http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , China , Henan , Luoyang en-us Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:10:41 UTC Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:10:41 UTC Thursday 17 July XirsquoanLots of people have arrived for the XirsquoanPekin part of the journey. Some of them are cyclists including a large contingent of teenagers and some are wives and girlfriends of the ParisPekin group who will be travelling by coach and doing tourist things. We feel a bit overwhelmed after being an isolated community for four months across so many countries. O http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-304273.html I took a seven hour train ride to Zhenzhou arriving late and then a three and a half hour busride to the town of Luoyang.The next day I was up early to get the public bus out to the Longmen grottoes. They obviously didn't get too many foreign tourists on the bus as pretty much everyone stared at me for the 50 minute journey...It was worth it though as the Longmen carvings were brought to us b http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-297377.html At the beginning of the 2008my singapore triped in henan and xi an. Here are some pictures of them. We began zhengzhou kaifengluoyangxianbeijingsingapore. http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-293080.html We arrived by train on Tuesday afternoon then left by train on Wednesday night.I was too tired then to find anything out and Im too tired now to write anything. This is what happened in between..... http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-289825.html After the experience of living in the Hong Kong Temple I returned to China for 30 days. There I came to two places very magical and mystical places. Here I want to share through some poems and photos my deep love and appreciation that I feel when in China especially when in such places as theseLongmen Dragon GatesThese Buddhist...caves more like a portion of a river valley that has http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-287862.html Well we have just spent the day visiting the home of Kong Fu and I am most impressed. We arrived in Shaolin from Luoyang after visiting the Longmen Caves which is one of China's few surviving masterpieces of Buddhist rock carvings. While in Luoyang we spent the day checking out the entire face of a mountain which has been carved into a thousand images of Buddha. The detail in the carvings made http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-280788.html After leaving the huge thunderstorm behind in Xian we made our way by train to Luoyang. We were lucky enough to actually have seats for the 5 hour journey not like all the people perched in the aisles. We stayed at this weird low budget hotel where we got a suite not just a tiny room. Very bizarre mind you it hadn't been cleaned in a while oh well. We met a BritishChinese guy teaching in http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-201437.html Meine 11tgiger ChinaRoundTrip ist beendet und morgen gehts zurueck nach Muenchen. Hier schonmal der Bericht ueber die ersten 3 der 11 Tage. Die weiteren liefer ich dann am nchsten WE nach weil ich in Mnchen erstmal kein Internet hab. In der Woche vom Vatertag hiess es erstmal Abschied nehmen Ein Abschiedsessen mit den Deutschen die ich hier kennen gelernt hab ein zweites mit den 3 chine http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-162754.html Hello to you all back home thanks for the messages and keep them coming Ok so we arrived in Xian shortly before our last blog and it is another busy city the smog was really bad there and we both found it difficult to walk about with the heat and air so bad. On the first day we went out and headed up one of the main streets mostly the same type of thing we saw in Beijing. After a short wa http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-157666.html 'Laowai laowai' Sometimes you can just catch the words being whispered by one adult to another and sometimes it gets screamed by an excited toddler to their parents. The rough translation is 'foreigner' but it probably has more of an effect like 'alien'. Though not strictly an insult it is often used in a derogatory sense a bit like 'gringo' in South America. I hadn't heard it until I hi http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-133996.html It's a five hour train ride from Xi'an to Luoyang across the loess plateau a geographic term to describe the chasms of clay soil and dry river beds where homes have been carved into the cliff faces. In the trees of the farming villages hang large decorative bunches of dried corn. On a distant hilltop a factory spews smoke into the yellowbrown mud puddle sky. Bring a book or a deck of cards.I pr http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-121450.html It's in China still. Although I am not I am still behind on my updates. We got into Luoyang on the 25th of July. We had to struggle to squeeze onto the metro and I think I almost crushed a girl with my backpack on the way out I'm going to assume not my fault as they won't wait for passengers to get off the train before pushing to get on. Then got to share our train carriage with a nice cha http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-81292.html We have done so much in the last few days that we have decided just to concentrate on the highlights. We took a night train from Nanjing to Keifeng for a 10 hour trip travelling soft sleeper. Hard sleeper folk sit up all night but we softies got bunk beds in a four bunk compartment. The corridor of the carriage was filled with cigarette smoke and we were apprehensive about our roomiestobe http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-76346.html Not long left now and I am currently in Luoyang visiting the Shaolin monks. I left Chengdu on an overnight sleeper train to Xi'an which went smoothly and actually got a good nights sleep by tying a zip top around my head covering my face. It was good to arrive in Xi'an a city with around 8million people known for its shopping. The guesthouse was literally opposite the Bell Tower the centre p http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-55956.html Luoyang 10.02.06The 10th Feb was a pretty hectic day. Not only did we visit the Shaolin temple previous entry we also just managed to get a bus to Luoyang over an hour away and visit the Longmen caves before catching a midnight train to Xi'an.The Longmen caves are over 100000 images and statues of the budda carved into the cliffs by the Yi River. Some are straight onto the cliff face an http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/China/Henan/Luoyang/blog-40543.html