Pinyaoju Hostel Pingyao

... br>We had nice calm time here, eating, cycling and playing table football in the hostel! The girls working in the hostel were a bit odd but other than that we had a lovely stay! Oh and they managed to turn a few of our white tops pink!
We got the bus to Wutaishan ...

... tunnels.

WFC was so big (54 courtyards and 1,052 rooms)... that was one HUGE family! It is spectacular but touring through it gets a wee bit monotonous after a while as it seems like it's just one courtyard after another! It was hot and we were tired so Tom and I ended up in a teahouse drinking Wang Co. beer!

Our guide at the castle/tunnel/village was so cute... it was her first English tour and she was very nervous. She ...

... war, sondern eine kleine Stadt mit 41000 Einwohner, die bekannt ist fuer seinen erhaltenen alten Mingzeit Stadtkern, der komplet tvon einer Mauer umgeben ist. Am Wochenende fallen hier Scharen von Chinesen ein, aber in der Woche ist es relativ ruhig. Man kann die ganze Stadt im Prinzip an einem Tag komplett erkunden und so war die 3 Tage eher easy going angesagt. Bloederweise verlangt die Stadtverwaltung fuer den Besuch der Stadtmauer und die zahlreichen historischen ...

... bunch of naked women gawk at me, so I passed, opting for a haircut instead. Unfortunately the guy who cut my hair was a) not very skilled and b) decided that he really liked talking to me. The result was, despite having been told in no uncertain terms to trim a little only, he just kept cutting and cutting in order to have an excuse to keep talking to me! Needless to say I was pretty ****** off when I finally looked in the mirror closely to see what was going on. Silly man kept gushing about ...

... about all I know! I then headed to the Performance Center to book my seat for the nights performance to find out there are no performances on a Monday night so I headed back to my room for a rest. I headed downstairs to say Seeya Mate to Mr French and then headed down the road to find a quiet place to have dinner, a beer and to type up the days doings. All went well until I got the bill and found ...

... eighteenth century what Wall Street is to the US, which not only helped promote the economic development of Shanxi, but also left us with a magnificent old city and a series of grand residences. Pingyao has now become quite a hot tourist attraction even though it is no longer economically prosperous. It boasts the famous Pingyao Old City which was included in the United ...

... relaxing. We arrived in Taiyuan nonetheless and experienced the totally faceless city for what it was: dirty, uninviting, and foreign. The train to Beijing was full so we were stuck with hard seats for the 8 hours back. Let me just explain something, hard seats are the worst thing in the world. It is two boards shoved in a 90 degree angle with three people to a bench. Maybe it was the man who spilt orange syrup on the table in front of me, or maybe ...

... the same. Just some are bigger and cleaner but there all "old style" Chinese rooms. In Pingyao cars are forbidden and people still live like in the old times. Of course there are hundreds of tourism stands and they sell everything; "antique things", stamps, maps, paintings, food, etc. But you just have to look past through that and then you see an ancient city that it almost untouched. There is enough to see in ...

Pingyao is a small little town that feels like a time warp. Its a beautiful little walled city that looks like it must of done 200 years ago, its buildings are no taller than 2 story and are all traditional grey brick with ornate wooden fronts and the red chinese lanterns are everywhere. Its been great wanderin the streets and buyin ***** from the market stalls, yeaterday i got a russian style hat, Carls got one also that looks like its made of bear fur, we also invested in soviet ...

Adam here well we are now in Pingyao but I must finish off Beijing!!! We went to the Summer Palace , which was the emperors palace for guess what? Spending the summer!!! It was really pretty even all frozen up, the lake there which is huge was frozen solid. We could see it was atleast a foot thick in parts where people had smashed through it :D We also went to The Lama Temple, it is the most important lamasary outside of tibet. Once again tons of ...