Baiyun Hotel Chengde

... creek running under the middle of it. Further up I found a couple of Buddhas with offerings in front and a little donation box (religions really are all the same). Out of respect (the kind of respect learned by having one too many Chinese yell at me) I didn't take any pictures of the statues, even up here where the were no other people. I guess they've trained me well.<br><br>After our return to the city, we spent much of the rest of the night doing ...

... sticks that people would wedge into the rock-side (if it stayed, its good luck for you). On our way back down, despite my attempts not to spend the few kuai we had left, I bought a little plastic souvenir of the rock. The vendor got such a kick out of my "wu kuai (5)" when she asked for 10, that she agreed.<br><br>We were now off back to the town, to enjoy a hot-pot dinner with her family.<br><br><br>

... surrounding countryside, the wall's strategic positioning became evident and it's incredible to think that anyone actually managed to breach this defense. Approaching via the steep, overgrown slopes would be almost impossible and the closely-spaced vantage points above, coupled with the row of arrow slits, should have prevented any attack. But that was Chinggis for you - it's not for nothing that the Mongolian national beer ...

... next day was mostly spent on some very long meals and with meeting of people, but in the evening I was able to take a nice hike up the mountain behind the town. Here there are a series of pagoda's and tomes below the tree line that give an increasingly picturesque view of the town. At the top (a summit I was graciously suggested to attempt alone :P), there is a very large pagoda overlooking ...

... sont beaucoup plus longs; les trains express c'etait juste en Shanghai et Beijing, maintenant ils sont beaucoup trop lents et leur confort est comparable a ce qu'on a vecu en couchette.<br><br>Les autobus, eux, sont quand meme deluxe. Les sieges se baissent et ils ont tous l'air climatisee. Mais pour la question securite, c'est autre chose. Par rapport a ce que j'ai vu avant, les chinois poussent vraiment plus loin la limite de la ...

... 6 and a half hours. I'll spare you the details of our confusing virgin trip on the metro that led to this calamity. But I will say a transfer that is almost a mile long from one train line to the other is not a transfer!<br><br>After a confusing trip from the train station to the bus station at Sihui we boarded a bus, which we were pretty sure was the right bus at 8am (China has two cities, one called Chengdu and one called ...

... station around 7AM and the journey took around 4 hours. I decided to go on soft seater. The journey was nothing exciting, passing though local town, so bring your ipod, book or if you like me, sleep, eat, sleep, wake up, eat then sleep again.<br><br>Chengde train station is small. It is possible to walk to the main city centre, but I decided to catch the local bus to my hotel, opposite Bishu Sanzhuang. After paying $50 for my newly refurbished ...

... Buddha in the world. I really do like this temple because it is really pretty but at the same time the exit is totally a tourist trap which really annoys me. After i was done At Puning Temple I walked down half a block to Puyou Temple. This was a strange temple to see. Mostly because there is no actual temple still standing. When you walk in all you see are the jade statues of the used to be temple. The statues are really different than normal temples in how they are carved. They did ...

Today we got up at 7am to have plenty of time to watch temples. We started at Puning Temple, which in my opinion was just another temple. After that we continued to the mini Potala Palace (the real Potala Palace, if anyone shouldn't know, is in Lhasa in Tibet and it is the former residence of the Dalai Lama before he fled to Dharmsala in norther India where he is now living in exile). It was nice and had a scent of Tibet if you hadn't been ...

... Emily was continually defying people's expectations that she was fluent. I, on the other hand, was busy defying the expectation that I was an idiot. On the train we brought out our Chinese books, a sure way to break the ice. Our new Chinese friends looked at them and demanded that I read some passages aloud. Like a trained monkey, I complied. Then they tried reading parts of our English books about China. Some of the words tripped them up ...