I went to China in 2015. Since then, two things happened (more than two things have likely happened since 2015, but these two are significant). One is that I learned that there was a heap of stuff in China I should have seen but didn't. Two is that they got a handy high speed rail network. So back to China we went. And because I'd never been to Laos before and it's closeish to China, we went there too. And because the easiest route was through Hanoi, we went there too. The communism tour, if you will.

We decided to get bullet trains the whole way. Chongqing - Zhangjiajie (the avatar mountain place) - Fenghuang (I picked this by accident, I had meant Furong) - Yangshuo - Hong Kong.

China is not a simple country to visit. In 2015, we arrived and our phones didn't work properly so we shrugged and assumed we'd figure it out. In 2026 it would be easier to navigate a holiday with no legs than no phone. Plus, China is big into technology and pretty much cashless. So if anyone is interested, here is the China prep you must do:

Get an eSim that'll let you use everything blocked by the Great Firewall of China (Google etc). I used Airalo and it worked fine. That'll probably be enough but you could also install a VPN. Alipay is like a horribly confusing version of Google pay that they use for everything. You can probably tax your car with it. Sometimes it'll just randomly turn into Chinese, which you can't hold against them I guess. WeChat, the Chinese version of Whatsapp, also does everything, including most of the stuff Alipay does. Hotels immediately add you on WeChat, which is useful if you need their help with anything, and weird if you don't. Didi is the Uber equivalent that I couldn't get to work, but unfathomably, Didi is included in Alipay and that one did work. Amap is the Google map equivalent. No complaints about this. It's just a map app and a really good one. Google maps will work with an eSim but there's no point because nothing is marked on it. Lastly the Trip app lets you request the train bookings, which is a bizarre system, but we did manage.

Chongqing is a crazy cyberpunk city with split levels to rival even Edinburgh. However, I would say finding ways to see the crazy levels isn't as easy as The Internet makes out, especially in 2, extremely jetlagged, days. Luckily our hotel bar had a view across the river of the skyline, including Hongya Cave, so we did not have to venture far to see that.

On our one full day, we saw as many city centre things as we could. Hongya Cave (built in a traditional style on stilts into the cliffside) during the day was eerily quiet, though felt like a video game climbing down through the levels. I bought a handy backpack with a panda on it that I used for our whole trip.

Kuixing Tower is the easiest place to see the crazy levels, though when you get there it is in no way obvious that the building is even publicly accessible. So you leap with faith into the elevator and use Google lens to translate the instructions and go to the plaza. It seems so normal, a million storeys high, until you walk to the other side and are literally at ground level. Very trippy. But I live in Edinburgh so you can't fool me with your strange levels.

Of course we had to see the classic train going into the side of an apartment block. It's nowhere near anything useful. I suppose when you build infrastructure with such ruthless efficiency that you plow through a residential block, you probably don't pause to consider the tourism potential. So you get the train (Alipay doesn't work in the metro stations) out there and stand in a sort of layby with a load of other tourists and watch it. I thought it was cool. Probably not for the residents, who before now only had to deal with the train, and now have to deal with hoards of visitors every day.

In the city centre there's a surprisingly beautiful temple called Luohan. When you're in it, it's hard to believe you're actually in the middle of a sci fi city (though from most angles you can see skyscrapers).

No Irish man, including Dan, goes to Chongqing without visiting the Solas Irish bar - made famous by Blindboy on his podcast. And these Irish men bring their girlfriends. So we went to Solas, which was in a much more authentic neighbourhood outside the city centre, and met another Irish couple there for exactly the same reason. The owner wouldn't tell us who the mystery celebrity was but I can safely say that no tourist stumbled on this bar by accident, so I doubt the claim.

In 2015, it was hard for me to eat in China. In 2026 it was equally hard for me to eat in China. Nothing is vegetarian. Even vegetables are often cooked in pork fat. There's very little western food, which is reasonable, given it's not in the West. But given I'm a picky vegetarian who doesn't love Chinese food (sorry), I really struggled. I ate a lot of rice and cereal bars. I'm not sure I'll ever eat rice or a cereal bar again to be honest. But the biggest struggle of all is when I mention the trip to people and they immediately light up and say the food must have been amazing and I smile and say oh yes and hope there are no follow up questions because there's only so many adjectives you can apply to rice and cereal bars.