Siqikou old town

Today we had been recommended another hostel, still in Chongqing, but in a much older part of town, or at least it looked much older I guess. We got the bus from just up the street for the hours ride out of town to the old town. Once there we found a very pretty old style building now a hostel right on the bank of the river.
We checked into our dorm and went out and had a look around, after a quick look I came back to.get my camera and whilst looking out from a small balcony I got talking to two Chinese girls on the balcony, the more confident one, Cecilia was an English student prepraring for her exams and the other girl, with no English name, (her Chinese name was yellow river island) came along too.
I got chatting to Cecilia and invites them both for lunch since we were pretty hungry and so we all went off to find the local specialty, another kind of hot pot.
At the meal Cecilia ordered a spicy (again) hotpot and when it came started eating the food with relish, from the parts we recognized we saw that it was various animal organs again but this region is know for preferring to eat parts of the animal that west people throw away. The bits we didn't recognize we really didn't want to know, and if we did ask they just laughed and said a type of bamboo! Obviously not thinking we would try it if we knew what it was. Cecilia had been living here a while and so ate the crazy hotpot with obvious relish while the rest of us bravely tried everything, and some bits were actually pretty tasty, but I think I prefer real meat!
After the meal we did some shopping together before Cecilia had to go and take an exam! She left her friend with us and so together we went off around the old town.
As we walked and explored and took pictures it seemed that Chris and river island were getting on very well so after a small snack I left them two alone and went to take some beautiful pictures around tthe old town at night and along the yellow river.
I got back late and Chris was in a good mood although she had gone to bed, I texted Cecilia and we arranged to meet them tomorrow as well!