three gorgeous!

one of the best things about there being so many people in china is that transport is rarely a problem. in chengdu, i rocked up to the bus station and jumped on the next bus to chongqing - a city 6 hours away - at the drop of a hat. there are buses leaving every 20 minutes. that's more frequent than the bus i used to catch to high school.

chongqing is a world class city, and i fell in love with it immediately. perched on a big rock at the confluence of two massive rivers, it's got some of the steepest city streets in china, airy pedestrian shopping malls lined by designer outlets, the biggest supermarket i've ever been in in my life, and much more. if it wasn't for the fact that they all speak that bloody sichuan dialect, it would be my favourite city to hang around in.

i only stayed half a day, then jumped on a massive 5-story cruise-boat headed down the yangze river through the famous three gorges.

i wanted to see them before they were under-water, but had heard uniformly bad reports of the cruise. in retrospect, i don't know what the people i had talked to were expecting. floating for 3 days and 4 nights on a massive river surrounded by towering lush green peaks and frequent stops at areas of interest for the price of my last pair of jeans? definitely not getting a bad report from this traveller.

i had a second class cabin, which is usually 4 beds, but because we didn't get a window, i shared my cabin with only one other person. i couldn't remember his real name, so i called him 'the moron'. seriously, i have never met a more socially retarded passive aggressive fuckwit in my entire life. we were at each other's throats from the first night and the fun never stopped. he had friends in the neighbouring room, and would come back to our cabin at 3am and deliberately call out in his horrible sichuan dialect "gao an! are you asleep yet? i know you said you were tired, so DID YOU MANAGE TO GET TO SLEEP?". in turn i would try to humiliate him in front of his friends and throw shoes at the wall whilst they were playing mahjong. he moved all his things into the next room, and then left the door unlocked and open whilst i was away, with all my things lying there for people to steal. it's no secret that i actually quite enjoyed it. by the end of the trip we had developed a mutual respect for each other and i decided that we wasn't a bad guy. just too similar to me for us to get on ;)

we made one or two stops each day. on the first day we visited a temple complex known as 'the ghost town', or the 'city of death', but it had been so heavily reconstructed that i didn't know what was original and what was fake. there was a display with replicas of people being killed and tortured in all sorts of interesting ways. my favourite was one guy who was upside down, legs held apart, and was being sawn right down the middle. it was exactly what i felt like the morning after eating that bowl of extra-spicy noodles in zhongdian a couple of weeks ago.

on the second day we visited 'the little three gorges' and even 'the little little three gorges', in which we transferred to successively smaller boats to go up successively smaller rivers and through successively narrower gorges. the water in these parts was green and cool and apart from a few rented circus freaks performing acts on rocky outcroppings, i felt blissed out.

the final part was a tour of the three gorges dam. contrary to what i had thought, this dam is not being built for hydro-electricity, it's being built to prevent flooding that devastates downstream areas about once a decade. it was pouring when we were there, and the dam itself was pretty boring. what fascinated me (in a bad way) was an aquarium next to the dam displaying fish from the river. the tanks were completely featureless - no decorations, plants or sand - stuffed with fish, and surrounded by tourists hammering on the glass. it was like an animal torture chamber, but there were no fish being held apart and sawn. to top it all off, you exit the aquarium by walking through a small supermarket selling...fish. salted, tinned, packaged - whatever. if it was in the tanks below, it was on the shelves above. judging by the feeding frenzy that it provoked in the others, it seemed that i was the only one going through the tanks who hadn't developed an appetite.

the boat was wonderful to be on, and i was on deck at the back of the boat most of the time. at no stage was the horizon completely visible due to smog, and every night i had to wash the - wait for it - soot off my face from the boat's chimney. i met some interesting people, but generally just gazed out at the mountains and the water, which were beautiful. all along the river are markers that show where the water level will be when the dam is completed. the water level has already risen 50m, but it's strange to still see houses, farms, and whole communities that are currently inhabited, but are below the final water level.

unfortunately whilst on the boat, i lost whatever weak impulse control i've had in the past and ate 6 packets of oreo biscuits, a huge bag of lollies, two snickers bars, some pizza shapes and 4 icecreams before developing an all-over body rash that has kept me borderline-psychotic with itch for the last 72 hours.

i'm now in yichang, which is a featureless town with an amazing internet cafe. tonight i'm heading back to beijing by sleeper train. i've got a few things to sort out there before i move on to my next (secret) destination :)

pic 1 - chongqing port at sunset
pic 2, 3, 7 - river shots
pic 4 - houses under the water mark. the final water level will be at 175m, well above the 156.3 you see in the picture.
pic 5 - boat-top posing in the 'little little three gorges'
pic 6 - pondering the plight of the fish infront of the three gorges dam