Chongqing – furnace of China – 31 Aug

We had been warned that the road to Chongqing was terrible and sure enough, the bus bumped and jolted its way over potholes and through construction sites for hours. The whole trip was quite an experience, including local men spitting in the aisle, squat toilets with no dividing walls let alone doors, toilets that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, and a dubbed version of ‘Starship Troopers’ being played on the DVD which jumped and re-started every time we hit a big pothole. The driver eventually gave up after 15 re-starts!

Chongqing has a population of 32.5 million – luckily spread over 82,000 km and is known as one of the three furnaces of China. Our guide ‘Harry’ met us at the bus stop and cheerfully informed us that it was 43 degrees Celsius today! (110 F).

The boat we were originally booked on had suffered engine failure so we were now on boat No.8 (pictured here) which makes a cross-channel ferry look like the Grand Princess.


















This was a 1st class cabin – 2.5m wide - those in 2nd class shared this with 4 people! You had to be really careful not to fall down the toilet while having a shower (which was river water by the way).

The ship's luxurious 'lounge'.... Lovely!







As the boat didn’t leave until 8pm, we took taxis to ‘Carrefour’ to stock up on food for the next 3 days just in case the restaurant was awful (and it was).

Harry briefing us all on the 3 Gorges itinerary for the next 3 days. (All forgotten of course after several beers)