International Financial Hotel Luoyang

Total time: 309 hours 11 minutes
Total miles: 3840.3
At times it is a tough life being stranded. Snow started to fall pretty much as soon as we had found somewhere to stay in Luoyang, Henan province, and the trickle turned into a flood. I had a feeling that it would snow, having been rain maiden and looked up the weather, but the amount that fell exceeded what I thought would happen. Although the snow is now melting, by this morning a good foot had fallen, bringing ...

... for 3 euro per person. They all said that it's in a bad location (in the middle of a big block of flats, a bit ghetto-y) and impossible to find. Though all this was turning us off they also said that the guy himself was really friendly and helpful, had good English and always made sure that nobody got ripped off by taxi drivers or anything. So we booked it. We had no other choice anyway. Seeing as it was so hard to find we gave him a ring that day and he ...

At breakfast, we watched the chefs making noodles - an incredible art! But we didn't fancy starting the day with noodles!
Later we visited the most impressive Longmen Grottoes which were founded 3,200 years ago and contain over a thousand grottoes with more than 100,000 images of Buddha and his disciples carved into the cliffs. Absoutely terrific. To think of the love and dedication of the believers who wanted to ...

... us a while to get used to the high pitched singing style, but we soon started to see how much humour and sheer artistry there was in the performance. It was great fun.

The end of an action packed day.

10th October:

Visits to the Summer Palace ...

... It was good value for money. So, it was time for us to go back to the hotel. The tour guide told us that the hotel was not far away and we could walk there in a short period of time. Well, it was not a bad idea to walk, was it? Yoyo, Heidi and I thought that it was a good idea but Donna did not think so. We were lucky enough to listen to Donna since we figured out that the hotel was actually quite far away from the shopping mall. It took ...

... early when we returned to our hotel so we went down the street to a western style coffee shop (I sure missed my coffee - coffee in China was all instant and all very expensive). It was wonderful coffee, simply because I hadn't had any real coffee in so long, despite the fact it was actual very bad and a small cup costs more than a two person meal. After the coffee we meandered around the shopping district close to our hotel ...

... show. Others told us that it is a huge place and plan on spending more than just the morning there. Having finally see it for myself, my opinion is that it is a wonderful place if you know and appreciate the history of Shaolin. This place has existed for thousands of years. I'm in awe that it's still in full active operations today. I can visualize all the scenes I read about in Jin Yong's martial arts novels taking places at different parts of the Temple. It is ...

... m a zahrada), ten vsak téměř nestojí moc za vidění. Někdy po desáté se vracíme k nádrazí v Luoyangu a chceme nalézt autobus jedoucí do Shaolinu, místa vzniku kung-fu (sem se Markéta jakozto nadsená bojovnice tohoto stylu zvlásť těsila). Pokousíme se prodrat prodejci a taxikáři tak dlouho, az nás jeden chytí s oblíbeným "no bus". Na to se necháme zatahnout na autobusák, kde nám v ticket office pod taxikářovým přísným dohledem sd ...

... around midday. I headed back to the ticket booth and was once again met by the same Station Lady who seemed confused as to why I was back so quickly. I laughed and said Shaolin Dee to her and she gave me a dumb look and then began laughing. I then got myself a ticket at the ticket office for Shaolin Si (Temple) and found my own bus and sat to wait for its departure. The ...

... weiss net... Song Shan (naechster Tag) Ich bin jetzt vielleicht 2000 m hoch im Gebirge, sitze hier auf einer ueberhaengenden Klippe und hoffe das der Fels net abbricht. Falls ja, werde ich 2000 meter fallen. Ich sehe netmal wie tief es runter geht weil ich mich net traue ueber den rand zu schaun...vielleicht sinds ja auch 3000 m ;) . Mir gegenueber, ca 500 m weiter ist eine andere Felswand, welche ebenfalls ...