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.