Ben's Trip to China: Goodbye, Chongqing!

19 May 2015

The past couple days we’ve spent just hanging around Chongqing. The first day we were there, we went to the hot springs for some well-deserved R&R after several days of travel. There were so many different pools there, including some with aromatic oils, others with various herbs, which all played a part in Chinese traditional medicine. There was even a little pool with hundreds of tiny fish in it to clean dead skin cells of your feet. It felt weird.

The next day was Sunday, so Tao gave us a free day. I slept in until 11:00, so I caught up on some much-needed rest. After I got up, I went out to explore the city. Our hotel was right in the center of 沙坪坝(Shapingba) district, which meant that there were all kinds of stores to check out. I eventually met up with some other students in my group, and we set out and just explored for the entire afternoon. Chongqing is a really cool city, I wish we could have stayed there longer.

The next morning, we went to SISU to tour the campus and sit in on a class. There were several Concordia students studying there this semester, and we were all glad to see our friends. We got to see the dorms, as well as a few restaurants and various buildings around campus. After the tour, a few of us went to 磁器口(Ciqikou), which is an ancient city in the middle of Chongqing, replete with souveniers and shops. We hung out there for a while, and it was really cool to see all the old architecture. Once we returned to the hotel, we rested for a while before a night out on the town. We were out late last night at a KTV singing karaoke with our fellow Cobbers. We sang a variety of songs, including ones that we learned from Chinese class or ones that are popular back home. It was actually kind of fun, because there were even new American songs that the SISU students hadn’t heard yet! Also, there was a 1900 RMB 4.5 liter bottle of Black Label there at the KTV, which I thought was pretty funny.

This morning we all had to be down in the lobby at 6:00 to depart our hotel for the airport for a 9:30 flight to Nanning. We all took naps at the airport while waiting to board our airplane. We’ll touch down pretty soon, the flight to Nanning isn’t nearly as long as the one from Beijing to Chengdu. Stay tuned for more updates!