We spent 6 nights in the Chinese capital. Most people we talked to agreed that was enough time. We saw most of the major tourist attractions and spent a lot of time on our feet. We are definitely looking forward to some quiet time at our next stop in Qingdao. The highlight of our time in Beijing was (not surprisingly) the Great Wall. We wanted to go to the wall mid-week so that we could hopefully avoid the big crowds of tourists, though we almost left it too late as we were suffering from a bit of Beijing burn-out by the time we made it. We took the public bus to Badaling and arrived just before 4pm. It was a mad dash from there as we scrambled up the wall trying to get photos while the ... read more

Well, we survived our first overnight train in China. We managed to squeeze ourselves and our gear into a shaky 2-seater rickshaw that took us from our hotel to the train station in Xian. The train station was packed with people, but it was relatively easy to find the waiting area for our train since the numbers are all in english. We had two middle bunks in a 6-bed "hard-sleeper" berth. It was actually pretty comfortable and we managed to get a few hours of sleep along the way. Pingyao is a Unesco World Heritage Site and its well preserved city walls date back to 1370. That's about all we can offer for a history lesson. We stayed at a nice hostel in the centre of the old city and spent our days walking the streets, ... read more

On our way to Xian we spent 2 nights at Hua Shan. Hua Shan is a sacred Taoist mountain which is very popular with the local tourists. We happened to be there on a Saturday which also may have coincided with a national holliday. If we ever complain about crowds in Banff or Kananaskis at home, remind us about our experience in China. Also, if we thought that Kongtong Shan was expensive (see our previous blog which was quietly published), we were in for a shocker at Hua Shan. Between the entrance to see the mountain, the cable car, and the shuttle to get between the ticket office and the cable car it cost us about $100 for the two of us. Food and general cost of living in China is quite cheap, but tourism has ... read more

While here in Xiahe (altitude of 2920m) we decided that to get some good photos (hopefully) we'd have to get up early and watch the sunrise over the Labrang Monastery. So we woke up at 6am, which was probably about 90 minutes too early and headed over to the view point to wait for the sun to rise. The sun evenutally rose at about 7:30am and then the sun didn't shine where we hoped it would until close to 9am. But we met some nice Chinese guys with fancy cameras that were also waiting for the sun to rise, so we weren't alone. Once the sun had risen and we took the photos we wanted we completed walking the Kora (pilgrim path) that encircles the monastery then headed for breakfast. After freezing our butts off waiting ... read more

After several long driving days it was nice to have a couple of nights in Dunhang to relax (actually one more night would have been even better). We crossed from Xinjiang province into Gansu province and the difference is noticable in the food and the amount of development. Xinjiang is mostly Uighur and Islamic influence (lamb kebabs, pulled noodles, very little pork, etc). The food now is much more "authentic" Chinese where the default meat is normally pork and the dumplings are different. Also the city of Dunhuang is much larger and more modern than we expected. We went to the Mogao Caves in the morning which were spectacular. The carved statues and paintings on the walls are really something to be seen, and they are very well preserved. No photos are allowed inside the caves ... read more