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Published: October 29th 2013
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Today is a travel day: Guilin to Chungqing to Chengdu. We sleep late on our wonderful king-size bed, have an excellent breakfast buffet, including crunchy bacon. Because of today's upcoming train ride, we repack so that we can live out of our carry-ons for a couple of days. We check out of the hotel and are on the way by 11 am. After only about a half hour drive through the city, we stop early for lunch. It's excellent but no one is hungry because breakfast was only a couple of hours earlier. The meal includes an attractive ying/yang soup (see picture), excellent crispy duck and noodles with meat balls. Jack our tour guide treats the group to osmanthus wine, which tastes something like Dubonnet.
We continue the bus drive through Guilan to the airport. The drive reinforces our opinion that this is an extremely pretty city that we would like to spend more time in.
We eventually reach the Guilan airport, but our flight has been delayed by an hour; then there is a change of gates. So we sit around and chat. I have to say that this is one of the nicest groups of people we
have every travelled with. No whiners or complainers (or, as someone said, we take turns whining), everyone polite and helpful and looking out for each other. And no smokers!
We finally board our plane and after a 2 hour fight arrive in Chungqing, the largest city you have never heard of, in fact the largest in China. We connect with our local guide Jim, board the bus and drive into the city. Traffic is, as you might expect, bad. We get an intro to the city of Chingqing, Jim's home town. He is clearly very proud of the city and its status as an autonomous region.
We stop for supper at a restaurant. We are now in Sichuan province and the food is noticeably spicer, in particular a kick-ass peanut chicken dish. Because of the flight delay and the terrible traffic, the bus has in the meantime headed for the train station with our bags. And we are off on an unscheduled subway adventure!
The subway is crazy crowded. Jim has to buy a pass card for each person from a vending machine, which takes a while. We are clearly fish out of water out and so we get checked out frequently both on the platform and on the train. My height certainly attracts attention from the locals. We take one train then switch levels and take another. At one point we end up high above the city, which is surprising because we started underground. Somehow our group manages to stay together and emerge intact at the train station. Our bus is waiting there. We retrieve our carry-on bags only from the bus; our large suitcases will be bused directly to the river boat in Chonqing.
We enter the bustling train station, pass through security and board the longest train I have ever seen. It's a high-speed train that travels up to 200 km/hr, an amazingly smooth ride. The trip to Chengdu takes about an hour and a half.
We are met in Chengdu by another bus and transported to the so-called Serengeti Hotel with an African theme, of all things. It is spacious and beautifully decorated, but we will find a number of details missing for a professed 5-star hotel.
It is now after midnight, and we are basket cases. The bed feels great.
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