Monkey Magic & the Honeymoon suite

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After sleeping of our 4am arrival we headed out to explore Lanzhou town. Before doing so we had to deal with the 2 receptionists, lets call them Dumb & Dumber! It took a good 10min with Dani repeating over and over again in perfect Chinese that we needed to check out of our temporary room and into our pre-booked room for which we even had a printed out reservation confirmation. It wasn't a language barrier just obviously a very difficult concept!

Our first destination was a cable car trip across the Yellow River and up a mountain overlooking the city, one of the most peaceful places we have come across so far. We crossed back over the river and visited the White Cloud Temple, home to long-bearded black clad monks before coming across a group of statues dedicated to the Journey to the West tale a.k.a Monkey, Pigsy, Tripitaka, Sandy and the horse. Gold plated and along side the river it was a perfect opportunity for some fun photos.

We returned to our room which happened to be the honeymoon suite.....yes that sounds weird but the round bed on the website looked too funny to resist and just so happened to be incredibly comfortable.

Later that night we headed out to the food night markets in search of the infamous local noodle dish, Lanzhou Lamian (hand-pulled noodles) only to discover that it is one of those things you can never find in the place most famous for it! Nonetheless we had a delicious Xiao Pan Ji (chunks of chicken and potato in a thick spicy broth) with fresh backed spiced bread to soak up the sauce and washed down with pineapple flavored "beer".

The next day we headed out to a small museum, saw the stunning Nanguan mosque, had a great massage, finally had fantastic Lamian noodles, wandered the antique markets of Huang Miao and relaxed with coffee and cheesecake before getting on our next sleeper bus.

Once again guidebooks had said Lanzhou had little to offer but a transit hub for overland trips across China, once again I think we turned that on its head and managed to have a great and relaxing time in an interesting city that was infinitely cleaner than its coastal mega-city counter parts.

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