Pingyao


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Asia » China » Shanxi » Pingyao
February 14th 2006
Published: February 15th 2006
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Pingyao - 13.02.06

Pingyao is a small tourist-orientated destination offering a couple of streets of souvenirs, western food and a pleasant atmosphere.

We stayed overnight at at one of the nicest hotels we've been in yet. Good food (western and chinese!), lovely and very helpful staff, cool chinese style room and free internet! The competition for business is fierce and we had a battle to get through all the touts at the station - one of whom got into our taxi with us! We got rid of her but then had to deal with the smiley taxi driver who was determined he would be the one to get the commission. We managed to lose him down a sidestreet and ended up just making it to the Tian Yuan Kui guesthouse alone!

We spent a day browsing the many stalls and bought a couple of souvenirs. The bargaining is reasonably tough here. The game is fairly familiar, they quote us a price anything from twice to 5 times the amount we want to pay and the skill is in getting them down to our price without just meeting them in the middle! I am useless and always want to give them far too much of my hard earned cash but luckily I have Will on my side who makes us walk away until they come running after us and give in! I am sure that they still get a good deal though.

We didn't really bother much with the sights here, instead we took to the dusty back streets with our cameras to try to get some good people shots. It was a lovely stopover and we are well rested and well fed now as we continue our journey north to Datong where the forecast for tomorrow is a sunny -5 degrees!!


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