DAY 319: I was awake at 6 a.m. before most people in the Dragon Town Hostel were awake. I was down at breakfast by 6:30, when I met the only other guy up and ready to go: Wayne, an Australian technician for Telstra on holiday in China for three weeks. We had both waken up for the same reason: to get the 6:40 minivan transport to a bigger bus that would take us to Chongqing, the starting point of a three-day Yangzi River cruise we had booked.

In the bus already were German-speaking Swiss Nicole and Sabine and en route to the bus we picked up two other Australian backpackers, Natasha and Kelly, two make-up artists from Adelaide and Cairns. We were driven to the bigger bus, which picked up two more Aussies, Mandy and Sean, plus a whole bunch of Chinese tourists -- all guys -- from another hotel. Natasha and Kelly were almost immediately turned off at some of the Chinese guys, not for their presence or appearance, but for their regular, widespread habit of hocking up wads of phlegm and spitting constantly, even inside the bus. One guy spit out the window, only it wasn't open, and let it slide down the side.

It was about a five-hour ride to Chongqing, which wasn't so bad since I had a book to read, plus the monitor in front showed a Chinese-dubbed version of Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery in The Rock, followed by some Chinese-dubbed classic Tom & Jerry cartoons. (Yes, they dubbed voices in what originally had no dialogue, and rather poorly too.)

The driver stopped twice on the way for legs stretches and toilet breaks. "I'm amazed how my bladder always has some sort of reserve every time we stop, even though I didn't drink anything [since the last break]," I told Wayne as we walked to the facilities. It was true; I always seem to have a little pee to release should the occasion arise -- unless of course I've been drinking beer, and then I have a lot of pee to release, and have to go again almost immediately after washing my hands from the first time.

The shop at the pit stop had many different bagged snacks, but only one really stood out in my eyes: a bag that had a picture of deliciously greasy fried chicken on it. "Do you think there's really fried chicken inside?" I asked Wayne.

"I don't know." I bought it anyway to find out, hoping to crunch into freeze-dried goodness, or maybe crispy battered chicken skins, which I had seen at some food stalls in Beijing. I opened the bag and found these little orange square-shaped morsels inside. I popped one in my mouth and closed my eyes to use my imagination and it worked! With tasty ingredients of rice, flour, corn, edible palm oil (thank God they used the edible kind), sugar, grape sugar (is that like Grape Nuts, which has nothing to do with actual grapes?), and chicken powder (ah, there's the chicken!). I was amazed at the miracle of food science; they managed to package and sell a snack that tasted and felt just like packaging styrofoam.

CHONGQING, "SOUTHWESTERN CHINA'S DYNAMO" according to Rough Guide, is situated on a big peninsula that juts out and separates the Jialing and Yangzi Rivers. As the largest city in the region, it was no surprise that it was a big modern bustling metropolis, and we saw it right away when we were stuck in traffic.

"Look, they have skyscrapers on top of skyscrapers here," I said, pointing to the hi-rises being built on higher levels of a hill just above others, almost right where the tops of the buildings on the bottom ended. Wayne figured out it was because of the coming rise of the river water from the construction of a big dam downstream.

A team of four travel agents picked us foreigners up and put us in another minibus to take us to their office near the docks. We individually made our travel arrangements for the cruise and onward travel afterwards and then went out to explore what we could of the city, before our boat's departure that evening.

The only thing the agency suggested to do in the limited time was to wander around the city center and get some food supplies at the supermarket because "the food on the boat is expensive." Sean, Mandy, Wayne and I hailed down a taxi and told the driver to take us to the first of three things written for us in Chinese on a card: "city center." Five yuan later we were at Jiefangbei, the Victory Monument that celebrates the end of Communist and colonial rule, in the center of the commercial district, where about five pedestrian malls intersected in one point. We split up in pairs, and Wayne and I wandered off to find a place to eat away from the KFC and McDonald's. En route, we encountered a group of older woman rehearsing a traditional drum dance, the usual group of guys playing Chinese checkers, and a market selling live snakes, chickens and ducks (picture above) for cooking. Down another side street, we finally found a decent-looking small little noodle house that prepared bowls of noodle soups with ingredients we pointed to. It might have been a mistake to point to the Sichuan pepper chili paste because they added a bit too much than we could handle.

In the remaining time, we tried to find the Luohan Si Buddhist temple for photos, but with most signs not in English or Pinyin, we only found dead ends or construction sites building yet another skyscraper over where an old building had been demolished. Instead, we took pictures of the life-sized bronze statues in the pedestrian malls. We headed back to the Victory Monument to meet up with Mandy and Sean, got our groceries and then split a cab back to the office.

A funicular took us down to the docks and us foreigners boarded the ship, outnumbered by the Chinese, although people assumed I was one of them. The "cruise ship" wasn't one in the Carnival/Love Boat sense. It was more like a big souped up ferry with cabins in three classes: first, with two beds and a lot of space; second, with four beds; and third, with six beds. There was also a "stowaway" class, where peasants simply bought permission to be on the ship without accommodations -- they just slept with the cargo in what would have otherwise been a decent-looking lobby area.

Wayne lucked out and got his own second-class room while I shared a quad with Nicole and Sabine that had dodgy air-conditioning. At least there was a TV (each room had one), and we used it in conjunction with my iBook to have "Movie Night" since there wasn't much to see in terms of scenery at nighttime, after we had pulled away from the lit up buildings of Chongqing.

As far as food on the ship, it wasn't as expensive as the agency made it out to be. Sure it was if you ordered specific items off the menu, but the kitchen had a "budget" buffet of standard Chinese fare all the time for five yuan a plate, with tofu, chicken and pork dishes -- real Chinese food as opposed to the Westernized stuff in America. In the end, there really wasn't a need to pack food, although I don't really think that chicken styrofoam snack counted as food.