Luoyang, where the bleeding heck is Luoyang?

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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 chap who didn't understand too much english and certainly didnt get the concept of Su Dokus (don't mention the Japanese!) so got lots of sleep on the train and arrived to Luoyang feeling nice and refreshed (ahem)

We got to the station to the usual hassle, somehow they can always spot the tourists, or at least the western ones. About 5 guys trying to get commission for checking us into a hostel, actually the same one we had reserved, so tryed to ignore them and make our own way. There are two things near Luoyang, the Longmen grottoes and the Shaolin monastry, we were offered plenty of minibuses and taxis on our way so figured this would be easy to arrange. Decided to go with the public bus to Longmen and worked out pretty well, lot of buddhas living in caves, all carved out of the rock directly, some much bigger than others. One of them was very impressive when viewed from the opposite river bank but I'm starting to think I've had about engough of buddhas, thousands of them there were, literally. Managed to call my mum to wish her happy birthday (albeit with a two second delay on an internet phone. Managed to relocate my phone (in my washbag of all places) so not so worried about the number of mobiles I've been through recently. The late night goings on in the hostel while using the internet led us to suspect there was a massage parlour on one of the upper floors...

On the 26th we got up later than the 8am tourbus to Shaolin with the intention of arranging it all ourselves. "Hello, Shaolin, hello" isn't too helpful when they don't speak any more English. We eventually got ourselves onto a minibus but were a bit worried about being charged twice when we didn't get any type of receipt, then the guy who we paid came back to ask for a tip (mmm dodgy). We decided to try to trade a tip for a receipt but didn't seem to go down too well as he just offered us some little scrap of paper instead. Was reassuring to meet another English chap on the bus, Cyrill, who wasn't quite sure if the bus was going in the right direction either (forgot to mention that worry) but at least we had strength in numbers. Anyway, before I ramble on too much it all worked out fine, I think we all paid about 5 yuan over the odds (oh no) but noone got charged twice so everyone was happy to arrive at the lovely Shaolin monastery in the clouds. We got to check out a show which was pretty good, no real fighting but we did get to see some funky shit like a guy breaking a steel bar on his head and someone bursting a balloon with a needle though a sheet of glass (how the hell do you do that?). The rest of the monastery was fairly average, or maybe I've just seen too many temples and buddhas recently. It was interesting to see the monks get in on the tourist trade to sell nick-nacks to all the visitors. We went back for dinner and had a quick game of ping pong and pool in the massage parlour above our youth hostel (it definately is) and all went fine apart from the sporting apathy on all but one person's part and the half naked chinese guy who wandered into our room to say hi during our game. Off to Xi'an next (or rather I've already been) so I'll write another thrilling update in the next couple of days (maybe).

Cheerio.

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