We went straight into the town today to have a good look around and did find everything including Chris's secret passion, outdoor shops, where he proceeded to undo all his light travel plans and buy some more clothes.
After exploring the peninsula we were on we got an ancient cable car over the yangzte which was actually pretty cool. The cable car and the platform and entrance way obviously used to be amazing and was designed for a large passenger volume, I guess before the bridges and buses got so cheap, but now its a run down and empty echo of what it used to be, very Soviet Russian!
The carriage pulls in swinging crazily and the attendant is first off straight into the air-conditioning leaving everyone else to half jump off the swinging car. The next people mill around until 2 seconds before it leaves with the most brave (or most foolish) waiting in the carriage in the sweltering heat (us) and just before the man walks briskly out into the heat, climbs aboard and it leaves, the Chinese people waiting as long as possible before jumping on, crazy Chinese!
The other side of the river was not touristy at all and obviously rarely visited, more mahjiang clubs than I have seen but quite pretty and a bit like an Asian San Francisco with all the steep hills.
When I was in china a year ago travelling I met a Guy in Xian called Johny and we kept in touch every 4 months on qq and he said if I was ever in Chongqing to look him up so last night I left him a message on qq saying i was in town and leaving my mobile number, I woke up this morning to a call from him inviting us to dinner. I accepted and so we arranged to meet at 7 and go for the local dish, huaguo (hotpot) .
He met us in our hotel lobby and I managed to recognise him, just, not bad considering I had only met him for a few hours!
He got a taxi without too much trouble although they are usually impossible to get here and took us to a restaurant he knew around 30 minutes away by taxi.
His girlfriend met us in the restaurant and she was also lovely and after some discussion out of deference to us they went for a mildly spiced hotpot which, after tasting, turned out to be right on the limit of what I could eat and way past what Chris liked. We had heard they liked it spicy but this was madness!
They ordered lots of cool things which you then put in the soup in the middle until they cook then eat, sharing and trying everything as well as cooking for each other. We had also been warned that chongqing food was.....varied but we wernt prepared for what came out. The most standout things were the cow intestine, small and large, the cow stomach, liver and kidney and the real highlight the fish served without their heads but so recently decapitated that a push from a chopsticks will make them swim. When they are dropped into the hotpot the even make a last attempt at swimming for a short time. You eat everything except the tip of the tail and try not to think about what you are eating, the taste ok though and the bones can just be safely crunched.
After the meal we walked through the centre of this district with its big shops and bright lights before jony had to head back as he had work the next day.
We joined a queue in a taxi rank but after 20minutes and not a single taxi stopping there jony started standing in the road arguing with any that dared to get close. Eventually after more than an hour he got one and dropped us off safely back at the hostel.
There was on thing I really wanted to do so we grabbed a bag and borrowed the hostels flipflops before walking the 5 minutes up to where the two rivers meet in central Chongqing. At this point there are steps down into the river and we put on our borrowed flipflops and went for a midnight paddle in the Yangtze, still deliciously cool compared to the warm air. We paddled for a while and took some pictures before making our way back to our Hostel for a night cap beer in the bar.
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