China - Chongqing

Having been out until sometime past 3am I was in no mood to be getting up early to start a day of travelling, however, I had no choice. I had to catch a bus from Yangshou to Guilin and then catch my train from Guilin to Chongqing. The train was quite an experience. There was 6 people in each bay and about 12 bays per a carriage. Each bay was open and had 2 fold down seats at the end in the corridor and everyone else had to stay on their beds. Unfortunately only the bottom bunks had enough space to allow us to sit up and I had a middle bunk. Basically that meant I had to lie down on my bunk the whole time. I hadn't worked out the dining system (buy pot noodle before boarding and use free hot water on train) but I had bought a mountain of snacks with me which was good seeing at I had 19 hours on the train.

The next morning I got to Chongqing around 9am. The train stations in China are always crazy busy and overwhelming places. I got a tad lost and was approached by a man with perfect English. He helped me out and literally put me on a bus to the right place and told the conductor to tell me where to get off. I had for some reason chosen a hostel in the old town, Chiqikou. What I hadn't realised is how far away from the station that was (45mins) or how far it was from town centre (50mins in a different direction) or in fact how damn big Chongqing is....biggest municipality in the world apparently with 32mil people. Also, I hadn't figured that the old town was such a Chinese tourist hot spot. I arrived on a Saturday morning into peak tourist time. I actually had a mission finding the hostel and wandered up and down with my bag in the ridiculous heat sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the well dressed, short Chinese tourists. Did I mention that Chongqing is one of the three "furnaces" of China - it's hot. After asking numerous clueless street sellers I eventually found the hostel only to get checked into a room with no westeners. That's not a problem but it was a bit of a shock because it was the first place I'd been a minority as a English speaking tourist. After a well deserved shower I wandered around the old town. It was basically two very touristy streets where the hoards of Chinese tourists wander playing games and eating various snacks from street sellers. It's quite like a fun fair without any rides. I couldn't hack it, it's stupid and fake and noisy. I walked up one of the side streets into the real old town which people who work in the tourist section still live which was more interesting:

This is the tourist section actually looking quite quiet here:

Outside the old town entrance they have this sign of rules in Chinese and translated into English which I thought was hysterical. I particularly liked the "Don't force foriegn tourist to take photos" and "resist superstition"

and "do not utter dirty words". I think it is funny but also sad because it shows an element of the communist control.

Anyway, I headed back to the quietness of the hostel but got steered into someone's restaurant for lunch because he knew the words "you want food?" and I was so pleased to hear English I agreed. Turned out that was the extent of his english but there was another customer in the restaurant, a young girl, who spoke some. She eventually ordered me chopped omlette and tomato, spinach and garlic and rice. It was so good to have a hot meal with lots of veg. I made it back to the hostel and booked my boat for the three gorges. I needed to get money out and unbelievably had to catch a bus into the centre of this section of town to get to an atm that accepts foriegn cards! I did just that and was quite proud I managed to get to the right place with no Chinese. This is the centre of the area I was in, it could well have been the centre for a major city:

I found a Carrefour there which was quite an experience. I refrained from taking pictures even though it's more like a market inside with live seafood on sale, butchers cutting up meat whilst people mill around them and pick n mix for all kinds of weird and wonderful things. I stocked up for the cruise.

In the evening I was sitting in the bar finishing off the Life of Pi and listening in on a group of westeners who had arrived. I went and introduced myself and had a beer with them. There was an English couple, Pete and Jenny, who were teaching English in China and just on their summer break and two Irish guys, Fin and Sean, who were just travelling after working in Beijing for a bit. I went off and found some street food - cold noodles with chilli oil and spicy meat kebabs and then had another beer with Jenny and Pete. They went to bed and the Irish lads returned so we drunk more beer and played pool. It was a good chilled out evening and I was so relieved there were some English speakers around considering my roommates!

The next morning I slept through to 11am and luckily bumped into the Irish guys as I was about to go out. We determined we had the same day plan so I waited for them and we all got the bus into the centre of Chongqing. It was a mission but Chongqing is so interesting because there is construction going up everywhere and it is just so huge. We wandered around a market which was largely closed and eventually stumbled across the tip which looks over the Yangzi and Jialing rivers merging:

We walked along the bank of the Yangzi to find the cable car across but ended up at the bottom of a hill which we had to walk up to get to the station. We did so and ended up walking through what I can only describe as slums. It was such a change from the otherside of the hill which had been a normal built up city. It was really interesting to see the contrast in standard so close together.

We got the cable car across the river so that we got the views which was cool. We had lots of people taking photos of us at the top like normal. I had to pose with people's kids!

I had read that there was a strip of restaurants on the otherside of the river, we found nothing of the sort although we did find a very local place to eat at. We had some difficulty ordering and eventually pointed to what the owners were sitting eating. It was a very spicy hotpot with all sorts in it - mainly offel, pasta, veg, random fish etc. It was pretty gross but sooo funny watching the boys eating it. All our noses were running and we were sweating, I don't know why they eat such spicy stuff in such a hot place!

We had to get an ice cream afterwards and then the cable car back across. We walked into the centre of town and parted ways. The centre is only 10min walk from the really horrible area we walked through before the cable car yet there is Burberry and Gucci shops and it's all very clean. Such a contrast! It's such a strange city. It is so huge yet there is only one metro line so everyone ends up going by bus everywhere which is slow and makes the roads so busy. It's like the city hasn't quite caught up with the increase in population.

I got the bus back which took near on an hour so I fell asleep and ended up at the end of the line. Thankfully that ended up only being a 10min walk from my stop. I bumped into Julian in my hostel - the guy who randomly talked to Alexa and I in the pub in Hong Kong on her last evening. I had a beer with him and played pool and we went out and bought lots of random sweets from the fun fair esq stalls. We joined Pete and Jenny for a while. It was strange, Jenny and Julian seemed to be on the same wavelength but I didn't understand half of what they were on about, I though Pete made a lot more sense. I called it a night quite early.

I got rudely awaken at 8.30am by a new guy coming in from his night! He was Scottish. I didn't take to him especially as he spilt beer all over my clean knickers that I was drying on the end of my bed. He proceeded to fully engage me in conversation and sit on my bed in my space. He woke up the whole dorm and they all left very swiftly. It was cringe worthy listening to him drunkenly repeat himself. What a prat. I eventually escaped and treated myself to an ice coffee - hadn't had a coffee since HK! I was feeling quite down and had no energy so I just sat around in the bar. I really hadn't wanted to be up that early. I went back to the same restaurant for lunch and had an identical meal because I didn't have the energy to attempt anything else. It's bad enough sitting there alone when you are feeling down because you have to smile for everyone's photos let alone try and go through the whole ordering in sign language thing. Anyway, it was time to leave Chongqing so I packed up, walked outside with all my stuff and it started to rain - very hard. I got soaked as did my rucksack (rubbish). It didn't improve my cross mood. I did manage to catch the bus and get to the pick up point for my cruise on time.