Harrow Three Gorges!

26th April - Chong Qing - Hot Pots and Cute Pandas!

We arrived off our third night train into Chong Qing (actually pronounced Chong Ching) at about 10amish. We had a fairly hectic few days of travel ahead. We taxi'd to a hotel where we would leave our bags for a few hours before getting a 4.5hr bus journey that evening to our boat for our 2 day cruise (I'm taking some poetic license using the word "cruise" ...more later!). At first we thought this could be a bit of a drag, but then one word made all those worries go away...PANDA'S!! Yes Chong Qing Zoo is home to a few pandas and we would have time to go there and see them!

Off we popped like giddy school-children with a spring in our step, and got a taxi to the zoo. It was an absolutely gorgeous sunny day, just to make things even better. We arrived at the zoo and made our way straight to the Panda enclosure. At first we didn't know what to expect, perhaps thinking the pandas would be behind screens or just on view at certain hours etc. but then we turned a corner and just couldn't believe our eyes. There, perched on a bench, happlily munching his way through a mass of eucalyptus (or so I'm assuming) was a panda! Well I grabbed my camera as quickly as a papparazzo about to get a crotch shot of Katie Price, and started getting a few shots.





We couldn't believe how close we were able to get, and even happier to discover there was more than one panda in the zoo. However, when we strolled around to see the other pandas, they were more sedate and kept in the shade so it was hard to get a good view. Still, we were ecstatic wtih our pictures of the first panda so nothing could have wrecked our buzz.







We were on a bit of a tight schedule so after a quick look around some of the other animals in the zoo, we grabbed a taxi back through the centre of Chong Qing to our hotel. Earlier on in the trip, Xu had mentioned the possibility of trying a local speciality dish on our trip - a Hot Pot. He did stress though, that if you didn't like spice, then pack up and stay at home ;)

Me of course, afraid to miss out, was like "sign me up buddy!", and here in Chong Qing was a restaurant highly recommended for its Hotpot. Joining me an Xu, the other foodies that braved the Hotpot challenge were my fellow dumpling banqueters - Emma and Bethany, and for the hotpot, fellow Geordie Niki came along too.

To explain how it works, a massive bowl of oil with chillis, chillis and more chillis floating and marinating in it is placed over a flame in the centre of the table. You then choose from the menu the various items you'd like to have "hotpot'ed" shall we say. Xu knew we were a fairly easy going bunch so he just went hell for leather and ordered loads of stuff. We had everything from fish, meatballs, quails eggs, tofu strips, mushrooms and many more items that I just can't remember! Basically you tip in the dish of raw meatballs / mushrooms etc, and wait for them to rise to the top of the bubbling bowl of spicy hot goodness. When this happens you know they're ready to eat.

All I can say is thank jaysus we'd been using chopsticks for a while now coz can you imagine trying to pick up a tiny quails egg, with chopsticks from a boiling bowl of oil... WITH CHOPSTICKS. Tellin ya, it was like a challenge from the Krypton Factor. But you know yourself, when there's food involved - when there's a will there's a way!
Holy god was it hot. I mean our skin was sweating, our noses were running, even our eyes were sweating!! If there was any hint of a blocked nose, or a clogged pore amongst us, it was long gone by the time this meal was over! But the food was amazing. Once you got over the initial "ohmygodI'vecrematedmytastebuds" feeling, the spice tasted great - that's the one thing I have to admit about the food in China so far, I love how they pack the flavour in! After the h-h-hotpot lunch, the 5 of us strolled back to the hotel, core body temperature slowly returning to normal. Along the way Xu dropped into conversation, that we may not be feeling so great later, if our stomachs weren't used to the oil and heat. We were like "ah here Xu thanks for letting us know NOW!!!". Nothing we could do then, so we all just gave each other a hopeful look, and returned to meet the others.

When we re-convened with the group, we all made the back-breaking 20min walk to our bus depot, where we would take a 4.5hour bus journey with other chinese holiday makers to a boat which would sail us down the Yangtze River, through the famous 3 Gorges. The air-con on the bus was a welcome relief, and all in all the journey wasn't so bad.

We emerged from the bus a little tired, but excited to see what this "boat" would be like. Well you know what, we weren't disappointed! We all checked into our rooms, each of which was like a small hotel room with an en suite. A lot better than we expected! Also on the top of the boat we saw to our delight there was a huge deck area. After a hectic few days travelling on buses and overnight trains we all made a plan to grab some deck chairs and do a whole lot of nothing on that deck, the following day!
27th April - Club Feckin' Tropicana

We awoke completely refreshed and energised on Friday the 27th April. Xu had told us the night before that we would be entering the first of the three gorges at approx. 10.45am so we all made our way to the top deck to have a goo. It was absolutely beautiful, if you happen to see or have any 10 Yuan notes, the first gorge of the three gorges is on the back of this note.

Gorge 1 of the 3 Gorges

After we sailed past the gorge, we all went to the dining room on the boat and had lunch. The lunch was buffet style, so as much as you'd like. Lots of traditional chinese dishes on offer and salady stuff and some potatos - which I attacked with the kind of enthusiasm usually displayed by a child at a birthday party. Delish they were.

Once suitably stuffed, we donned our beach attire and hit the deck like it was poolside as the Beverley Hills Hotel. Lucky for us, all of our fellow passengers were gone on some boring sounding day trip so we had the boat to ourselves, and more importantly the deck and all its recliners to ourselves. Whacked on the factor 20 and laid out to bake. Heaven.

I'm the white one

That evening we went down to the bar to see the "local entertainment" Xu had promised us. Oh entertaining it was. The entertainement consisted of a few locals getting their Celine Dion on, on the Karaoke machine. It was absolutely hilarious. I had to get a video of one guy, it was priceless. His whole song (all in Mandarin of course), seemed to consist of high notes, which Celine Dion himself decided to pitch just slightly off key - it was carnage. Wildly entertaining though! After a couple of beers, I took my slightly less albino'd skin to bed.

28th April - On the road again...

Well this day pretty much consisted of travel, travel and more travel. We left the boat at 7.30am where we got a 1.5hour bus to some town. The only thing of interest that happened along the way is we passed the 3 Gorges Dam. It's a huge 30km long dam. But lets face it, at 8am in the morning, a dam's a feckin dam. I took one obligatory blurry photo and let Morrissey sing me back to sleep on the bus.

We arrived in some town in the arsehole of nowhere about 10am. We got some food in the Walmart and boarded another 4.5 hour bus to Wuhan. In Wuhan we would be boarding our next night train. We had some time to kill so grabbed some steamed dumplings for dinner, and got aboard. Boarded the train about 7ish bound for Guilin.