Blogs from Luoyang, Henan, China, Asia - page 3

Our mission today is to visit Old Town Luoyang with our interpreter, Melody. But first a massage is in order. Julie finds the Massage Hospital while I sleep in (yeah!). Once we are finishing being leisurely, its off to lunch. Our interpreter takes us to a cluster of restaurants. We are wary since it looks like 'street meat' places. We explain we are worried about getting sick, so she takes us to a Muslim noodle and rice restaurant. I had a yummy beef noodle soup and a strange tasting soda called Vibrate. After lunch it was off for ice cream at McDonald's and then a trip to the post office. The post office was actually a combination post office and bank. There were only two desks open. This place, more than most, folks pushed right in ... read more

The whole reason for our trip is this super wonderful little person, Eris. Julie and I set out to cab it from the apartment to 'baby central' where the mom and babe are resting with the superb care of her Chinese Grandfather. Armed with a piece of paper with addresses and lots of pointing and smiling, we safely get ourselves transported for even less money than we were told we would pay. The city is bustling with cars, bikes and pedestrians. Its hard for us to even tell when to cross the street even though the traffic and walk signs are moving from red to green. Although people are polite, they don't wait for anyone and are just in a hurry at all times. Once at the apartment we visit for hours on two separate occasions ... read more

In Pingyao we met a nice French lady named Maria and she told us about the Luoyang caves she was just going to. Even though we already visited Yungang Grottoes in Datong we decided to check this place out. Besides, Luoyang is a base place for visiting Shaolin Temples so we were quite happy to stop there. We choose International Youth Hostel in the Old Town, quite far away from the train station. We just thought there would be far more charm in this place then in new town development. Luoyang is a rather big town, however transport system is very efficient so we had few bus options to the Old Town and were dropped by the main square where Hostel was located. This hostel was not listed in Lonely Planet and maybe we should have ... read more

好久不见 Back by popular demand, its Brendan's Travel Blog! After spending time down south in Shanghai (overwhelming), Suzhou (overpriced), and Nanjing (just right), I have arrived in Luoyang. Luoyang is one of China's four ancient capitals, all of which I have now visited. I arrived Thursday morning after a night sitting on a train with insufficient sleep. First I tried to buy a ticket to Lanzhou, but they were all booked up. Seems the East-West train line up here is quite busy. While walking to the hotel through the train station square, I was accosted with many offers to go to the Shaolin Temple. One guy was particularly obtuse, and seeing me coming, shouted "Laowai!" (foreigner!) and made the familiar offer, to which I responded "Do I look like I came to China yesterday?" He took ... read more

Once again I was glad I had the hotel name in Chinese and the phone number to our hotel Christian's Hotel. The cab driver had to call the hotel to get directions. Once we arrived we were greeted and brought orange drinks and hot towels to wash our hands and face. We arrived in Luoyang a day early so we had to try to explain that we needed to book a room for tonight as well as for the next day which we already had booked. This was more difficult than we thought since not many people in this city speak english. There was one man behind the desk who spoke a little and he ended up helping us figure it out. Once we saw the room we were really excited. It was huge and the ... read more