Datong - Yungang Caves and Hanging Monastery

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We arrived in Datong by train from Beijing which was a 6 hour journey on a hard sleeper. This wasn't as bad as we thought, the seats are actually soft probably similar to that of a normal commuter train in england. A tip on trains is that you need to book them in advance either through your hostel or preferably at the train station. Once you are outside Beijing you cannot book trains easily for your onward journeys and if your planning to only stay somewhere for a few days you may not get a train, so best thing to do is go to beijing station or Beijing West station and pre-book your tickets for your next few jorneys at least - this way your likely to get the soft sleepers etc.

Once we arrived in a very freezing Datong well after 9pm we got a taxi to our hostel - Datong Youth Hostel. It's quite far from station (approx 3km) and in the middle of a square so taxi cannot go right outside. The taxi dropped us at the entrance to the square and just pointed down into the completely dead and unlit area. We walked down but couldn't see the hostel so when we got as far as KFC at the other end we decided to pop into a local tea house and ask. we were shown to the hostel which did not have a lit sign outside and was above a shop but once inside we were pleasantly surprised at how clean it was, the staff spoke English well and our room even had a western toilet. The only downside was how cold th room was - I slept in a pair of leggings, socks, a t-shirt and a fleece jumper and I was still cold.

The next day we wanted to head to the Hanging Momestery and asked our hostel directions to the bus stop. After following his directions and eventually finding the stop we realised that it takes approx 3 hours to get there on 2 buses and walking between stops and then to the monestery. We thought this just seemed like a lot of hassle so we went back to our hostel and arranged a driver for the day to take us to both the Hanging Monestery and Yungang Caves. This cost us 300y (£30) between us (not including entrance fees) but this only works out the same, if not slightly more expensive as getting the buses to both and saves masses of time and enables you to see both sights comfortably in a day. Would definitely recommend doing it this way, as to save yourselves only a few quid really isn't worth all the added hassle you will get by having to change buses serveral times without knowing where to get off and where each station is to change at.

The Hanging Monestery is a massive Monestery built in to the cliffs and although its suggested that its supported only by the long stilts, it's actually held up by huge horizontal timbers drilled deep into the cliff. There are three levels and you walk through to the many different corridors and levels via rickety wooden walkways and metal staircases. It's quite scary especially if there are a few people standing at once on the walkways but you get lovely views over the cliffs and made even more special due to the frozen lake below and snow covered peaks. This was truly a surprisingly good sight to see and would definitely recommend a trip here if your able to make it to Datong.

The Yungang Caves are 5th century caves with 51,000 buddha statues carved into the rocks. again this was a big surprise to us although we had read about it in the lonely planet book we were not expecting the buddha's to be so big and spectacular or the carvings to be so intricut for how long ago they were done. The best caves were 5 (where the is a 17m tall seated Buddha) and 6. In these caves the Buddha statues are truly huge and some are gilded with coloured ceilings. Unfortunately not all the caves were open but there was still plenty for us to see. Overall we had a great day visiting both sights, not to be missed in our opinion (knocked spots of the forbidden city if you were to ask us) and made even better that we could do both in a day and have a day of relaxing tomorrow.

As a whole there isn't a huge amount to do in actual Datong (although there are lots of shops and a 3 storey shopping mall if you want designer clothes only a stones throw from square next to McDonalds). If you are staying anywhere near the Datong youth hostel or red flag square a trip to Fee li G restaurant to sample their authentic shaomai dumplings is a must - you get 8 dumplings for between 12-18y (£1.20-£1.80). We ordered 3 different dishes - lamb, pork and beef and had a couple bottles of Chinese beer each (Tsingtao) and the total bill was £7 - amazing.

Would highly recommend a detour to Datong before moving on to Pinyao or elsewhere but would say 1 night is probably enough or 2 at the very most.

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