Chongqing, for people who are here for a reason.
This is not a travel guide. These are the places that fit around a treatment schedule — close to Liangjiang, manageable on a healing day, and worth the photograph. Recovery-safe options are marked, and so are the ones to skip in the first three days.
Liziba — the monorail through the building
Chongqing's most photographed oddity: Line 2 runs straight through the sixth and seventh floors of a residential block. The observation platform opposite was designed with a 33-degree camera angle, so you do not have to hunt for the shot. Trains every three to five minutes.
This is also where the city’s most practised photo ritual happens. When a train approaches, everyone on the platform turns, tips their head back and opens their mouth, and the person holding the phone times it so the carriage appears to slide straight in. It is silly, it is free, and everybody does it. Your pair is taken here — once before treatment, once on the second trip.
Hongyadong at night
Eleven storeys of timber-framed buildings stacked up a cliff above the Jialing river, lit up after dark. Entirely rebuilt rather than ancient, and all the better for it — it photographs like a film set because it essentially is one.
Fifteen minutes from Liziba by taxi. Perfect for the evening after a consultation day, when you want to be out but not doing anything strenuous.
Chaotianmen — where two rivers meet
The Jialing arrives green, the Yangtze runs brown, and for a stretch they refuse to mix. From the promenade you can see the seam. It is the clearest possible visual of where you are in China.
Flat, paved and shaded in stretches — the easiest walking of anything on this list, which matters in the days after surgery.
Kuixinglou — 200 steps, zero flat ground
A staircase threaded between apartment blocks, ninety degrees to the street, leading to a viewing deck over the Yuzhong peninsula. The definitive Chongqing photograph, and the one that best explains why maps of this city make no sense.
We list it, and we also tell you when not to attempt it: not in the first three days after implant surgery, when a flight of steps is the last thing you want.
Ciqikou old town
A preserved Qing-era port quarter of grey brick, steep lanes and street food. Busy, commercial and unashamedly touristy — and still worth a half day, particularly on a weekday morning when the lanes are quiet.
Food note for dental patients: this is a chilli-and-crunch kind of place. Good for browsing, less good for eating in the first week.
Three Gorges Museum
Directly on People's Square, and the best indoor option when the weather turns — which in Chongqing it does, often and without warning. Strong on the reservoir project and on regional archaeology.
Indoor, seated, air-conditioned, with lifts. On a healing day when you want to leave the hotel but not walk far, this is the answer.