Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Friday was one of those days, which went far too quickly. I had only this day between my parents leaving and travelling to Chongqing, so I had a domesticated day of washing, packing and food shopping. After packing for a year abroad in just two suitcases, I am now an expert at capsule wardrobes and easily fitted six days worth of clothes into my hand luggage bag....excellent.

In the evening, Will came to mine as we were travelling to Chongqing together and we had malatang and watched Gravity, which was really sad! I also used his Chinese knowledge to help book a trip to Beijing for me and Adele. This took us over 3 hours as the website wouldn’t book tickets for foreigners! Eventually the website worked but we will still have to collect our tickets from a ticket office and show our passports – nothing is easy in China for foreigners! At least Bejing is booked and travelling on Easter Sunday will mean five glorious hours of chomping on Easter eggs. I may even do myself an egg hunt in the carriage...

Saturday morning started at 5.30am *yawn* as we had to get up in time for the first metro to the train station. Baring in mind that we’d not gone to bed until 2.30am, the walk to the metro seemed to take forever. We cruised through security (it’s like being at an airport) and then had a quick McDonald’s breakfast before queuing to get on our train. Now the journey to Chongqing took nearly 7 hours and unfortunately, Will was in a different carriage as he booked his ticket after me. This left me sat next to a Chinese man, who in the scheme of things wasn’t too Chinese. I did however, come back from the toilet (a very long trek to find the western one) to find him perusing my ‘Pick me Up’ magazine! I have no idea if he understood the article but he loved it when I gave him it after I’d finished reading.

A couple more interesting highlights of the journey included the man behind me who non-stop snacked for the WHOLE seven hours. You name it, he ate it. At one point, I swear he was tucking into a whole, dried duck. Whatever it was, it smelt so bad that I had to wear my scarf over my mouth. Also, I had to use the toilet again during the journey and so plodded through a million carriages to reach the western toilet, but it was in use. For at least ten minutes. By this point, I was at the hopping about in a desperate state and as we were waiting at a station, I thought I’d chance my luck in a squat toilet. Oh no, as soon as I went to squat, the train pulled away and I weed all over my shoe and sock. Brilliant – scrubbing my converse with hand sanitiser and water wasn’t what I’d envisaged at 11am on a Saturday morning (don’t worry, I’ve machine washed them since getting back to Wuhan).

We finally arrived in Chongqing and after catching the subway to the city centre, had an emotional reunion with Olivi and Dean. They looked amazingly tanned after 5 weeks in Indonesia, but my dismay at this fact was lessened by the gifts they bought me, handmade soap, coffee and an anklet. We checked into the hostel and because it was Valentine’s day, I got a special reduced price. It’s so helpful being female sometimes - £20 for five nights. The hostel itself was lovely; clean and spacious but I struggled with my top bunk bed for at least two nights! As we were pretty tired from travelling all day, we headed out for some famous spicy hotpot before having drinks at Helen’s bar. Typical that I travel to a different city and end up in the same bar that I go to in Wuhan! The hotpot itself was horrendously spicy and my stomach hurt the whole evening, but the food inside it was good!

Chongqing metro

Hostel lounge area

Our room - Yes I had to attempt the climb to bunk A for two nights!

Those bits floating on the top are peppers and chillies!

Favourite bar

Sunday was a really smoggy day in Chongqing (the pollution here is pretty terrible anyway) but we wandered through the centre and down to the river, after a quick stop for lunch – clay pot fried pork noodles if you’re interested. The river itself has a confluence (where two rivers meet) and you can see the colour change of the different rivers. There was also a great opportunity to see the skyscrapers of the city. It definitely reminds me of New York, with the river and tall buildings and they even have yellow taxis! The only difference is how hilly this city is compared to New York.....my thighs were burning by the end of the afternoon!

Down by the river

City skyline

Enjoying candyfloss

The confluence of the two rivers

Where the two rivers meet

We headed back to the hostel before going out for dinner to a speciality duck restaurant. We’d met a guy backpacking and he’d previously been, so he came along and we had the best food. We had duck pancakes and a sour and spicy soup filled with delicious things like dumplings and meatballs. It was so good. After that I needed dessert (obviously) so I got a cheeky oreo milkshake and then we sat at an outside bar people watching for the rest of the evening. I was surprised by how many foreigners I saw coming and going, more than I have ever seen in my whole time in Wuhan!

Our soup!

Duck pancakes - they were incredible

Oreo milkshake for dessert

 Monday was a super lazy day, where I didn’t wake up until after 1pm. Whoops. Our room didn’t have a window so the pitch-black darkness meant that you could easily sleep in all day. Anyway, Olivi and Will had long gone out sightseeing so Dean and I headed out for some lunch. I finally got to taste a Chinese hamburger (a cross between a kebab and a Greek gyros) and it was delicious. That was a mere starter, of course, so then we went to a small restaurant and I tucked into some shrimp and mushroom wontons in a broth. They were incredible! We were both not feeling up to sightseeing so just headed back to the hostel to watch a film (Hostel 2 for the pure irony).

Shrimp and mushroom wonton soup

City centre - they even had Tiffany!

Art gallery

Skyscrapers

We had a late dinner that evening, in a restaurant that charged us for just sitting down! For that upsetting charge I stole a little bucket to use a pencil tidy. On the plus side, I had my first taste of sweet and sour chicken in over 5 months and there was pineapple and peppers and onions and I was just so blissfully happy. To top of my evening, we found a cocktail bar called Flavour Lounge and they made THE BEST cocktails. I had a pina colada and it made me want summer to arrive immediately.

Sweet and sour chicken!

Flavour Lounge

My amazing cocktail

 On Tuesday, everyone left our hostel room so it was just us lot left...you could definitely tell that Chinese New Year was approaching! I had a chill morning watching Mean Girls 2 (the first one is definitely better), whilst waiting for the guys to wake up. Will left to catch a plane back to his hometown for Chinese New Year, which left me in charge of Dean and Olivi. After some dan dan mian (a famous noodle dish from the region) and spring rolls, we caught the subway to Ciquiko, which has an ancient village there. There was a lively atmosphere as people were making noodles and singing and crushing nougat up. I bought a few souvenirs to take back, as everything was so cheap and then we ended up wandering into the unknown part of the village. Here, an old man was making his own wine and before we knew it, we were sat on tiny little seats sampling homemade fruit and rice wines. They weren’t exactly to my taste, as I’m classy and prefer Lambrini, but he seemed so overjoyed in our presence that I drank them for this reason alone. The metro back to the centre involved me feeling extremely tipsy and giggly.

Dan dan mian

Ciquiko town

Making noodles

Packed with Chinese tourists

Such a brilliant shop

Leading down to the river

Quirky signs

This house was covered in posters and signs from bars and clubs

The 'wine' shop

 Before dinner and after I’d sobered up, we headed to Hongyadong, an 11 storey complex with food levels and craft shops, all built into a cave. I had an obligatory Dairy Queen whilst the boys set about buying hideous things like dried sausage and chilli peanuts....bleurgh. I wasn’t feeling great when we got back so I ended up having a nap and by the time I woke up, it was too late to go for dinner, so we ordered food at the hostel. Definitely had a hangover at 9.30pm – judged entirely by the fact that I ordered triple carbs (dumplings, rice and chips). By the time our food arrived it was after 10pm, so we decided to just stay in and watch films. A Dutch guy, called Yoeri joined us and we watched The Hangover 1 and 2, to the delight of the other Chinese guests! Their censorship laws mean that these types of films are banned in their country. FYI, Titanic is missing the nude scene in China.

Hongyadong food street

Which dried meat to choose....

The horrible dried meat

Nougat and flavoured nuts

View from the top of Hongyadong cave

 On Wednesday it was Chinese New Year Eve so the majority of the shops were now closed. After yet another lie-in (I swear all I did on this trip was sleep), Dean, Yoeri and I headed out to search for food, and found a noodle shop open. We had zhajiang mian, which is a pork in soybean sauce noodle – it sort of resembles Spaghetti Bolognese! The afternoon was spent finding drinks and snacks in a supermarket for the journey home and packing up our belongings. I bought nothing of substance or nutrition but I did find German instant mashed potato so I was beyond happy.

Reliving my childhood

In the evening, there was only a few foreigners left in the hostel, so after a quick selfie stick photoshoot with Olivi (had a few with the stick precariously dangled out the window) and shots with the hostel staff, Dean, Olivi, Yoeri, Charles and Jason (from Australia) and I headed out for a last hotpot meal. On our walk to the restaurant, we kept saying ‘Xin Nian Kaui Le’ (meaning Happy New Year) to all the Chinese and they replied back in amazement, wondering why we were speaking Chinese! The meal was amazing, lots of meat and dumplings and vegetables and it was less spicy, so a winner all round.

Hostel selfie!

Enjoying my hotpot

Chinese New Year's Eve meal

 The rest of the night was messy and crazy. We headed back to Flavour Lounge, where they were playing the New Year show broadcasting on Chinese TV. Dean decided to create his own cocktail, which included four types of alcohol. Baring in mind, we’d already had at least 7 shots in the hostel and beer with dinner, the boys plan to drink copious amounts of this new cocktail was never going to end well. Dean fell asleep at midnight, said he was going to the toilet and never returned...that was after trying to pay for his drinks with his hostel room key! Olivi lost everyone and his selfie stick and couldn’t get into his top bunk when he arrived back at the room. Charles ended up with the bar tab from the others to pay at flavour lounge. Jason and I walked home to find Dean asleep on the sofas, minus an Iphone. Luckily, I was absolutely fine and made lots of noise the next morning to make their heads hurt even more!

Anti-Japanese monument

Counting down to midnight at Flavour Lounge

Couldn't hack the DIY cocktails

Thursday was Chinese New Year and we spent the majority of it travelling back to Wuhan. The train journey itself was full of screaming, whiny children, which I did not appreciate. The woman next to me kept trying to lay her child’s head on me but I was having none of it and used my super pointy elbows to keep nudging her. Stupid Chinese woman, stop being stingy and buy your child a seat so that I can enjoy the whole of mine. I won as she eventually moved to some empty seats further back and I was able to unravel myself once more. Getting off the metro in Wuhan was the oddest experience, as Wuhan was a ghost town. There were no cars on the road and no shops or restaurants open! We found one wonton place open, that charged us extra money because it was open on New Year....not impressed. At least the wontons were yummy, although at that point I would have pretty much taken 12 hour old street food. Anyway, I flopped onto my sofa in my apartment at around 11pm that night and fell asleep soon after.

After two weeks of having my parents over and then a week in Chongqing, I’ve been catching up on all the cleaning and washing since coming home. How I had three loads of washing to do with just my stuff is beyond me. The weather has also been awful with thunderstorms so I’ve been enjoying relaxing in my warm apartment. My plan for this final week off work *sob* is to relax some more and catch up with friends, although my only confirmed outing so far is a trip to Subway. Living the off-work dream. This evening, I am watching catch up trashy TV and enjoying a spicy veggie chilli (probably finished off with a bar of Dairy Milk). Sorry, not sorry.

xxxxx