Just a quick update. Most of the tours have been finalized. I will go into more detail on these as we get to the various ports of call. All of them are private. I am the leader on 3 and sharing 5 others. It is a lot of work, but fun doing this with new and old friends from cruise critic.
The latest dark cloud brewing on my horizon - CDC just announced that China has had an outbreak of polio. I had to add polio boosters
to the must do list.Our original plan was to spend 3 days pre-cruise in Singapore and then the 35 day cruise on the Diamond Princess from Singapore to Vancouver. However, after great thought, we added on 6 days in China. That was shortly after deciding to pull a Bonnie & Clyde and rob a few banks.
I have always wanted to do a Yangtze River cruise as well as see the Terra Cotta Warriors. Carlos wanted to see the largest hydro-electric dam in the world - Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze. The dam is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity (21,000 MW), but is second to Itaipu Dam with regard to the generation of electricity annually. So we added this side junket and booked this tour through Jeff with Beijing Discovery Tours.
Our travel buddies: we booked the 35 day cruise with Joe & Gretchen Rezash.
Our friends from Heritage Shores, Vicky & Herb Gray
were doing the pre-cruise and then 16 days on the Diamond. Unfortunately, Vicky had back surgery and they had to postpone the cruise until 2013.
A neighbor from Heritage Shores, Phil Clark,
is making the pre-cruise portion of the trip with us. We will meet up with him in Hong Kong and spend 6 days in China before he heads to Beijing and we head to Singapore.
Pre Cruise Tours:
We fly out from Dulles on April 3 to Hong Kong. We will overnight there and catch a flight to Xian to tour the Terra Cotta Warriors. After two days in Xian, we fly to Chonquing to board the Sunshine China River boat for our 3 day/4 night trip down the Yangtze to Yichang. After a short flight from Yichang to Shanghai, where we spend 1 night, we fly to Singapore to board the Diamond.
