We arrived at Chongqing early. Let me say now, there is no other reason to visit Chongqing than to go on the river cruise. Do you yourself a favour and arrive no earlier than a few hours before your cruise departure time as this place is nothing special.
We'd booked a public ferry as opposed to a luxury cruise and struck it lucky. We got a four star ferry, it was no where near as luxurious as the ship I cruised down the Nile on. It had no swimming pool, we had to pay for a pass that allowed us to go on the top deck which had a bar and observation deck. We also had to pay for our meals which were ok but expensive as you'd expect. We fared a lot better than our friend, Roland who opted for one class lower than ours and ended up on in the same class as us but on a more meagre ship, as he said, he'd have happily given up the upgrade to be on our boat instead.
We were promised an English speaking tour guide and got a Spanish tour guide, and had to use other people's tour guides to speak to our own. Nova, Kul I wished at least one of you were here.
If you're going to use a public ferry whilst you can go it alone I would recommend taking someone with you. The ferries have very few foreigners on board and I suspect it could get a bit lonely in the evenings otherwise. That's the thing with travelling alone, you don't mind sightseeing alone but in the evenings you want or should I say I need people to talk to. There's always plenty milling around the hostels but on a public ferry those that speak something other than the native language are few and far between.
All I can say is thank god I met Paul when I did, he saved me and he'd agree that I saved him. We were both saved by Elly and Maria. Elly is a lovely lady from Holland and Maria is a Chinese lady who speaks perfect English, bliss.
We spent the evenings playing cards and listening to karaoke at the bar and while some of the singing was good about half was appalling. I like that about China, people don't care if they are good or not it's just fun to sing and no-one seems to take the piss if someone is really bad. Everyone knows Japan is karaoke mad, let me say China is just as addicted. I would say every city and town I've been to has as many karaoke bars, recognisable by the acronym KTV, as Internet Cafes.
Against the recommendation of our tour guide we also went into town to watch a local musical extravaganza one evening. I couldn't believe our tour guide's cheek and glad we went against his wishes. Through an interpretor he said unless we went with a tour guide (read obviously not him) we should not go as hardly anyone in town spoke English and getting to and from the theatre would be too hard for us.
Fortuitously we'd met Roland earlier for dinner and then together we'd bumped into his friend, Wang from his ship. Wang got us there and back effortlessly. He saved us from being ripped off too. The minibus wanted to charge us 10Y whereas they offered him 2Y. Naturally we all paid 2 each.
There were at least a couple of excursions every day. No matter what time of day they were it be it 10 pm or 6 am the excursions would get announced over the tannoy in Chinese only and a few moments later one of the English speaking guides sent by our guide would knock on our door and give us an English translation ;-)
There's not really a lot to say about this trip except it was beautiful and relaxing. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.
Yes I did finish the trip by going to see the Three Gorges Dam, it is huge and they took us to four view points - definitely a bit of an overkill but glad to have done it.
Following the cruise I spent the night in Yichang and had a lovely evening with Elly and Roland. Maria decided to have a early night. The following day I caught an overnight train to Xi'an.
Culinary Discoveries:
Red Bean smoothie - nice would have been perfect if they hadn't added sugar or at least added much less of it.
Pork fat - doesn't matter what other ingredients or sauce it comes with, it is disgusting. I know Paul and Roland definitely disagree but they're blokes which I think says it all.
Pork intestine - at least that what I think it was, it was white and had a curve to it along it's length. Chewy and not nice either.
Sweet and sour pork, lemon chicken - these are so much better in China than in the UK mainly because they are not so sickly sweet.
Yes, you've guessed it pork is the most popular meat, chicken and beef do appear on menus but there are far fewer dishes containing these of which chicken and peanuts seems to be the most popular.
Fish - all types, China has yet again proved my theory that ALL countries cook fish better than Britain which is shameful considering we're an island. I'm waiting to find a land locked country that does fish better of which I'm sure there are plenty.
