Day 18 Monday 13th May

We had an uneventful flight to Melbourne. The hardest part for us was the fact that we arrived in Melbourne at 7am but didn’t fly home to Adelaide till 1.45pm. Anyway, we arrived home safely in the mid-afternoon.

Day 17 Sunday 12th May

We all had a lazy start to the day as we’d organised a late checkout for ourselves. We went for a walk around the area near the Hotel but it was very quiet with most of the shops not opening till 11.30am. It was Mother’s Day here too so many families were out having late breakfasts etc. We left for the airport using the hotel’s shuttle in the afternoon. At the airport we said our goodbyes to 4 of the 12 who were flying home to Sydney on a different flight before the rest of us flew out to Melbourne.

Day 16 Saturday 11th May

We decided to explore Hong Kong using the “Hop-on Hop-off” Bus and this proved quite a good way to spend the day. We caught the hotel shuttle bus service to the harbor where we purchased our tickets which included the return ferry ride to Hong Kong. The ferry ride was lovely and we had great views of this very large and busy city. Hong Kong is really nothing like the rest of China and the English influence is seen everywhere. We enjoyed going on all 3 tours included in our bus ticket and saw a lot in a short time. We visited some markets in the morning and things were very quiet but by the afternoon we abandoned any thought of hopping off the bus to do some shopping because the streets where so crowded you could hardly move. We all safely made it back to the Hotel in the evening and the boys were very pleased because they were able to watch the footy Showdown, Adelaide verses Port Adelaide which was being shown on the ABC TV station. We still don’t know why but they weren’t complaining.

Day 15 Friday 10th May

We were up early to disembark the ship in the huge city of Chongqing. This proved to be so interesting and I think quite sad, really. When we arrived at the dock we noticed that there were at least 100 steps that we would need to negotiate to leave the ship. There were no ramps, escalators, lifts etc. (We had boarded the ship at the start of the cruise using an antiquated lift, looking after our own luggage. Once on board, porters had carried our luggage to our upstairs the rooms as the ship did not have any lifts.) Anyway we watched as our new guide negotiated a price with the all these “dock workers” who had appeared on the dock. Our guide explained that all our luggage would be taken off the ship by these men and they also bring down supplies for the ship. We all negotiated the steps quite easily with a few rests along the way and watched these men, carry 2 large suitcase (one each side) suspended on poles that each the man had resting across his shoulders. A woman in another group had difficulty walking and would not have been able to climb the stairs so she was put in a wheelchair and two men suspended her chair between them and carried her up in the chair. Our guide said that these men are poor farmers and they do this work to make money. We wondered if this was why the government had not installed a lift as it would mean these men would not be able to earn extra money. We had time to do a short tour of Chongqing. This huge city full of enormous high-rise buildings has a population of 33 million! Needless to say we didn’t see all of this city. After our tour we were taken to the Airport. We thought the airport would be full of people but were pleasantly surprised when it was almost deserted. It was a very new and modern airport. We had an uneventful flight to Hong Kong and from now on we were left to our own devices until we fly home. At Hong Kong airport we were told where the 12 of us could go to catch a coach to our accommodation and we successfully found the bus. We managed to alight with all our luggage at the correct stop but then felt a little lost. Luckily we found a very helpful young woman who was able to take us to our accommodation which was about ½ a kilometre away. We must have looked pretty funny, 12 of us dragging our luggage through the busy streets of Kowloon.  We have lovely accommodation here but need to work out what we are doing for the next couple of days.

Day 14 Thursday 9th May

During the morning we were treated to “Chinese” 101 presented by Clyde. Needless to say we weren’t that good at it after the 40 minute lesson. In the afternoon we had to disembark for another excursion. This proved to be quite interesting. We were parked alongside 2 much larger cruise ships and had to walk through these two ships to then get off onto the dock. Our ship is quite small and we were a little envious. Our lovely guide took us on a coach to Shiboazhai to visit a large Buddhist temple at the peak of a mountain. Luckily most of it could be reached by the coach or a lift and there weren’t too many stairs to reach the very top. A few of our group decided to take the quick way back down the mountain, using a polished granite slide. I walked back down via the stairs as I had collected cameras and bags from those going on the slide. Once at the base of this area we walked to “Fengu Ghost City”. This small village was built mainly to explain the ghost aspect from the Chinese point of view and we saw many “demon and ghost” trinkets that you could purchase. We were also treated to a lovely cultural dance and songs performed by 3 Chinese woman in beautiful costumes. Back on the ship we had a lovely “Farewell Dinner” followed by a variety performance again, featuring the ship’s staff.