On The Road Again...

It's been several days since I blogged (duh) and there is no way for me to get caught up on the travels of the last four days. We arrived by our ship in a town called Yi Chang (ee chong) yesterday at about noon. It's been raining steadily for the last 48 hours. Not just a drizzle, but much harder than that. If I was predicting, I'd say about 6 inches of rain so far. That's obviously just a guess but by listening to how loud it is I'm thinking 6 inches is conservative.
We left our hostel in Chongqing on Friday afternoon at about 5:30 PM. The manager, Li (lee) made all of our travel arrangements from Chongqing back to Beijing. Here is Li:

Really nice guy. Spoke English well as all people who work in hostels must be able to do. The Chinese are really into fashion with name brands. So try and guess what this little girl's name is?

Prada! Every time I walked into the main lobby, she would start biting by ankles and shoes. Pretty cute little dog.
We took a van/taxi to the dock. Our boat is the third one in back. You can't see it very well but...:

It turned out to be very nice. Here is a picture of the room:

The first night on the cruise there wasn't any show or performances in the bar/ballroom. We didn't leave port until after 11:00 PM. Eric and I spent the evening playing cards and just meditating on the decks. Not much happened the first night. The cruise really began to happen the next day, Saturday. The cruise was pretty awesome despite the rain and fog. I took many pictures but unfortunately, very few turned out.
Eric and I are heading to the train in a few minutes so we can travel from here, Wuhan (wu h on), down to Guilin (gwee leen). We'll be there for three days. The train ride is more than 20 hours and we will be staying in a hard sleeper (refer back to my train trip from Beijing to Shenzhen). I am starting the Twilight series (books about vampires) and so I hope to finish the first one by the time we arrive in Guilin. I will also write everything out about the rest of our cruise on the Yangtze so all I will have to do is cut and paste when we arrive in Guilin. The next few blogs I hope will be interesting for you. Since most pictures did not turn out and also because we hit the Three Gorges Dam at midnight, I'm going to have to try and explain to you in words what the experience was like instead of through pictures. It won't be the same obviously but if you get a little idea then I have done well enough.
I have bought gifts for my sisters and dad as well as me and I hope they survive the rain and travel. They are delicate items and while I know they will not break, I hope they do not get wet, either. We'll see!
The train ride is long and so we won't get in until late morning tomorrow. There is no internet on the train. I'll try and get everything posted by tomorrow evening which will be Wednesday morning your time.
Until then...

On The Road Again...

Wuhan, China