Shaolin to Beijing

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Hi! Sorry for the lack of blogs, but the last 10 days of the trip have been quite busy - it felt like we were either seeing a sight or travelling at any given time... not so much 'free time' as Micheal likes to call it. So in order not to bore anyone by detailed stories of each day, I'll just run through the sights and what I thought of them 😊
Luoyang - Longmen (Dragon Gate) Caves - Sept 20th
- 100's of caves and grottos cut into a cliff. Huge and small Buddha's found in each. It was impressive - it's amazing the amount of work that goes into all of these sights. The unfortunate part is that alot of the heads were cut off during different revolutions, so there's a lot of vandalized buddhas 😞
- the funniest story I have so far is that somehow for the first two weeks of the trip I didn't realize that I had actually been using self tanning lotion... I guess I thought Continual Radiance just meant me being radiant, not my skin changing colour 😊 I only figured it out when I noticed my hands were starting to get yellow...and that the odd towel I used had some colour left on it (I had been blaming the pollution for that the first time it happened 😊. So we're leaving our hotel and Micheal calls me over to tell me the towel is stained and that they want me to pay for it - about $7, but expensive given the cost of everything here. He was having them bring the towel down so he could look at it and argue that it could be washed out. It was quite frustrating... as I didn't really feel like holding up 15 people in a lobby while the all got to see my towel. Luckily I finally convinced him to let me pay and get out of the hotel lobby - although after I left, I wished I'd asked to keep the towel....
Xi'an - Sept 21 - 23rd (not sure if the heading for this location above is just spelt wrong on the website or not, but I'm sure its Xi'an.
- spent the day wandering with Jenn and Alex (daughter/father) and it was nice and relaxing - they like to go slowly and take LOTS of photos. It was nice to be on our own away from the group. There's a drum and a bell tower in the center of town - they used to 'ring' them at certain times to tell the time. THe Mulim Quarter and Great Mosque - very peaceful and quiet! We stopped at a tea shop and had a tea ceremony - trying 5 different types of tea... very fun. The city wall - ancient walls surrounding the centre of the city - we saved it for the end of the day and were tired after about 3km. The view didn't change too much from up there. There's about 4M people in city so most of the offsetting buildings are either apartments or office towers.
- Dumpling Banquet and evening show - great food and a really cute waitress that started every stop at the table with "Scuse Me" and then would tell us about the dumplings "looks like pig" was one of my favourite... luckily it was really pork - so was "looks like monkey face"! The show wasn't as impressive as one's in the past - singing, drumming, dancing ect.
- 1 + 1 disco. After specifically telling Micheal we didn't want to go to a club, we ended up at a disco club which was super loud and crowded - with security wearing hemlets! Luckily we eventually found a place that was more like a pub where we could celebrate Steph's (the guy from the East Coast) birthday.
- Terracotta Warriors - they really are impressive. They've uncovered over 2000 clay warriors and believe that there are about 6000 more still buried. All of which was done to protect one emperior in the afterlife!

Pingyao - Sept 24th
we took our last overnight train to Pingyao arriving at 6am on Monday morning - it was nice to get off the train earlier, but our hotel rooms were not ready until about 8:30. So we tried to sleep in the lobby, but it wasn't really happening. I was lucky enough to call the Hay family at Sunday dinner though, and it made my day 😊 Pingyao was a small town of 500,000 - the first chequing banks in China were started in Pingyao in 1824... and yet they didn't have an ATM... go figure! There was a cool photo exhibit going on, which was nice as the city didn't have much else to it. I decided to 'pamper' myself to a foot massage and 'pedicure' with a couple of other girls... we were pretty surprised when a man showed up to do our pedicures with his two sharp knives. Basically cut down the nails and took off a little dry skin with his knife - it was a pretty funny experience! Oh well, we got to sit for an hour watching chinese soap operas while getting a little massage!

Datong - Sept 25th and 26th
- Hanging Monastery - very cool. The Monastery was built 1400 years ago into the side of a rock face. It was definitely 'hanging' when we went and walked around (not so go good for those scared of heights!). The Monastery is no longer used by monks, but at one time, it was used for Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
- Yungang Grottos - more buddhas in caves... although this was a more impressive sight than the last grottos, I think we were all brunt out of the buddhas in a cave tourist attraction 😊
- train from Datong to Beijing - we got sleeper type beds for this 6 hour afternoon trainride. It was nice to relax, but it was also an amazing view - so it would have been nice to be in a cabin car checking everything out too.

This trip has been a whirlwind of sights and activities. I can honestly say I've seen more than I ever thought I could in a month and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. I have decided that this will be my last group tour. It's great not to have to arrange any of my own accomodation or transport (I could not even imagine trying to do that in this country), but it was a little too much like work for my liking 😊 There was little time to relax and even if we did get to chill out for a beer or two, it was stressful trying to find somewhere other than a hotel lobby to enjoy it (or to get a cold one... one night after explaining to the waitress 5 times that we wanted a COLD beer, she had to run across the street with her warm beers to exchange them for cold ones!). Anyway I'm glad I came and I've seen and experienced so many things that I'd never see anywhere else!!! But I will be happy to leave. On that note, it doesn't look like I'll be able to go to Tibet. My tour guide had told me he'd help me get a flight/permit in Xi'an only to discover once in Xi'an that the permit takes a week and they wouldn't be able to start the process until the Monday thereby not getting it until after the trip was done. This was very stressful as I like to have a little more control over things. I think we had some other communication issues involving helping me (or not helping me) find a travel agent in Beijing. Very frustrating needless to say.


more to come on Beijing tomorrow or Monday!

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