Day 5: Datong

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Gabe again. (apparently steph gets burned out writing in her own blog and leaves me to fill in the details of the trip)

Yesterday there was a bit of a mixup with the train tickets. The girl at the happy dragon in beijing helped us get the tickets, and she even gave us a brochure and circled the chinese phrase telling the driver to take us to the west train station. The only problem was our train ticket was for a different train station 10 km away - we didn't find that out until we got to the west train station. There wasn't enough time to get a cab up to the correct station but luckily they were able to transfer our ticket, free of charge, to a train that left an hour later. Could have been much worse.

The train to Datong from beijing was about 6 1/2 hours. As we were boarding the train we didn't see any other westerners, and this was out of 2000 or so people. The train ride was fun and interesting - the scenery varried between steep mountains with lots of tunnels, to farmland, to very poor cities, lots of coal mining and power plants. The seats were arranged like booths, with a table in the center, so we sat facing 3 chinese people that were very interested in us. I got out our phrasebook and we struggled through the basics. They got a kick out of it.

When we got to Datong there were lots of taxi drivers yelling for us in chinese, but one man approached us with decent english asking us if we needed a room. It was less than half of what we were planning on spending at the only lonely planet recommended option, so we followed him so we could go see the room. The hotel was down a kind of dark alley, so both steph and I were a little aprehensive in following him. I held on to my leatherman so I could brandish the 1" blade in case there was any trouble. But once we saw the lobby we relaxed, the hotel was fine. And cheap! The only problem was we didn't have water back at our room. I complained, and they turned on the cold water, but still no hot water. I put off taking a cold shower until the morning. Who needs coffee when you have a cold shower to wake you up?

The same guy that led us to the hotel also helped arrange a trip to the Yungang caves, which is the only reason we wanted to go to datong. Today we went and saw the caves and they were amazing. There are 51,000 buddhas carved into the walls. Some of them are only 6" or so high, but there are several huge ones, with a few over 60 ft. I took a bunch of pictures, but the best preserved caves do not allow cameras because it damages the paint that still exists on some of the buddhas. The oldest ones were carved circa AD 460.

We got back from Yungang with tons of time before our next train, which goes to Xi'an. To kill time we just walked around the city a bit. Datong is a pretty ugly place, lots of construction going on, trash in the streets. And some of the worst smells I have ever smelled creep into your nose every so often. I'm sure stephanie will be blogging about that part of it though.

Don't forget to check our flickr page

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42585283@N08/sets/72157622406670628

I haven't uploaded the pics from Yungang caves yet, but they should be up soon

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Comments

[Matt Potterton]

Buddha Buddha
So is there a chinese phrase comprable to "Donde esta el bano?"