Friday April 15th

This morning I wasn’t feeling too hungry so I didn’t go for the usual croissant.  I just had some cereal and fruit.  We left the hotel for a hill which we planned to climb before heading to lunch.  Unfortunately, we had to spend less time on the hill because we got stuck in traffic due to an accident. 

Kunming

I thought I would take some medicine as my cold was still with me, but I thought I heard Martin say that the ‘golf cart’ up the hill would bypass the steps, so I decided not to take anything.  Unfortunately, the ‘golf cart’ took us to the bottom of the steps and I couldn’t manage the way to the top.  We got two thirds of the way there and I could go no further, I was really struggling and I began to feel very ill.

Back down the steps we went, and lo and behold: a market!  I cheered myself up by buying a tapestry rucksack for 25 Yuan haggled down from 50.  Bargain!  On to lunch and I wasn’t feeling too hungry still.  There were some steps up to the restaurant, and although I didn’t rush up them, I almost feinted just before we got to the tables!  Jane got me drinking water immediately and I sat down and ate the plainest food I could see on the table.  I also had some Sprite (FINALLY!) and Mathew and I both decided it was a combination of having a cold, not eating, low blood sugar (there was a Sprite conspiracy here in Kunming, and I’d hardly eaten anything sweet over the last 2 weeks), and being at altitude as we were at 1,800m above sea level which is higher than the Canadian Rockies which I did not realise.  So I was probably suffering from altitude sickness and had no idea.

After lunch, I felt a little better and we went straight to the airport – as it happened, my stomach had decided that it wasn’t interested in having much of the food I had offered it, so in the airport I decided it might be a good idea to use one of my electrolyte sachets when we got to the hotel in Chongqing.

Chongqing hotel room

On the plane this time, I was at a window seat – I was finally able to have a good look at the Chinese countryside – until we were above the clouds!  About 1 hour later, we arrived safely at Chongqing airport at 4pm.  It took a while – about an hour – to get to our hotel, but our new local guide Oliver was very friendly, funny, chatty, and spoke very very good English – he even had a cockney accent which was hilarious!  He then told us he had learnt English from a Chinese teacher who had lived in London!  No, really?  Haha!

When we got to the hotel, I wasn’t feeling hungry at all, nor was I feeling like eating plain rice YET AGAIN.  I had a cup of tea, skipped dinner and sent a couple of emails on my phone, wrote some postcards and had a look at the room service menu to see if there was anything on there I might like the look of.

After Mathew returned to the room with some watermelon, I decided on the ‘Black Pepper Steak’ on the room service menu.  Then the fun began – I pressed the ‘Room Service’ button on the phone, and tried to explain what I wanted.  The woman on the other end of the line didn’t seem to understand what I was asking for.  I asked “Is this room service?” she said “No.”.  I asked for the number for room service and she had no idea.  So, I tried one of the numbers on the room service menu, I asked “Is this room service?” she said “No” (?!).  She went to get someone else who spoke to me, she had slightly better English, although I had to spell “black” “pepper” and “steak”.

Not sure I was going to get anything, I waited for a short while before someone delivered the food into the room, and I sat down to eat.  Unfortunately the beef steak was totally smothered in black pepper sauce which was far too hot for me.  I managed a little bit, but it was just too much.  I ate the 2 slices of tomato and mozzarella on the side, and quite a bit of the plain steamed rice too.  I felt I’d had enough and also decided to have some sprite from the fridge as I thought it would help top up my blood sugar levels.

I wasn’t feeling ill after all that, so I hoped I’d get a decent night’s sleep, especially as we didn’t have to leave until 9:45 the following morning.  I hoped my body would like some breakfast in the morning and my appetite would return, as we were no longer at altitude and I was getting a bit tired of feeling constantly ill!