Chengde Bailou Hotel

... directions. The views of the valley were even more beautiful than the falls to me. Further up I ran into a Chinese woman who fancied herself and English speaker and quickly locked me in generic conversation. I did my best to humor her but she ended up thinking I was born in Tianjin, then asking me how I got here (bus or car). I said bike, she said no...<br><br>Anyways, past that little sub-adventure, above the falls there was a little stone hut with ...

... park with a big wall around it and a bunch of pagodas in the hills and lakes with islands and bridges passing out to them. Let's just say it's worth the 90rmb per person entrance fee we payed, and we spent most the day walking around only to see a small portion of the resort.<br><br> Leaving on quest for sustenance, we, post-success, traveled to one of Chengde's 7 outlying temples. These temples ...

... 20+ story apartment buildings and busy market streets and department stores. Even small towns in China have a way of becoming quite busy and prosperous compared to my quite 'villages' back home in Oregon.<br><br> The many family lunches and dinners aside, I'll just list off some of the most memorable experiences and let the soon to be posted pictures do more talking.<br><br> The day after ...

... du essayer d'eviter une auto qui effectuait un depassement pendant une courbe, sans s'assurer que quelque chose s'en venait dans la voie de sens inverse. Ils font ca souvent ici, depasser sans voir, ils sont fous. Le Lonely Planet dit qu'il y aurait 600 morts d'accidents de la route en chine chaque jour et nous comprenons pourquoi...<br><br>Chengde nous laisse un peu sur la meme note que Nanjing car on a trouve les gens particulierement peu ...

... my train. Well Chris being the sweet guy that he is even made sure that i got up so that i wouldn't miss my train. Well i got up and hit the first snag of my trip... getting out of the building. Well you see every night at 11 or 12 (depending on the night) people are locked out of the building. Sadly this means that we are locked into the building. Normally i don't really care but Saturday morning i did. I very sorryfully (is that a word) woke up the caretaker of the building and had ...

So the weekend comes and you are feeling adventurous and with strong urge to challenge the roads North of Beijing This is where you decide to take a road trip of roughly 150 miles from Beijing. The destination is Chengde - an old imperial resort North of ...

... some very steeps inclines and it was tough going especially at the start. However once we started there was no going back as the bus had well and truely left. Because of the temperature I had on a t-shirt, jumper, fleese jacket, hat and gloves, however after the first 20 minutes I had stripped down to my t-shirt cause I was sweating buckets. This provided extra laugh for the woman following me as she was still well and truely covered up. The sights were ...

... and a leaky toilet, no heating, no nothing, and it was freezing cold, how would we stay warm? Dinner was at about 7, it wasn't anything special, just food. After dinner the Danes stayed at the restaurent with one of the German girls, until the staff turned the lights of, and thus, politely told us to get lost... Back at the "peasant hotel" we decided that the best way to keep warm was to cram about 10 people into one room and then have some fun, we got warmer ...

... began to play Jingle Bells. A Chinese Monk playing an English Christmas carol in a Buddist Temple in hot sunny weather was more than odd. From there we went to an Art School and watched one of the teachers create a spectacular watercolour painting on rice paper in what seemed like seconds. I would have liked to have bought it but it was sold to another member of the group who was quicker off the mark than me. We did buy a small picture of ...

... just a small swerve by our taxi. Sure! Cmon over. Someone in the right lane going to slow, and can't get over in the left lane? Easy! Use the shoulder, it's completely within reason (and legal, apparently). Sidewalk? SURE! Just honk, and anything goes. In fact, honking is a language while driving there. Instead of stopping or swerving, honking seems to suffice. This goes for turning on a red light without stopping (they just honk...no need to slow down), or (GET THIS) as ...