Chongqing

After resting in Chengdu (成都) for a day, Baba and I continued on to way in Chongqing (重慶), which, while cheaper then Chengdu in many ways, was definitely a much faster pace, but much grimier city. In some ways, it resembles Hong Kong, with a lot of tall skyscrapers going up next to the waterways amongst the mountainous terrain.

We took a cab to the Hilton:



Hilton Chongqing was a Category 1 hotel, the lowest on the Hilton HHonors program. That meant a stay there went for an unbelievable bargain of 10K points! If the same hotel was in the US, it would no doubt be a Category 4 or 5 hotel.

View of Chongqing from the hotel room:



After checking in, we went out for a walk, and found a local restaurant to eat. We had some chicken in chicken soup, very spicy rabbit meat (but too many small bones), "ants crawling up a tree" (螞蟻上樹, a dish made of bits of pork mixed with vermicelli, the dish name is somewhat poetic), and some vegetables.



Afterwards, headed to the Yangtze River port, where there were cruises operating on the river to take tourists around for a view of Chongqing. We got in one of the mid-sized cruise ships:



The view back at the city:



Unfortunately, we also noticed the air was a quite smoggy and smelled very bad. Looking out, there was some visibility problems by some of the skyscrapers because of the heavy smog:



Chongqing was probably the most polluted city in China I had visited. It seemed even worse than Beijing or Tianjin. However, the skyline was nice at other areas:





Baba befriended a couple who was sitting next to us:





They were from Beijing. The husband is a writer, and the wife is a culture and travel channel producer. They had a son who studied in Chongqing, and were in town to visit him.

We had an interesting discussion about how one should really live life to the fullest. It's a question that's always worth pondering some more.