Yangtze/Victoria cruise line question

[npphotog]

Has anyone been on a Yangtze river cruise using the Victoria cruise line?

The brochures suggest that you should NOT charge batteries in your cabin but take them to the reception desk. I have a digital camera battery charger that uses 110/220 and the same for my electric razor. Would be very inconvenient not to be able to recharge in our cabin. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Not leaving until next May 8th. Thanks, Willard

[fromday2]

I think the power in the cabin might not be "clean" enough to work with all chargers. They want you to take your charger and battery to the front desk so they can charge it with good quality power. I did not try to charge batteries in the cabin.

 

Al

[smallworld]

Has anyone been on a Yangtze river cruise using the Victoria cruise line?

The brochures suggest that you should NOT charge batteries in your cabin but take them to the reception desk. I have a digital camera battery charger that uses 110/220 and the same for my electric razor. Would be very inconvenient not to be able to recharge in our cabin. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Not leaving until next May 8th. Thanks, Willard

 

I just returned from a tour of China that included several days on the Yangtze. The ship was the Victoria "Anna". I think this is their newest ship, so what may be true about her may not be true about the other ships in their fleet. However, they made the same request to check with the desk before using electrical devices. That does not necessarily mean that is where you must use them. You could charge a battery there, but that might not be a convenient place to use a curling iron.

 

I found the Anna to be pretty much the same as the hotels we stayed in through out China (and Tibet) i.e. the bathrooms have outlets identified for razors only, but the rest of the room or cabin has outlets that will work with any electrical device providing you have the right plug adaptors and transformer, if necessary. I suspect the outlets in the bathroom have some kind of safety device built in that makes them unsuitable for high current devices with heating elements, i.e. curling irons. I can tell you they did not work with my wife's curling iron.

 

Be aware that throughout China there are different plug configurations for the same 220v 50cycle power. I think we had to use three different plug adapters depending on where we were. One hotel had two different plug configurations in the same room. I do not remember what the Anna had, but I seem to recall it was a two pin round plug.

 

Whenever we used any of our electrical devices I always used our travel transformer. It was probably not needed with my my wife's curling iron and P&S camera because they are both dual voltage. However, my DSLR charger is not dual voltage so I had to carry the transformer with us anyway.

 

In three weeks, we never had a problem with power. I suspect the reason Victoria wants you to bring your device to the desk is to make sure the correct adaptors are being used. They probably want to protect their outlets and circuits more than they are interested in protecting your device.

 

Just to give you an idea of what happens. In one hotel, we found a three pin configuration that we could not match up to any of the five or six plugs we carry. Like the US, the third pin is a ground so I just assumed the corresponding two pin plug would work but without the safety of the ground. However, they have smart receptacles, there is some kind of locking device that prevents the two plugs from being inserted if there is no third plug. As luck would have, shortly after we checked in, a maintenance man came to our room to replace a light bulb. We explained the problem and he promply inserted a small screw driver into the third hole which released the lock for the two other pins. Then he simply inserted our two plug adapter into the receptacle. That worked fine until my wife unplugged her curling iron after the first use without realizing she would be unable to plug it in again. At that point, I am sure the hotel would have preferred that I come to the desk rather than do what I did. I won't go into that story, but I got the plug back in without damaging anything or electrocuting myself.

 

Good luck and enjoy China.