Early Thursday morning, we left our Guilin hotel, hoped in a taxi to the bus station and then traveled to the airport. We checked our bags and waited 2 hours for our flight. The airport was very warn. After an hour flight, we arrived in Chongqing and took the airport shuttle bus into town. We struggled to find an empty taxi to get to our target hotel. It seems that many hotels in town suffer from musky smell, we could relate to this situation. We spent much of the day exploring our option for a Yangtze River cruise. With all the negotiation of the day, Jenny realized that she was sometimes at a lost for Chinese words. We finally opted for a two day cruise … in first class. At the same time, we booked our hotel room in Yichang, the destination of our cruise, and airline tickets from Yichang to Chengdu. We’ve noticed by now, after dealing with hotel and travel agency staff, that we appear to be very strange to them when asked for our cell phone number and we answer that we don’t have any. We are probably a handful of folks in China without a cell number … oh well .. we do have a netbook and some postcards!!

Saturday morning, we got picked up at our hotel and brought to the cruise ship dock. We departed the dock at 8am sharp. Our room was small but comfortable. On board, we met a family of Spanish travelers struggling a bit with language issues. Jenny helped out. We spent most of our time looking at the scenery from our room window. The Yangtze river is not too inviting for a swim as its waters are brownish. We are amazed at the number of cargo and passengers ships we see going up and down the river. Little fact: Yangtze River is the 3rd longest river in world starting in the far west of China and finishing at Shanghai. We really enjoyed the restful time offered by the cruise. We visited a few tourist sites along the way with the highlight attraction being the visit of the large Three Gorge Hydro Electric Dam.