Hua Yang Plaza Hotel Luoyang

... power lines and trees, turning streets into slushy rivers, and making the roads more treacherous than normal. Well, more treacherous if actually wishing to control the bike - the local drivers were actually the best I had seen them, as they realised that there was a high likelihood of actually crashing!
We were previously holed up in a somewhat grubby youth hostel - that was until Jamie and I went on a light night foray to the Carrefour supermarket around the corner ...

... to collect us from the station.

So we get to Luoyang and there's this 15 year old standing with a sign with Adele Fleming written on it. He flagged down a taxi for us and rode with us to the 'hostel'. It was down a very dark little road but we weren't at all worried because we'd had plenty of warning. When we got to the apartment (up 7 flights of stairs, some of which were piled with coal!) the place was really nice and our room was very clean ...

... these amazing grottoes with their huge statues straight out of the rock so long ago, and with such rudimentary tools, is awe inspiring.
Later, we went on a 'dragon boat' on the River Yi, and got a wonderful view of the grottoes.
The White Horse Temple was built in the 13th century during the Ming Dynasty at the time of the spread of Buddhism, although the original structures have now been more or less completely ...

... trip on the lake; Some more silk shopping [!]; visit to the Temple of Heaven; Peking Duck dinner; then to the station for the overnight journey to Luoyang.

11th October:

We checked into the excellent Peony Hotel on the 21st floor; freshened up, then drove 2 ...

... at least 5 minutes to get back to the hotel by taxi. And we could imagine that it would take us at least half an hour to get back if lucky. It seemed that their definition for ¡®near¡¯ is different from ours. Anyway, we got back to the hotel save and we started doing our homework, the interviews. Since we have not handed in any before, we got to hand in 6 at once. So, after finishing the homework, it was already 23.00. We went to bed at once.

... got sick again and found a McDonald's and we had a nice long walk around a park (but didn't pay to get in). We would return to our hotel for a bit of a fiesta in the late afternoon and then go to a nice hot-pot restaurant. I had missed hot-pot since the first day in Beijing and that was just a little side restaurant. Here was very good and very fancy and hot-pot is easily one of my favorite Chinese dishes, despite the water ...

... a Lord of the Ring fan getting a chance to visit Lothlorien. How can you beat that? Shaolin today is flooded with tourists. It is also weird to see women strolling around everywhere. I believe that until recently, women didn't show up in Shaolin often as one of the earthly things monks must renouce is lust. The actual Temple itself is quite ordinary. The garden of thousand pagodas were more interesting..that was where they buried some of the most influential ...

... to Shaolin Si (temple) took around one and a half hours and was visually beautiful (70 kms). It was no Wuyi Shan or Mingyong but we went past beautiful green rice fields and slowly wound our way up Shaolin Shan. Not a huge mountain but it had some nice views. From when I stepped foot off the bus I knew I wasn't going to like this place that much. It had the ...

... runter faellt...wenn ich an der richigen stelle hallo rufe bekomme ich 5 Antworten :) Der schall taeuscht hier enorm...ich dachte das vor mir welche einen abhnag runter klettern, hab das dann auch gemacht, nur um 2 h spaeter festzustellen, das das unbekletterbar ist....zurueck kam ich nur weil ich in Rock-climbing kein blutiger Anfaenger mehr bin...die waren villeicht km weit weg, die Stimmen...habs mit laufen ...