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Day 1 of my trip!

August 2, 2019

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Bon voyage!

Set off for my journey! The day finally arrived where I am going for my solo trip. Excited and fearful at the same time I set off for my journey. I carried my backpack and sling bag and went to take the train to the train station to board the bullet train which would take me to chong qing. It was going to be a long ride, over 10 hours but I was prepared.

Trouble struck!

Well I thought I was till I reached the train station. I couldn’t find the ticket terminal and well was panicking a little as I saw the minutes slowly tick by. When I was finally able to reach the ticket terminal, I saw that the international passengers’ queue, which was usually a short queue was a long queue full of customers from china. It was a hair biting experience as I saw the minute hand slowly tick by while I queued, with a little anger about the situation with the Chinese passengers. I looked at my phone checking if there was any other trains to chongqing for the day but alas there wasn’t as they were all fully booked. Looks like this was my only shot to reach chonqing. I calmed myself and just continued queing,hoping i would catch the train.And when it finally reached my turn, I had only 15 minutes to rush to check my bags and rush to my train. Looks like my plans of getting breakfast was crushed and I might not even reach the train in time! I quickly rushed to check my bags, begging others to let my cut their queue through the manual queue as I was a foreigner. Then I ran for my gate, hoping that it wouldn’t close. Luckily, I was in the nick of time and made it through the gate. When I finally boarded the train, I checked and saw that I had 2 minutes before the train scheduled departure time. I sighed a heavy sigh of relief as I went to look for my seat. It was a memorable start to my journeys. I located my seat and sat down. With an empty stomach and a 10 hour journey ahead of me, well what a way to start my journey I thought to myself. But as the train disembarked on it’s journey and I saw the city sights slowly give way to the mountains. I knew that it was going to be a fun trip.

Train Journey

The journey was interesting as I took a nap and saw lots of mountains. I also took a nap through the journey and kinda missed the lunch time on the train. I was hoping to be able to do some work while on the train but realized that it did not have a powerpoint shortly after. Looks like I would not be able to do any work then. I rotated between reading my mangas and listening to my music and taking naps in order to pass my time. Luckily I brought a bag of snacks along with me on my journey so I had a little sustenance as I waited to finally reach Chong Qing to have a nice meal.

Touchdown

After a 10 hour journey it finally reached Chong Qing and boarded the Chong Qing metro towards my hotel for the night. Luckily, I found it easily and was able to check in with relatively little problems. I then proceeded to go to the nearby night market and try the famous chong qing fried pork belly. It was delicious as the pork was cooked in a fermented bean sauce. I then proceeded to continue walking along the night market picking up various street foods to fill up my tummy. This included pancakes, drinks among various another foodstuff. It was an interesting start towards my journey. The night market was one that rivalled the ones in Taiwan in terms of variety of food. Though it was mostly in shops rather than hawkers along the street. I had an interesting first day as I ended the day with an interesting drink, the pandan coffee. Wouldn’t recommend it to people though as it was kinda bad, but it was an interesting experience but I would rather stick to my normal latte or cappuccino thank you.