Today (well, technically yesterday) was the start of our trip to Jiuzhaigou and Chongqing. We flew down at ~10am and arrived after a three-hour flight. It was 38C outside, and today was considered a cool day by Chongqing standards.

After checking out our hotel rooms, we rested for a bit in the heat until another family arrived - I think the kid’s name was Thomas? - and then we went to have dinner, which turned out to be the spiciest hot pot I have ever had in my life.

Then we drove up to a vantage point overlooking the city center and took photos. It was pretty cool - though vertigo-inducing - to see the whole city at once laid out pretty majestically. Then we came back home at around 11pm and passed out.

Thoughts:

• And I thought Beijing was hot. This place is sweltering. Gonna be fun running around in 40C+ heat sweating like crazy.
• Beijing International Airport is pretty cool. Not just literally. When you walk in the ceiling slopes up and away from you, giving you the sense that this place is on a scale of its own.
• Apparently the normal Chinese reaction to eating beyond your spiciness tolerances is to get a massive stomachache. I can’t honestly say that that’s happened to me before.
• Chongqing is pretty huge. Population-wise obviously, but the city center may be larger and taller than Chicago. It’s pretty cook to go to a city that basically nobody outside of Chinese people are aware about and realise that it’s bigger than anything you’ve ever experienced before by an order of magnitude.