Chongqing surprised us both. We had read in the Lonely Planet that it is nothing more than 'concrete city' - a stop-off on the way to a Yangtze Cruise - so we didn't expect to see bright neon lights, swanky restaurants and a Hong Kong style skyline across the river. But that was what we found.
We had taken a bus from Chengdu to Chongqing. The journey was only around 4 hours and so we arrived early evening and jumped in a taxi to our hostel. Unfortunately the staff at our hostel spoke very little English so we had a few communications problems when we first arrived. After we settled in we took a stroll along the riverfront to admire the skyline. We came across some traditional chinese dancing going on in a square and sat and watched for a while.
We headed to a restaurant which seemed clean and the staff where very friendly and welcoming - but didn't speak a word of English! We had a few problems asking if they had a menu in English until a guy came up to us and helped interpret what they were saying. We found out it was a specialist
Turtle restaurant - oh dear, not really what we wanted. We didn't want to insult the staff who had been so welcoming so we asked if we could possibly order something like sweet and sour pork instead. They seemed amused but nodded and showed us to a private room. We felt like VIPs! We had a fantastic meal of sweet and sour chicken, marinated pork ribs, beer, as much rice as we could eat and as much green tea as we could drink. Really lovely food - and all for around 6 GBP for the two of us!
Language was becoming a problem in most areas of Chongqing - especially near our hotel, so the next day we decided to head into the main part of the City to find some recommended Tour companies to book our Yangtze cruise. We took a cable car over the Yangtze to get to the main part of the city which was an experience. We also noticed how different the skyline looked in daylight - it really did turn into concrete city when the neon lights were turned off. A shame really. We spent the whole day running between tour companies to try
and get a good deal for a Yangtze Cruise. They all worked out pretty expensive, even the non-western chinese boat option so we decided to go back to the hotel and think about it. That evening we ordered a real (!) chinese takeaway through our hotel (which was a task and a half with the communication problem, we had to mimic the animal sounds ie oink oink or moooo just to make sure we didn't get any woof or meow meat (so common here)!). When it came it was dead yummy.
The following day after realising that we had no other option, we headed back to the main City to buy one of the Yangtze Cruise tickets on the Chinese non-tourist boat which was going to be 2 nights and three days. The bus was leaving the same afternoon at 4pm to take us to Yichang where the cruise would start so we had a mad dash in the morning to get everything sorted. We made it on time in the end though.
We had read a few really bad reviews for the Chinese tour boats on the internet and the Lonely Planet had not been too complimentary
either although it bigged it up as a good budget option - so we were slightly aprehensive. The western options had been three times the price and had been a rediculous amount of money for just a few days so they were out of the question - and this was the only other option.
Luckily, we had a great time...................
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