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Published: August 17th 2009
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The bus leaving Wutai Shan early in the morning to the
Hanging Monastery was - like usual - packed with people. The trip took about three hours on a sometimes bumpy road. I was glad to have a normal seat in the bus. After arriving at the Hanging Monastery, I approached one of the couples from the bus. They could speak basic English and I asked them whether they knew how to get from there to Datong later. They told me that they had gotten a phone number of a taxi driver who was taking them later to Datong and the caves which are situated there too. That was exactly what I wanted, so they arranged that I could join them in the taxi! Because I had my backpack with me and there was no official luggage storage, again I was really glad with the Chinese couple. They helped me find a place where I could store my luggage. It turned out that the only place where I could put it was a toilet, which luckily wasn´t used as one! The very small ´building´ was used as a small shop, probably because there were other toilets on the premises anyway.
I found the Hanging Monastery very impressive. It is built on a cliff, so it seems really to be hanging. There were some tour groups and because it is very small, there is only one route you can take. Because of the many tourists, it felt a bit like a traffic jam sometimes, but especially because it is very different from other monasteries or temples, I really enjoyed it!
After having visited the site, we went with some other people from the first bus to
Datong. The driver made a stop there, because some of the guests were getting home from that point. He directed us to a noodle shop run by his family were we could have lunch. And yet another Chinese couple was able to speak English and I they ordered some vegetarian noodles for me. I have to say that it is really convenient when you meet people who can help and translate things for me. Sitting there, the drivers of the first bus also entered the restaurant (one big family) and, although they all don´t speak any English, they were all very excited to see me there again, which was really funny. But I guess
that happens all the time here, which makes travelling very nice!
After lunch, the driver got me and the first Chinese couple to the caves, the
Yungang Grottoes, another very nice site. Some of the sculptures in the caves still had a lot of colour and I can´t imagine how it would have looked like when they had just finished it!
The road to the caves was also really bad. At both sides of the roads there was only garbage. At the touristic sites, there are always people cleaning the roads, but obviously in Datong, this is not happening at all. About Datong too, I heard it is a very filthy city, because of the coal mining in the region. And indeed, everything in the shops is covered in a layer of dust, but for the rest it isn´t that bad!
That night, I wandered the streets for a place to eat and I saw some Western tourist sitting at a restaurant. After having asked them how the food is, it turned out that they too were vegetarians and so I joined them for diner. To eat with more people is always nice here in China, because then
you can easily have multiple dishes and have a taste of them all!
I had bought a train ticket to Beijing at the CITS (Chinese tourist booking office) that next morning, because I felt a bit tired of traveling. So I decided to go to Beijing one day earlier than planned to have some time to relax in a nice environment. When I just got ready to leave my hotel room, the guy from the booking office came to my room. He told me that the train I wanted only was a sleeper train. So I had to wait for a few hours to get on the next train, which did have seats. Because I was awake anyway, I decided to go to the same restaurant I´d been to the night before. It turned out that it was really busy, but they were baking bread while I was standing there. Because I love bread, it was a very lucky morning to have
freshly baked bread!
I tried to sleep for some hours and just before I had to take the train which would take more than 6 hours, I wanted to eat something again. So I went to
the same restaurant again (why change a winning formula?). When I approached the place, there were a lot a men standing in front of it and because it looked a bit awkward, I looked again. There was a man lying on the streets and they had covered his face with cardboard. It could only be that the guy had died there and they were probably waiting for some transportation for him... I decided not to approach it further, so I bought some cookies for the trip. It was weird to notice that the guy was lying there for a long time just on the streets...
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