Not long before we went to bed on Tuesday night, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker system, aka, as Dave refers to it, as the ‘annoying Tannoy’, that there was a “change in conditions”. A couple of kilometres ahead of us up the river a cargo ship, laden with containers had overturned, and the river was closed due to stray containers floating just under the surface. The decision was made that our boat would turn around and travel back to Fengdu, where we had stopped earlier in the afternoon. We had to put our bags out that evening and breakfast time was changed to 5:45am.

Everyone’s mood at breakfast was pretty good, all things considered, and the early hour. When they saw the 150+ steps they needed to climb when they disembarked, attitudes changed a little. There are a dozen or so of us that are little younger than the rest with most of the 120 on the tour being 70+. A woman who uses two walking sticks had to be carried up as did a young woman with cerebral palsy.  I jogged up the first 30, but I admit in 30+c temperature and high humidity I slowed down quite a bit after that. I felt VERY sorry for the porters who had to carry our suitcases.

We were then bussed to Chongqing which took around two hours. Chongqing is a large, hilly and very busy city with a population of more than 34 million. We then did a ‘city tour’ which because of the humidity, heat and incessant stupid questions was a little annoying. We had lunch at a large city mall and got caught in the rain at a more traditional shopping centre in the afternoon. Most people on the tour are heading home to Australia tonight and were desperate to spend the last of their money!

If you read my blog last year when we were in Europe, you will know that Dave and I love to visit supermarkets while travelling. Today was the first time we got to do that in China. I only took a few photos – I was worried they might make me delete them or even take my camera.

Note in the background of the last picture the live ducks ready to buy and eat. Around $8 Australian each. Potatoes 2.38 Yuan – which is about 46c Australian – great value!

A couple of photos from the central park, the highest part of the city:

And some photos of the Ming Dynasty palace we visited after lunch. Note the options for free entry Dave is considering  (if you can read the fine-print!)

We headed to the railway station about 4:30pm, passed through security and waited for the train to Chengdu. By this stage I was feeling a little unwell and was glad that the toilets were clean, if not western style. Dave had sensibly packed toilet paper in my handbag! He is nothing if not thoughtful 😉

Boarding the train was undertaken very precisely and we enjoyed the high-speed ‘bullet train’ experience, which took only 1hr 40 minutes to do about 300km. A sign in the train lets you know the speed you are going – in this photo 292km/hr.

 

The photo on the right is a ‘rice box’ on the train – which we enjoyed on Hang Zhou’s recommendation. He even sent me the Chinese symbols by text so we could order the right thing from the dining carriage.

Hang picked us up from the train station in his Dad’s Land Rover Discovery and dropped us to a hotel near his apartment. We are really looking forward to spending the day with him tomorrow.

Time for bed now.  xx