Two days on the boat, way too many peanuts and quite a few games of rummy later, here we are in Chongqing. The boat, although being the most run-down one in the port when we boarded it, wasn't all that bad in the end. We shared a cabin with a nice Chinese couple, and a suspiciously quiet young bloke in very hippy hip Chinese-style fashion jeans.

The weather wasn't all that great, however. Supposedly we were travelling between two of the three 'furnaces' of China, Wuhan and ChongQing, but this time those furnaces seemed to be out of order (which seems to happen in China to various things). The first night we spent out on the deck, wearing all the items of clothing we could find in our backpacks, and huddled up under Ben's sleeping bag. But since we'd paid a full 10 yuan for the rental of each of our chairs, we had to make the most out of it and enjoy our night on the Yangtze.

The next day it was raining, so we saw a lot more of our cabin, though the boat stopped for three hours in a city called WanZhou (or some such thing), where we had a little walk up and down the river banks (stairs, stairs!) and came across a very surreal looking massive ufo-type of building, which turned out to be a brand new very expensive looking basketball stadium, in stark contrast to all the crumbling concrete buildings arround it. Bizarre.

Yesterday we spent a day in ChongQing, some highlights of which included ice-skating in a very posh shopping centre, watching a man having a full pedicure in the street, Chinese dice games, watching sleezy Americans on the dance floor, and another visit to a hairdressers' (no cut for me this time!!). And more, we took an old, old rusty cable-car across the river -- a ride with 'highly amusable value' according to a note posted on the wall.

Still trying to find a way to upload pictures... soon, soon...
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