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Today we were going to visit the World War II Museum in Chongqing. We asked at the desk in the hostel how to get there and were told we would need to catch the bus into the city centre and then the light rail to the museum, so off we set. Got on the bus for the city centre and an 1 hour later we arrived at our destination (still with a train ride to go) at this point we realized we would not have enough time to get to the museum as we needed to be back at the hostel for 5 for our boat. We checked on the map and found we had only actually gone about 1 mile the whole time on the bus so decided to walk back. After getting lost for about 1 hour we finally got back to the hostel. We were met by the travel agent who was going to take us to the boat we had booked for our Yangtze Cruise. We duly followed him to the docks and were lead to our book. Oh my god I have never seen anything so dirty in all my life, my words to him were "you have got to be kidding!" he decided at this point that he did not really understand much English and ran off the boat as fast as he could. We were shown to our first class cabin which was just as filthy. I reckon this boat must have been built about the same time as the Titanic and has seen no cleaning activity since the Titanic sunk!!! Once in our cabin we had a stream of boat personnel just walking in trying to get extra money off us. One of them wanted money to allow us to go on the deck (really not happy!!) so I refused to pay. He then went off to find an interpreter to try and make us pay, I still refused although Nick wanted to pay I think. The deck was absolutely filthy littered with food, spit (which the Chinese love to do!) and fag ends and everyone was smoking, cannot imagine why anyone would want to pay to use it! Next they wanted us to upgrade to the executive suite for £60, I went to check it out with him but it was another filthy room this time with a double bed rather than the singles we had (I refused it, which didn't make him happy!) For the next hour he kept coming back offering a lower price with a final offer of £40 which I still refused. Fortunately we still have sleeping bag liners with us so we have a cover for the beds as the bedding is absolutely stinking. I am looking forward to having internet again and the first job will be writing as many bad reviews as I can about the guy who sold us the tickets!
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Sara The Titanic looks better than that now.