Wulanchabu Hohhot

To save a bit of money we decided to travel with the locals on the 'hard sleeper' class on the train to Datong, and to be honest is wasn't too bad. There were 6 beds instead of 4 in each compartment, each bed was just a wooden platform with a blanket and pillow and there was not enough room to sit up but the 6 hour journey was pretty good!! We were the only westerners in this class so we felt like celebrities with all the ...

13/10 - Datong<br>I needed 2 local buses and a long walk to get to the bus station to Datong - good Chinese people helped me.The drive was nice, 4.5 hours: bushes and green trees with colourful autumn leaves.<br>As you reach Datong, the area look like the north Negev, and Datong - like Beer-Sheva in the 50th: dusty, cold winds. They destroy the small buildings and build new big buildings. Meanwhile the whole city(1.1 million people ...

Today, we first took in the marvelous Yungang Grottoes (&#20113;&#20872;&#30707;&#31391;) along with everyone else in China. Honestly, the crowds here weren't as bad as those at the Hanging Monastery, but probably only because there is so much more room to move at Yungang. There is no easy way to get to Yungang if you don't take a taxi because the road that leads immediately to the grottoes is (no surprise) being worked on. Therefore, we took a bus as far as we could, then shoved ...

We flew into Taiyuan yesterday and quickly got a bus (after a nice li'l meal at KFC, though not nice enough to actually have Bucket of Chicken) to Datong. As we arrived, I felt like Datong was not ready for visitors yet. There is so much construction going on all throughout the city that you wonder where people actually live. I cannot say the city itself has a whole lot to offer--I certainly wouldn't want to live there, anyway. <br><br>After finding a decent hotel and dinner, we ...

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... was a foreigner also and they began speaking to her in English. Mainly, hello, ok, where are you from etc. One of the guy's, who strangely held his heavy bag for two hours and then decided to put it under the seat, could actually speak English rather well. He began speaking to her and after asking several questions finally figured out she was actually Chinese so they switched to Mandarin which then left all the other ...

... that blankets the city, and the rapid transition to blue sky at around two miles elevation. It is winter in China, and China needs to warm its buildings, transport its goods and citizens, dig its mines, power its factories. Tim and I talked a fair amount about a lot of different things. Tim showed me photos of my Granny and told me stories about my Granny. We discussed the ridiculous immigration laws that wouldn't allow a thrice former exchange student in ...

Still Tuesday, September 11th I didn't actually get off the train in Jining myself, but a couple of Swiss cyclists did, and I figured this would be a good excuse for a quick story and a couple of pictures. While I was standing on the train platform in Ulaan Baator, a couple of attractive cyclists with fully loaded touring bikes passed me and smiled. I'd already grown accustomed to the fact that, even in Ulaan ...

... for food poisoning from ice cream he'd eaten the night before. Apparently the Tibetan hospital was pretty unsanitary...they just gave David a trash can to throw up in, and Dr. Kiely had to demand they use a new syringe to give him a shot. I'm so lucky that wasn'tmee...I was tempted to eatthe same ice cream. We found out later that three other students who only had a few bites of his ice cream also threw up. We had to fly out to Chengdu though, and I'm ...

As we approach Zhongwei over a mountain pass we see irrigated fields, their lifeblood sourced from the Yellow river, defiantly positioned against the approaching sand dunes of the Tengger desert. We are now in the small province of Ningxia. We have a pretty quiet day in Zhongwei, visiting the local temple which combines a mix Buddhist and other religious influences, and laughing at the bizarre museum of torture which is housed beneath the temple. Down in the eerie catacoomes ...