Hongye Hotel Ordos

No internet access in Inner Mongolia not because it wasn't available, but because I didn't want to bring my laptop. So this entry is again from Beijing, but hey I was there so I'm going to mark it on the map as such. The trip to Inner Mongolia wasn't what I expected, but fun nonetheless. There was lots of riding around on the bus because the dis...

Salimos desde Beijing al mediodia en un tren hacia Zhongwei. Llevabamos provisiones para 20 horas y poca idea de lo que podiamos encontrar o soportar. En fin, salimos como pudimos. Las camas miden medio metro de ancho, son duras como tablas y duermen seis en un compartimento. Es como una carcel movil donde pasan carritos vendiendo comida y bebid...

22 hours on a train? We must be mad. The train is row upon row of bunk beds 3 high. We are travelling in what the Chinese call 'Hard Sleeper' class. So called, I guess because it's hard to get into the upper bed, hard to sleep and basically hard. After approximately 35 minutes sleep we arrive in Zhongwei. A small town, we've moved up to A-list c...

Today we got up at 5am to watch the sunrise in the grasslands... although the sun didn't end up showing until 6:45! But when it did come, the colours were really beautiful, and it was also nice to be up so early in the chilly weather (we could see our breath!). We spent the morning (and some of the afternoon) on the bus, driving to the Resonant ...

I wake up at 6 AM to go to Sand gorge desert, after few buses and taxi (where each time I was not sure to where I was really going till I arrived), you arrived in tong of desert which is just surrealist with also all the Chinese touristic activities: camel, quad, 4 wheels car, sand sludge and parachuting... Like a Disney land with sand. But as s...

In the morning, we had a short meeting again with the whole group in on of the yurt of the group in order to find the best way to handle it. The guide came back saying that from 150 euros they were asking me 20 euros. As I was taking the time of everybody, I just paid the 20 euros and everybody went together for group hiking. This experience giv...

The next morning we rose early and got ready to do some independent travel to get to the Yungang caves. We ate some local porridge and bread, and got on the town bus to the train station to buy tickets for that night to Beijing, and get a bus to the caves. We realized we needed some money but we figured we would find an ATM close to the station...

The first bus ride was two hours back to Taiyuan. After about 40 minutes, the bus pulled over and a drunk fellow got on. He was very loud and the quiet peaceful ride quickly turned rambunctious as the drunk dude got a few other guys in on some of the conversation he was having. After 15 minutes he was showing some of the people on the bus some s...

We went to Dongsheng because it's the biggest city near Genghis Khan's Mausoleum, but it was an OK city in general. We ended up staying longer than we planned due to travel snags and I didn't particularly mind it--except for the overabundance of dogs, which generally aren't all too popular as pets in China. They crossed the road unsupervised qui...

To give you an idea - a 'hard sleeper' is a bed in a six berth compartment of a train carriage. On our journey to Datong we had the bottom two bunks; this was bad news as everybody seemed to sit (and stand !) on our beds. We learnt our lesson though and next time vowed to request either the middle or top beds if travelling overnight again. The j...