classes. Most of the crew did fairly well with nice smiles and poses, but one guy was quite the overachiever. He strutted down the runway at quite a pace and struck a very serious pose at the end. It was off to bed after that as the crew attempted to change the bar into a night club with flashing lights and the numa numa dance (look it up on Google if you don't know what it is).
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