Eager to depart, we set off for town eventually finding a bus to take us there. Our process for getting to our accommodation is to find a landmark close by and ask for a bus there, then we do an adlib tour of the town to try and find it! Our landmark today was the Liberation Monument right in the middle of town, and right by our destination hotel.
Finding our hotel today was the easiest yet, only upon arrival a piece of paper was shoved infront of us that stated:
"Notice: this is to inform you of the disqualification of our hotel to receive any foreign guests due to the special affiliation to the army."!
Gobsmacked we wandered out and started our search for somewhere else to stay! Walking around fully loaded with our packs with nowhere particular to go was not part of our plan, especially in the middle of the day, considering Chongqing is one of China's 3 furnaces (that's 40 degrees, kind of hot)!
We continued walking through the town, eventually finding ourselves at Ming Yuan Hotel, where Liv asked to see the cheapest room, and we were taken to a lovely room with our own bathroom and shower (!) all for cheaper than what we were expecting (or willing) to pay, considering Chongqing is an expensive city to stay in - we are finding the further north we travel the more expensive life becomes.
The view from our room really showed just how concrete China cities reall are. We realised we were only posting pictures of the beautiful China sights and neglecting to show the reality of the concrete greyness that surrounds us daily - cranes are nestled amongst the skyscrapers that are constantly being built at the expense of existing rundown apartments where the majority of Chinese currently live.
Our activity for the afternoon was going to the Arhat Temple, the main attraction there being the 400 stone figures of Buddha carved into the rock entranceway - the temple was as beautiful as the many of other temples we have seen so far in China. One unique aspect of the temple was its position in the middle of the city, dwarfed by sky-scrapers and surrounded by the bustling city streets.
We decided to once again brave the Carrefour supermarket, but were surprised at the difference from the last experience: no kids peeing in the aisle or hundreds of people - thus we managed to get our supplies and get out with minimal fuss!
Our final errand for the day was to book our Yangzi river boat tickets, something we have been looking forward to since deciding to adlib our way to China a year ago - so we headed on a bus for Chaotianmen Dock.
On our way to the dock we came across 2 Chinese fire engines and commented about how they reminded us of Mumble's rural fire engines!
We were greeted with a wonderful English speaking Chinese girl who helped us get everything organised for our departure in 2 days time. We have decided to travel by hydrofoil instead of the usual tourist passenger boats, which take anywhere from 3-6 days to get to Yichang (the home of the controversial Three-gorges Dam). Our journey from Chongqing to Yichang will involve a 4 hour bus-ride to Wanzhou (missing a supposedly boring section of the Yangzi river) and then a 6 hour speedy boat ride straight through the Three Gorges.
Tickets in hand, we decided to wander along the Jialing River back to town, so we could experience this river, one of many that feeds the enormous Yangzi - getting ourselves terribly lost and wandering for hours!
We eventually boarded another bus, which doesn't really matter considering buses here are generally under 20 NZ cents, unless of course you happen to hop on an aiconditioned bus and then the price doubles! We headed back to town for tea at another cheap street kitchen and after almost 7 weeks on the road we finally cracked and treated ourselves to the familiar taste of a McDonalds sundae.Wandering beneath the neon lights we headed home for bed, we have a big day planned for tomorrow including a 6.30am wake up call!
Adlibing it into the furnace.
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