The next fed days I spent at Tina's hostel which is more in the downtown area of Chongqing. I met Pieter from Belgium here because he was in Chengdu and it was way too cold. Chongqing is much warmer and nicer. Its more hilly than San Francisco. It has a plethora of tall buildings, whcih all ascened from various heights. It makes for quite a lovely view.
The Hostel was run by a bunch of young college kids, all eager to practice their English. This worked out quite well because I was eager to learn some more Mandarin, and it was nice to not have to be so adventurous out at the meals.
Overall Chongqing is more of a business city. The major draw for travelers is that Chongqing is the starting point for a river cruise down the Yangtze towards Wuhan. I thought this sounded like a cool idea, but the faithful internet forums were in this fascinating equillibrium over the quality of such tours--it seemed like it had become overtly tourist and that half the boats sucked and the other half were decent. The owner of my first hostel was kinda in this business, and he was practically burping out the beeping sound of a now backing up dump truck, unloading me with too much information about these tours. I passed on the boat ride and decided to chill out in Chongqing and take it easy.
Fan, one of the guys at the hostel, took me to visit a Chinese Traditional doctor. My allergies have been creeping back up ever since I got into China so I wanted to see if the Eastern guys could help me out. The doctor checked my pulse for 10 seconds and asked a few questions, then wrote down a bunch of Chinese. He then gave this Chinese recipe to one of his nurses and she began filling a bag with scoops from jars on the wall. The funny thing about the doctor was that he proudly wore an Army coat instead of medical coat. I was hesitant to try the herbs, but I went for it. So far, it feels ok--my allergies are maybe a little bit better. We'll see in the next few days, but I am keeping my hopes up.
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