2007 - Asia - Day 8 - Chongqing, China

We left our cruise ship at 9:00 a.m. We got right on the buses and drove for almost 3 hours to Dazu. Dazu is a place that a disciple of Buddha had many sculptures of Buddhist beliefs carved into the mountains. It was very cool. I also bought a red jade dragon that looks really cool. As we were leaving Dazu, we stopped at a farmer’s village and took pictures of their lifestyle. Many of our group passed out a lot of money to the children and families. We had a box lunch on the bus on our way to Dazu. Michael Wilcox got on our bus for a little while and shared some Chinese stories. We then drove back to Chongqing. It has a population of 33 million and is the largest city in China. We then drove to our hotel. We had about an hour before dinner, so we walked along the sidewalks and looked at some the street vendors. There were several of the local people that started following us and watching our transactions. It was funny. After I bought a couple fans and saw my audience, I wanted to take a picture of them. As soon as I pulled out my camera, they scattered. We then had a buffet dinner at the hotel with 400 people. It didn’t work out very well. We spent just as much time in line as at the table. After dinner, Michael W. read us some Chinese poetry. Then Mark and I walked around the city. We walked for about 45 mins, and saw a lot of the night, street life. I was glad I had Mark with me! When we got back to the hotel, I called Dave and the kids and enjoyed talking with them.