It’s a rest day today.

Yesterday was a 5ish hour bus journey from Emei Shan to Chongqing. Chongqing is a huge, beautiful city and we got to spend a couple of hours there before boarding the river cruise. There are many many many skyscrapers. We had dinner in an area that was recreated to look like the historical residences of where people used to live, but is now markets and restaurants. It was build in memory of the way people used to live in the city; everyone now lives in apartment towers.

The river cruise is much like other cruises, or at least like the one I’ve been on. There are several dining room, a bar, a gym, a cruise director, etc. My group has elected to pay for upgraded meals so we can have an assigned table in a quieter dining room. There are also several extra dishes per meal compared to the un-upgraded option, and drinks are included at mealtime.

We have docked at the moment for an on-shore excursion. Most of the boat is participating but not me. I know that everyone is gone because I went for a wander and all the lights are off around the boat, and all services have shut down. Also, I only saw staff. Very quiet right now. I’m resting in my room with my roomie. We ate some vegetable crackers for a snack to hold us over until lunch at noon.

Fun thing: we are all woken up at 6:30am by misic playing over the announcement speaker that we can’t turn off, followed by daily announcements in Chinese. The Chinese announcements went on for five minutes, while we only got the date and weather in English. We have a printed sheet with the announcements we can read on our own.

I’m at the point of the trip where I’m tired and am ready to go home, (just shy of the two week mark, which is the usual time for this) but I still have a week of interesting things to see so I’ll make due. I’ve sent some laundry to be done, so that should help me feel better, especially if it comes back neatly folded. I always have a secret fear that I’ll never see my laundry again… but I filled in the sheet with my name and room number, so that should help.