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Published: July 19th 2009
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Having booked ourselves onto a three night Yangtze River trip (not the luxurious cruise that you may have in mind) in our last hostel, we made our way to Chongqing, a huge city that marks the beginning of our river adventure. We left Xi'an on an overnight hard sleeper from a busy, warm and dirty train station. Having waited for the stampede of Chinese passengers to enter the train we leisurely strolled on. We met a trio of Netherlanders in the hostel who were on the same train and the three of us marveled at the lengths that the passengers went to in order to ensure that they were on the train as quickly as possible. You could tell that they were already fuming that the train was running a whopping 11 minutes late. We made sure to book bottom bunks for the train. It makes such a difference having, both, your own space and contact with the floor,especially, if the journey begins during the day.
The Dutch trio were also booked onto a river cruise but they were to depart the same day our train arrived whereas we had one night in Chongqing. We'd booked the trip off the
John and we had managed to scab a lift from one of the John's employees to our hostel, via the John's apartment. The drive between the train station and the John's was brief but hot. Chongqing is one of the hottest places in China and is known in China as one of the three furnaces; Wuhan and Nanjing being the fellow furnaces and fellow destinations of ours. It was very difficult not to be impressed by Chongqing. The drive was pretty spectacular. The city is built right on the banks of the Yangtze and is surrounded by hills and mountains. Skyscrapers stretched far up the hill sides and sit staggered looking over the river. The most impressive view was from the bridge. If you were to do a panoramic pirouette in any metropolis anywhere in the world I doubt that you would see more skyscrapers than you would pulling off a 360 spin from this Chongqing bridge.
Along with the Dutch we were brought to the John's apartment. It was in a pretty fancy apartment block right on the river and was more like a hotel that a block of apartments. We were saluted by the front of house
as we entered. At first we were a little skeptical but once we made it into the John's or John's Cozy Nest as he calls it we were blown away by the view. We then made arrangements to be dropped of at our hostel, conveniently located three doors away, and to be collected the next day.
I spent the next 18 hours sweating profusely whilst Sarah and I took a walk around and up what felt like two thousand steps. We headed for Chaotianmen Square, which sits at the juncture between the, brown sediment filled, Yangtze River and the, emerald coloured, Jialing River and bathed our feet. We watched locals swimming, fisherman untangling their nets and scores of Chinese tourists boarding the many cruise ships and were amused by the amount of camera happy Chinese folk who 'discretely' tried snap sneaky photos of us. Later that evening we took a cable car trip across the river; I was still sweating profusely. The sun had set and the skyscrapers had become illuminated all around us.
We had some time to kill having been picked up, in person, by the John at the agreed time and escorted three doors down
and nineteen floors up to his apartment where he sat us down and tried his best to sell us everything. He wasn't pushy and when we said no he was happy to move on to something else. He recommended some places we would come to later in our trip. Seeing as he collected us at noon and we didn't have to be at the boat until 6.30 we had a lot of time to kill. We came across the Chongqing Planning Exhibition Gallery which, I am a little ashamed to admit, appealed to the geography geek in me. The scale models and 3D graphics were really quite impressive. There were even Sim City like computer games where you could build your own Chongqing and a Colin McCrea-esque driving simulator where you could drive round, where else but, Chongqing.
That evening, at the John's, we met up with an Irish couple that were to share a cabin with on the cruise and along with a Quebec-an couple and a quartet of French students we headed for the boat.
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madre
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hols
Just back from lanzarote and it makes our hols look like a day trip to Bangor! we did so little compared to all your vitality and adventures. I got everyone to go banana boating and when i saw the boat i chickened out and boarded the speed boat! eve got a black eye and i bruised all my toes trying to pull her on board . your blogs are so amazing and just makes me realise your love of life. good luck on the nxt leg MADRE N FAMILY XXXXXXXX