Yijia Hotel Shuozhou

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.<br>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! <br>Love Lucy xxx<br>

... and people taking pictures!<br><br>When we reached Datong we caught the bus to our hotel and checked in. Because there is no hostels in Datong we had to book a proper hotel for once. This turned out to be a 4 star luxury business hotel, not bad for £12 a night!!! We actually had a private bathroom with a toilet instead of a squat, toilet roll, bath, tv, air con, mini bar and even comlimentary toothbrushes!! We hadn't ...

... with Budhaa images - they counted 51,000. Reminds Petra or Lalibela. Some are still coloured.<br>I took the 13:40 train to Beijing. It arrived only at 21:20: 7.5 hours! Anyway, it is easy to get from there to the hostel, as the subway is nearby.<br>I read, did Soduku, even found 2 Chinese girls who know some English.<br>Beijing looks clean in comperison to Datong.<br>I ate dinner with 2 Israelis from Rehovot, who have just arrived<br>

... Buddha'd out. After a Mid-Autumn Day dinner at a nice restaurant, we ended the evening at UBC Coffee, an insanely high-priced western place where you are paying for the comfortable couches and the atmosphere. Still, the waitress had no idea what went into a margarita, so I had to ask her to guide me to the bar and have the bartender produce the bottles to be sure it wasn't something weird. It was the real deal, except for the fact that it was made with lemon, not lime juice. <br>

... though a<br>website I just read recommends 90 minutes for a visit, I don't think<br>you need more than about 15 minutes to see it and photograph it. It's<br>pretty swell, and you can't feel ripped off given that it's only 10RMB<br>to enter. You can look at the photos, but it doesn't seem like much without taking<br>it all in at once. I have a new obsession with the ancient Chinese classic Journey to the West, and I bought a pack of JTTW-related playing cards in the gift shop--a rare ...

... makes all the time and money spent worthawhile. Facing the coal mine, this is one of the three famous grottoes in China. You could easily spend a day here (something that I dont have), admiring the delicacy and intricate carving. The details on the carvings are immaculate and coloured, a contrast from Louyang grottoes, which was built afterwards. Unfortunetly, many of the carving are damaged by the polution from the mine and ...

... are not doing so hot. The pollution in Datong is horrible, so that can't be helping. These, too had been hit by vandals, and a lot of the eyes of these Buddhas carved in the 400s or 500s AD had been gouged out. I guess the Red Guards were like the Chinese Taliban at that time. I think I would have made the trip to Datong just to see these caves and go home. Do not miss them if you have the chance to see them. The guy that drove us to the monastery and the ...

... communication with people is a real struggle, you end up relying on it. just so you know, the new china lonely planet sucks. after this, we're tired and hungry and don't feel like seeing any of the other standard sites in town, so we head off to what is supposedly considered the finest restaurant in the shanxi province. the main part of the restaurant was closed, i think there was a private party going on or something, but the hot pot bar part was open. i hadn't had chinese hot pot ...

... deteriorate in condition, but the walk back gave a surprise because as we walked away from the caves you could look back and see the faces of the giant cave Buddhas peeking out through "windows" in the mountain, which we couldn't see from where we arrived. Anyway, the caves were awesome and something I'm really glad I was able to go see...because of their location I don't think many people visiting China get to come here, so I really enjoyed it! After the caves...

... mates set up a place for us to stay at some training school and the rooms turned out to be really nice and clean and in a quiet location (for China that is). As I said before traveling with these girls should be pretty interesting - Lin Jia is very funny and has a deep voice for a Chinese girl, she likes to poke fun at everyone and has these cute 'high' dimples which give her a unique look; Zhu Bing Jie (jew bing gee-ay) is easy to ...