Day 14 - Chongqing

Chongqing is a metropolitan area of over 30 million inhabitants. It's big and sprawling, but it's not THAT big since the actual city only has about 12 million in it. We were only supposed to spend half a day here but spent a full day instead due to there not having enough flights from Chongqing to Guilin. We saw a whole bunch of sites including The Great Hall of the People, which was under renovation so we only got to see some painting of it draped over the scaffolding. Then we visited a park which contained yet another 3 Gorges related museum, this one featured mostly a 50 meter long painting representing hundreds of KMs of the Yangtze and its surrounding areas. We also went to another tea presentation where they taught us proper Chinese tea service, and I bought yet more expensive tea. Tea of the Iron Goddess to be exact.
Next we went to a zoo to see Pandas, which were great. It's really cute to see them eat and you can't help but to anthropomorphize them when you see them eating using their hands. The zoo was a bit sad though since a large part of it was being renovated and many of the big animals were confined to very small cages. Next to the zoo was a fantastic art gallery where had I some real money, I would have easily bought at least 2 paintings that really caught my eye. Maybe next time.
After the zoo, we spent a short time at a commercial district where I bought a chinese-english translator but the store did not accept visa, mastercard, or interac. Don't listen to those TV commercials, people. We were really shopping under pressure after trying to get my payment method sorted out. Dinner that night included Mapo Tofu, it was SO spicy and so delicious - pictures of me sweating not included.
Our guide saw us to the airport. On the way there, he sang us a french version of the a song we had heard karaoke'd the night before. It was a very strange coincidence. The airport had a store featuring the happiest mannaquin in the world.
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