As I was saying... we arrived in Chongqing quite late at night and we were met by our guide Jesse. She was very patriotic towards Chongqing and on the way to our hotel she gave us a "brief history of the city". Si stared out the window and she turned round in her seat and began... "our city is very famous for...." this became a pattern and every other sentence while she was telling us that Chongqing has 3 names (capital of fog, capital of hills and capital of something else) whilst i tried not to laugh!

By the time we got to our hotel we were shattered so went straight up to our room, which compared to some of the places we had been staying in was a palace!! It was huge with a king size bed (which was still very hard as with most beds in China) but the shower room was granite and marble with a huuuuge mirror it was sheer bliss!

The next few days were no exception. Once we boarded our cruise ship it was a nice break from having to hunt for food and, hard beds and we became very accustomed to it! The cabin was small as expected but comfortable, and the ship "Princess Jeannie" was nice. The first evening during the safety briefing we met Nick and Michaela a couple that were our saviors on board i.e one of the few other people on there that were under the age of 65. We also met Howard for the first time, a nice Chinese bloke who was our interpreter. He had an odd habit of asking himself questions then answering them "Is my name howard?...yes my name is Howard" and so on and so forth.

The food was nice, a big buffet full of local and western delicacies which after the crap we'd been eating was amazing! There was the usual cruise entertainment which kept us amused no end with people making fools of themselves! Including Si who won the drinking competition (no surprises there) and won us some free beer which was lucky as the prices were astronomical!

The excursions and sights were what we were there for though the luxury was just a bonus. The first on was to a place called Fengdu, the Chinese Capital of the Underworld. At first the thought of another temple was more than we could bear but this one turned out to be good fun. Apparently its where people go after they die to see if they were good or bad and which afterlife they were going to, and in order to test this they had three tests. The first was to cross a bridge (yep that was it!) if you were bad the serpant from the underworld would come and drag you down. The second was to step through a door way and not fall over or touch the door frame or else the ghosts would come and take you down, the thrid and final one was to balance on a round stone opposite the king of the underworld himself and stay there for three seconds. If you passed all of these then you were a good person, and guess what...we are! The temple itself was nice lots and lots of steps which the fat americans struggled with we overheard comments like "it just hurts so much" and "come on you can do it" then the cheers as they reached the top (of ten steps).

The next day we went through the gorges and got up at 6am to see the first and supposedly most spectacular gorge. Wish we could confirm or deny this but due to the thick fog we could only see 20 metres either way so the bottom half of them was lovely but the tops were not so sure about.

The rest of the day it got brighter and we were able to see the other two and they were huuge! considering that already 110 metres had were already under water, anyone who gets chance should go before they are lost, beautiful, but I'll let the pictures speak for themsleves.

Another trip was up a tributary of the Yangtse to go on a sanpan boat. It's a small boat with 6 crew memeber on it. Where the water is deep they row up the stream but as it gets shallower that have to get out and pull. This is an ancient tradition and they are called trackers, you can see their paths all along the sides of the river but this is now the only place they do it, and its only done now for tourists as the motor boat can go where oars can't. It was a good day, however it was dissapointing that they now wear clothes as only 16 years ago they did it in the nude!! A couple next to us shared their beer, and we all tucked into our packed lunch which included a vaccum packed sausage, a boiled egg, a thimble full of jelly and a hame sandwich (with no butter or anything just bread and ham)!So we made the most of it and enjoyed going down some small rapids on the way back.

The final day we went to the dam project. It was a megastructure! Its going to provide China with 40% of its power (which apparently is enough to do most of Europe). Theres a museum a 2 way ship lock and a even ship elevator. Theres also gardens and a viewing point and soon there will be a golf course. It was a strange place, have to hope thats its worth everything its destroying, but it was a must see.

The last evening we went to the ship's farewell party, where we saw some more world class entertainment from Micheal the Chinese singer and some dancing chefs but the real icing on the cake was the final song that we were all invited to join in with...Auld Lang Syne! We crossed our arms and sang like it was well..New Years Eve.

When we woke up on the final morning the fun really began, we found out that that ship was going to be very very late into Wuhan and we were going to miss our train. We called our tour guide who assured us all would be fine and she was aware that it was late and the guide would meet us and put us on another train. When we docked the guide told us we had no cabin or bed in which to sleep but that has was going to come on the train with us and buy them on board. So we waited at the strain station for 2 hours then 10 minutes before we were due to leave we were told that the trian was delayed by an hour, good start so far. When we finally got out to the train it was full, no beds anywhere. I was not a happy bunny and this poor guide got the brunt of my temper. I told him we had paid for a sleeper and i wanted one, and i didnt care what he did to get it. He offered us the chance to sleep on the floor behind a locked door which we declined then he found us a single bed to share which we were happy enough with, but they wouldn't allow it. Finally he found us what they call a hard sleeper. This is a dormatory of 3 high single bunk beds...oh joy. When if you have been to China and seen some of their habits you will understand our dread. They stare, rea;;y gorpe at you, then theres the spitting the loud talking not to mention the train jolting. At one point we were sat on some fold down seats Si went to the loo (which we did as little as possible as they were disgusting) and his seat folded back up against the wall. The man that was sat behind him had been staring at us for about an hour and as soon as Si's seat had popped back up and he'd dissapeared he hocked up everything he could muster from his throat and spat it out right under his seat!!! It was the worst nights sleep ever, if we got any at all. At 3am I was awoken by a man sitting on a table at the end of my bed eating a pot noodle as louldy as he could in the dark!!!

When morning came we were more than grateful to get off that train and head straight for our hostel to shower and sleep! Some people say with the locals its the best way to travel, they haven't done it Chinese style! The tour company were very appologetic and gave us gifts and we forgave them and by the time we were clean and rested we weren't even too fussed but very gld it was over. Anyways were in Guilin safe and sound, and back to street food and bargaining again!