Pingyao

---

The train ride to Pingyao was not as comfortable as the overnighter to Xian but the good news is it was a little shorter. Left at 8:30 at night and arrived in Pingyao at 7AM, greeted by a sign directing us to the "Underground Funnel" to avoid walking over the tracks 😊.

Pingyao is pretty small and a very traditional village. We spent the day on our own visiting various sites and museums and temples in the town; today we headed out to see the house of a very wealthy gentleman - the details of which I will post later. Suffice to say it was the size of a small town and quite incredible. While walking the walls around the home you could see cave houses built into the mountainside. These are actual caves that have been built as houses.

Afterwards a few of us made arrangements for a vehicle to visit another buddhist temple about 15km outside of town. It was an interesting ride on the highways out there but well worth it - we pretty much had the place to ourselves and it was a very old temple with many outstanding carvings etc. No photography though - which is a whole story in itself😊.

Anyways, we head out tomorrow morning bright and early for Datong and the hanging monastery etc. Probably won't have access to reasonable connections until Bejing but promise a better update then, with those overdue photos. Hope you enjoyed the pics of PingAn and Yangshuo area.

take care

---

Photos

At temple
After I took this, a voice came over an invisible intercom telling me "no photog!". It took an hour to peel myself off the ceiling

Our driver to the temple
Thought he was posing for a girlie mag or something