China, here we come!

MAY 10-16
It’s Mothers Day and we leave for Shanghai on a plane with a malfunctioning entertainment system and frequent turbulence so spend much of the 12-hour flight confined to our seats with no movies, music, games or electrical connections in the console for our laptops. Luckily for us, we had a 4-hour battery and lots of movies on John’s laptop plus lots of books so the flight was a bit more manageable.
The Bund and Nanjing Road area in Shanghai is undergoing a complete facelift for the 2010 Expo so the entire area is demolished and closed off. It was quite disappointing not to see this area again as it was very pretty when we were here in 2001. However, we did get to ride on the new MAGLEV skytrain that goes 300km/hr. Very cool!
The flight from Shanghai to Yichang was a horror with multiple flight & destination changes, police incidents, physical altercations with passengers and almost literally missing the (cruise) boat. We made the cruise, a bit worse for wear but very happy to be there...