My grandparents often went on cruises during their later years, but I’m pretty sure none of their trips were anything like our first ‘cruise’ experience – on President 6 for four nights traveling upstream on the Yangtze river.

Our boat had around 400 passengers, which included 20 Germans on a tour (don’t get me started on their Chinese guide who was totally incompetent on the tanoy system, initially funny but not so much when he got hold of it for a ship-wide 5.45am wake-up call blasting into our room!), one American guy with a Chinese wife, us and the rest were domestic Chinese tourists. Mostly over 70 years old, some with grandchildren in tow. We were certainly going to stand out! It was a time for us to really get to know and understand the Chinese. Initially a little daunted when they kept on coming over to speak to us – always in Mandarin – expecting us to be able to respond – and taking our photo – but soon we got used to it and Joanna would brilliantly respond by taking a photo of them with her camera!

The girls were a major hit on the boat, especially after Molly won a game of Musical Chairs on stage during the opening night show, swiftly followed by me jumping up for the Macarena (cringe).

Soon preparations began for their performance in the talent show on our last night – deciding to do a dance and gymnastics set to ‘I’m Still Standing’ sung by Taron Egerton (aka Johnny) in Sing. (its Elton John originally).

It was a welcome shift in pace to the Chinese karaoke numbers presented by our fellow passengers and was praised by Sid, our brilliant guest service assistant who was there to help us with anything we needed.

Meals were served in a dining room with tables allocated, we shared with a family of elderly parents and two middle-aged daughters, they didn’t speak much English but we enjoyed our time with them, trying desperately to follow etiquette with our shared lazy susan and fascinated by their eating habits! By now we were all getting to be pros with our chopsticks.

The boat didn’t move at all for the first 24 hours which was a little strange – mainly so we could do some excursions close by. We chose to go to see the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest artificial generator of electric power from a renewable source. A feat of modern engineering, the dam creates about 20% of China’s entire GDP. It was interesting to see the ship lifts and how it all works from various viewing platforms. Most fascinating was to appreciate what the effects the dam has had on the local population with water levels changing so much – millions of homes have been lost and families rehoused.

Another excursion we did from the boat was a trip along the Shennong Stream to see the little three gorges (nicknamed the parrot, dragon and elephant due to the shapes of the craggy outcrops!). We saw a coffin perched miles up high which has been there for over a thousand years. Part of the journey was in rowing boats, where six paddlers move about 12 passengers, with two of them jumping out and running along the hillside next to the river and pulling the boat with ropes.

On the third morning we walked to the Shibao Pagoda, a dramatic sight on ten floors on a high plot of land, reached by a wobbly bridge known as the drunk bridge! To walk over the Aihe bridge inside the accompanying emperor’s palace with your partner in no more than 10 steps will apparently make all your wishes come true.

The Yangtze is the longest river in China and third-longest in the world, we only went around 200km out of its 6300km, where the scenery is it its most spectacular. Watching the Wu, Qutang and Xiling Gorges mistily appear alongside us by day and passing under countless lit up enormous bridges by nightfall: to travel down the Yangtze was truly a magical experience at times, and the cruise memorable for many reasons!