Day 7
We were supposed to travel from Fengdu to Chongqing on the river overnight. Heavy rainfall upstream meant water levels were fluctuating too much to allow shipping to operate. So we stayed where we were overnight, and were bussed to Chongqing, a journey of about 2 hours, in the morning.
Once again we sped through tunnels, across bridges, past fake road signallers
and enjoyed a pit stop at the communal toilets.
The road followed the swollen river most of the way, and sure enough, there was nothing moving on the water.
Chongqing has a population sitting on 33 million…well over the entire population of Australia!
The city is very hilly, and we took an hour of driving through high rise buildings to reach our destination, the Porcelain Markets in the Old Town.
An experience that would end up being one of the highlights of our trip, was about to be begin.
Although named the Porcelain Markets, we only saw 2 shops that actually sold porcelain! In reality, the markets were narrow alleyways filled with hoards of people,
exotic food and unfamiliar sounds. Chilli pastries, BBQ octopus and skewers…….the air was thick with delicious cooking smells.
Don’t ask me what this purple stuff is the bloke is straining through a sieve, but he was doing a great job!
These ladies were trying to entice you into their shops with their amazing outfits.
We even bought some postcards and negotiated our way to buy stamps at the local post office (spoiler alert Jen).
There were SO many people!
Amid the chaos were a few quiet corners.
We loved it!
But sadly, it was time for our tour group to split up. 10 of us were going on to spend some extra days seeing the Terracotta Warriors, and the others were winging their way back home.
We were whisked to the station in time to catch our high speed train to Xian. In a city this big, the station size and crowd was immense.
Lucky for some, there was time for a relaxing massage before the journey.
Our train was a big improvement on our last rail experience, but the crowds were also bigger!
After a 5 hour trip to Xian, we were on our own at the station, and it took some time to find our guide. Not too impressed about that, but eventually she found us (we weren’t hard to spot), and we drove through this amazing city at night to our hotel. Very nice!
Kanga And Wombats Adventures 