After a wonderful but all too brief couple of days in Chengdu, I caught a train to Chonqing. I departed from Chengdu’s shiny new train station, Chengdu East, which was a stark contrast to the somewhat run-down station I had seen in Beijing. The train too was fairly swanky, and a fast train that runs up to 200km per hour, meaning you can get to Chonqing in just 2 hours. I was exhausted, and slept for a little on the train, but when I awoke about an hour in I tried to force my eyes to stay open and witness my first real view of rural China, with the ramshackle houses and terraced farms. The extremely hilly, lush landscape was really pretty.

Arriving into Chonqing was also a much more pleasant experience than Xi’an had been. It was busy, but tolerably so (have I just been in China too long?), and it felt more ordered and clean. I also wasn’t immediately hassled by beggars, and this time, my transfer was waiting for me. We drove to the docks on the Yangtze river in about 20 minutes, and my guide helped me to check in to my luxury 5* cruise ship (which had been upgraded when the one I booked was cancelled!). As I suspected, my new roommate would be Julie, a lovely Canadian girl I had met in Chengdu. They’d told me they would try and pair me with another single female traveller, so when we’d realised the previous day that we were on the same ship, it seemed likely we’d be paired together, and we were. (Although I later discovered that they’d tried to pair Julie with an elderly Chinese lady, but she had specifically requested that we share a room instead).

The room was gorgeous – generously-sized twin beds (almost doubles), a lovely bathroom, reclining chair and a little balcony. Although it was rather pricey, I knew at least that all my food and entertainment was covered for the next few days. We would sail down the Yangtze to Yichang, where I had a flight to catch over to Shanghai. My guide had told me that I could pop out into Chongqing after checking in and find something for dinner (tonight was the only meal not included, as the cruise wouldn’t depart until 9pm), and he gave me directions before he left. But wandering out into Chonqing I felt immediately that this wasn’t very likely – it felt pretty sketchy where I was and although I saw a couple of cheap-ish places (one of which rather unnervingly had a picture of a dog giving a thumbs up – I wasn’t sure whether this meant they would be serving dog), I saw nothing that seemed likely to have an English menu, or even a picture-book menu that I would be able to apply the “point-and-nod” strategy for ordering food. Feeling fairly unsafe, I found a street vendor and bought some bananas (I’ve been craving fruit… I think I might be getting dangerously close to scurvy), and then found a small shop were I bought some snacks for the trip. I then hastily headed back to the confines of my room to do some blogging, and hopefully catch up with Julie for a few drinks.

The boat departed around 9pm, and we had a little explore of the facilities, which include a swimming pool (not heated; rather chilly this time of year), a cinema, mahjong room (a traditional chinese game involving tiles), and an extensive and very over priced series of gift shops. We came back to the room and I tried out some of the somewhat dubious ‘vodka’ I had bought for the trip – it tasted what I imagine lighter fluid might be like, but it had only cost me 90p so I figured it was no big loss. Still managed to put back two “vodka” cokes before bed. We chatted for a bit, and laughed hysterically at the regular announcements in Chinese which seemed unmistakably to be slipping the phrase “go shopping” in at every available opportunity – we eventually concluded this must be the Chinese for ‘ladies and gentlemen’, a suspicion that was confirmed by the hostess on our final night. We had an early start the following morning, so settled into bed fairly early after a wonderful hot shower.

Bright and early the following morning we were woken by another ‘go shopping’ announcement over the loud speaker (which had 4 volume options, all of which were ‘shouting’; the national volume of China). We had a buffet breakfast on the ship and then disembarked for our first shore excursion, to Fengdu Ghost City. This involved a 3 hour walk up over 400 steps, through several shrines and temples. Ghost city was thought to be the place where spirits would go after death, undergoing three judgements which would determine whether they entered heaven or hell. Interestingly, you must pass through heaven first, with hell being at the very top of the hill. It was an enjoyable morning out, the guide was very knowledgeable and spoke excellent English, and we chatted a little with an American tour group that were also on the cruise.

We spent the rest of the day on the boat. I was pleased to discover that Julie was as much a fan of napping as I am, and we had a lovely afternoon nap before the Captain’s welcome drinks an evening entertainment. I had a little work to do, and struggled a lot with internet access, but eventually got it all sorted out and we had a nice buffet dinner on the boat and watched the ‘caberet show’ provided by the cruise staff. This culminated in us watching about 50 Chinese over-fifties dancing to YMCA and Gangnam style; a rather surreal experience. The whole thing was over by 9pm, but me and Julie had a couple of vodka (real vodka that Julie brought) and sprites before bed.

The next morning there was an optional excursion at some stupid hour of the morning (7am, I believe), which we had chosen not to pay extra for, but this meant that breakfast was been served only until 8am. I dragged myself out of bed for this, determined that I would eat as much free food as possible (all the walking around and failing to find suitable restaurants has caused me to lose weight and I saw the all-inclusive buffet meals on the Yangtze cruise to rectify this). Julie stayed in bed. I feigned sleeping small talk with some of the other English-speaking guests and then went back to bed for a few hours. We both only just about woke up again in time to go out onto the deck and watch the first gorge go by, but it was well worth it. The scenary was stunning, although the constant reminders that the water had risen over 100m since the construction of the Three Gorges Dam further downstream made me wonder just how stunning it would have been a few decades ago. Not to mention the enormous sacrifice made by entire communities of people on this part of the Yangtze river, who lost entire towns and cities to the rising water. That afternoon we were let off the boat again, this time to board a smaller boat which would sail between the lesser three gorges, and allow us a closer experience of the beautiful surroundings. I spent most of this trip out on the deck of the boat, enjoying the scenery and taking photos. It was really beautiful, and interesting to sail past the small rural communities that farm on the steep slopes between the gorges. By the time we turned back around 2 hours later, I was getting pretty cold, and wanted to sit inside the boat. Unfortunately, the Chinese guide blasting full volume constantly for the entire journey made this almost intolerable.

I was now completely out of coca-cola to use as mixer for drinks, as I refused to pay the extortionate cruise-ship prices, and we hoped that we might buy some before boarding the ship again. Unfortuntately, the usually plentiful street sellers were oddly absent at this stage of the trip, and we returned to the boat empty handed. We sailed through some more gorges that afternoon before the Captains farewell dinner. This dinner was one of those awful ‘revolving dinners’ where dishes are brought out and you are expected to somehow coordinate a spinning table of food with 10 other people. It was a total nightmare, and frankly the food was pretty mediocre. The cruise staff were all there and dressed up, and evidently at least some of them were totally wasted. I managed to ask one of them for a soft drink with my dinner, and although he spilled a lot of coca cola on the floor, he did manage to pour me a drink. Dinner was all getting a bit much so me and Julie made a hasty retreat, and on the way out I couldn’t help but notice the remaining bottle of coke sitting out, unattended. I suggested to Julie that perhaps we should steal it. It seemed like a difficult feat to pull off, but as if by magic, as we walked past all the staff seemed to momentarily disappear and I was able to grab the bottle and fairly discretely slip it into my bag. Mission accomplished – we now had coke to mix with out vodka for the evening.

We had managed to arrange for a mahjong lesson with the guide from the American tour group, and so we met at 7pm in the games room. The next few hours were pretty intense. Along with Julie and I, another English-speaking passenger Pat had come to join us, along with a Chinese lady (who had been living in Canada for 40 years), the Chinese guide, and the cruise hostess, Penny. Immediately, all the Chinese-speaking people at the table began shouting and excitedly discussing the rules of the game. The first few rounds were a blur of tiles and most of my moves were selected by Penny. Finally, things started to calm a little and I began to get to grips with the rules more. We had a nice few rounds, where on a few occasions I came close to winning, and the called it a night. The stress of Mahjong had helped me finish off my entire drink, and I was feeling fairly merry at this point. We went back down to the lounge area to catch the end of the talent show, and then went to bed. We had the option to get up and watch the boat pass through the ship locks of the three gorges dam at around midnight, which I had intended to do, but we both slept through our alarms and didn’t wake again until the morning.

Our last morning of the cruise was spent visiting the three gorges dam, and it was interesting to hear some positive things said about this enormous construction, having spent the previous few days seeing the environmental changes that had been caused upstream. Apparently, as well as generating energy (around 2% of China’s total usage), the dam also aids in flood prevention downstream, and had lead to increased environmental legislation to clean up the river. It’s hard to tell what the truth of the situation is here, though, as an honest opinion is rarely expressed in China.

Returning to the boat we watched one final gorge go past before arriving in Yichang, where I had a transfer booked to the airport. Pleasingly, he let Julie come along too, and we had a wonderful lunch together before parting ways to board our respective flights. I was off to Shanghai that afternoon, a city I was very much looking forward to seeing.