We had a good trip on the train from Xi'an to Chengdu, arriving in Chengdu at 9am - we were met at the train station by the Mix hostel who organised taxis for us free of charge. Once our rooms were allocated we headed off down to the Visa centre to pick up our passports/visas. Had to get a special form and then go down to one particular bank down the road to pay the visa fees - for us 160 CNY each but for Joy & Jim because they are Americans the fee was 940CNY each. We then went back to the PSB (visa centre) with the receipt and picked up our passports - all done by 11am.
Yesterday morning (15th) we were up at 5.30am as we were being picked up at 6.30am and taken to catch another bus which took us down to Chongqing for the start of the Yangzi cruise. After picking up several other passengers (all Chinese) we finally left Chengdu at 7.15am. A good trip down with a couple of comfort stops on the way and finally arrived in Chongqing just after 1pm. We had the afternoon free and we walked down to a lovely Chinese character building where we had lunch and a look around. We were able to leave our bags at the ticketing office but had to be back there at 5.30pm. We got back there just after 5pm and then we had a big drama.
Dave was desperate to go to the toilet and being a squat toilet took his bum belt off which had his wallet in and left it in the toilet. He realized within 15 minutes he didn't have it, went back and it was gone. Police happened to be outside the building and we reported it and spent 2 ½ hours with them trying to make phone calls to the credit card companies and trying to find a place to connect to Wifi so that I could skype the Credit Card companies to advise but had no such luck. We could not even ring out from the Police Station. Every phone we tried was barred from ringing International calls and with little English spoken could not get through to them for them to ring International so we could make a collect call to the Credit Card companies so in the end gave up and came on the cruise. Fortunately we had time up our sleeve as the cruise ship was not leaving until 9pm. We finally boarded at about 8.30pm.
We have opted for a local Chinese cruise, going second class and is okay - we do at least have a western toilet which we were not really expecting. This morning we had to be ashore by 6.40am to visit one of the sights - would you believe a "The City of Ghosts" (Ming Shan) dedicated to the afterworld and its ruler, Tianzi and is scattered with temples, shrines, and waxworks depicting the gorier sides of hell, including various tortures awaiting sinners. It was built in 1994 and is really for the locals with all their superstitions etc. The locals probably thought it was great but we weren't too impressed.
At 9pm tonight we stopped to have a look at the Zhangfei Temple which was first built in the Shu-Han dynasty more than 1700 years ago in honour of the famous general Zhang Fei in the Three Kingdoms period which was an important national cultural relic. Because of the world famous Three Gorges Dam project the temple was moved to the opposite side of the new Yunyang County.
We are certainly into the smog areas and so all the scenery is pretty hazy which is a pity.