Yunfeng Yuchangyuan 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 ...

... of the other and begin using it. First stop was the City God Temple (also known as Cheng Huang Temple). Probably the most interesting and beautiful temple I visited for the entire day. It was full of colour, history and some rather graphic displays of demons killing humans in various painful and body slicing ways that would probably make even Freddy Krueger cringe! I left feeling happy that I ...

We arrived into Pingyao about 8am for a day of doing nothing really. There were no activities planned, so it was all free time. This place is really cool, it's like a quaint village that is fully walled. The guesthouse that we stopped at was called xxxx. This had the most awesome bedroom with a bed that took up half of the room. The shower room was the best so far and there was even free Wi-Fi. Outside there are about 5 different ...

... What? You both took part as well?". I said 'Yes, and I bet your name is Joe." I could make the story even more amusing, by saying that when later walking through Pingyao, I bumped into a Dutch bloke called Wim, who I'd seen earlier in Datong. When I told him the above story, he said "And guess what? Evan's staying at my hotel!". Pingyao is an anomaly in what I've gotten used to in China. First, it's a town, not a city. The population is measured in ...

... 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 ...

... the traffic - pedestrians and bicycles as no cars are allowed - flows along, and tons of small alleyways, all put together in a tidy grid pattern. We spent two nights and three full days here, but the weather didn't exactly co-operate. The city was fog-shrouded so we didn't bother to walk along the top of the wall, since the view was non-existent. This is one of the highlights of Pingyao, so it was too bad we didn't get to do ...

... dressed up etc. We started taking pictures then as it got closer we realised it was actually a funeral! :( so we stopped smiling and snapping away with the camera, thinking it was probably not in the best taste! You can see from the pics why we were initially confused. Judging by our totally unrestrained shopping habits, looks like were going to have to ship another box soon! and this one is going to weigh a lot! You may need to take a heavy duty trolley to the post office Paul :D