Shanxi Quanmei International Hotel Yangquan

... to find out what monstrous job could need all those shovels - even going as far as walking in line with them for several blocks, subjecting myself to their stares and more giggles - but the conversation goes no further. I've exhausted their English.

It's cold here, everywhere. The old buildings lack any sort of insulation, and to their credit the Chinese like to conserve heat, so indoors is hardly warmer than out. I hadn't showered in three days because of the cold, so I ...

Wutaishan was one of our greatest disasters to date.Hee and there's been a few. I booked a hostel which gave directions to Wutaishan bus station but was in fact in Nanning- a whole other provence. Oops.
Pretty place, once we'd finally checked into somewhere in our price range. It was the coldest place I've ever been. The water in the river had frozen solid! We had pot noodles in bed and tried some rice wine, (evil smelling stuff) and quickly got on a bus out of there!
Love Lucy xxx

... curry, fried rice and dumplings. Not really a fan of the dumplings. Very Gooey! The next day I took a walk about and got extremely lost. Luckily for me I was completely walled in and there was only so far I could go wrong! I should really have sat nav installed on my ...

... we slept in our bus, going nowhere!

His alarm went off around six in the morning and he roused a few others from their sleep! Simultaneously, a row of taxis joined the bus. One by one the taxi drivers hopped out! (Oh God! What's going on here??) They each took a bag from the bus and once again disappeared. Some of the helpers jumped into a passing white van. And a strange old man passed the bus, nonchalant, but walkin backwards up the road. We shrugged off ...

... lowered the price to 5 per, still outrageous, but we had no proof that it should've been cheaper, as it wasn't listed in the menu, so we paid and biked our frustrations away.

When we arrived in Taiyuan, we got dinner at a place that gave free rice with every meal, so I guess that ended up making up for it, anyway.

This trip was great. Nearby, so not a ridiculous amount of traveling for just a week's time, and nothing we saw or visited was really a dud ...

... a disappointment, but you certainly do get Wang'd out after a while, and not having a guide means you are free to wander around but also free to not really learn much.

After lunch (see photos for a great shot inside the restaurant), we headed to Zhangbi Ancient Castle (张碧古堡)--aga in, think more of a walled town than a true castle. The main reason we came to Pingyao (besides the city itself), I was not ...

... you don't know how bad some parts nearby look like. Also some temples. The houses I visited have wooden furnitures, porcelains, also dolls loke old Chineses - all managed badly, and are dirty. Pity.
I had an Indonesian girl sleeping in the same room - we talked for hours. She may take the "Holy Land" tour and come to Israel.

5/10 - Pingyao: Zhangbi
I took the bus to Jiexiu, then to Zhangbi (15k.m) - the tunnels and the ...

Pingyao was once the richest city in China, being the banking center to the empire. It fell into obscurity for about 100 years, but now is a major tourist attraction. One of the biggest attractions in Pingyao was US! It turns out we hit the town ast the same time as an international photography exibition and the town was jammed with Chinese photographers ...

Sunday 6th Sep - Pingyao
The internal lights went on in our train carriage at 6.30am accompinaied by Chinese radio to help wake us up. It certainly was a very civilised way to travel - not the journey we thought we would have when we originally booked.. no noise, comfortable (ish) beds and no really badd smells. Bonus! At 7.30am we stepped out onto the platform at Pingyao and into the rain and cold - it must have been 15 degrees cooler than ...

In Mandarin, "he" means "river" and "bei" means "north." True to its name, Hebei province lies north of the Yellow River. It also cradles Beijing. At some point in the wee morning hours, just as the sun was peeking at us over the horizon, I awoke and watched a somewhat rural landscape become urban become the sprawling megapolis of Beijing.