YunGang Hotel Datong

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 ...

... at this temple the entrance gate was guarded by a very loud and scary looking black dog chained to a pole just beyond the entrance. We thought about trying to get around the dog however it was very well strategically placed to prevent just that sort of tactic. We really had only one course of action and Luke began to try and call for someone. Eventually and reluctantly our cries were met and the dog was removed from the path. After paying the requisite ...

... peu de la gorge, nous avons eu l'occasion de visiter deux sites bien cools, le premier etant des grottes bouddhistes vieilles de 1500 ans. Ca consistait en une enorme falaise dans laquelle les chinois se sont mis a creuser des grottes et y sculpter des statues enormes, la plus haute etant de 25 metres je crois, en tout cas, vraiment enorme. Il y aurait a peu pres 51 000 bouddhas sculptes un peu partout sur le site, c'etait tres beau.<br><br>Deuxieme site, on a pu visiter ...

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... on the mountain and maintain the ironically commercial tourist attraction. The views were stunning. I insisted, despite Lu Wei's apprehension, that we take a cable-car down to observe the complete vastness of the landscape bellow us. The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. On our way back to Datong we stopped off at an incredible temple that looked as though it was suspended against a cliff. While it was too crowded to warrant a visit, the sheer architectural wonder was still ...

... predevsim odpad evidentne nepotrebuji, na kazdem rohu jsou verejne zachodky a domaci odpad se vyleva do kanalu. Az uvidite ty fotky... Jeste ze mrzlo, protoze jinak by ten smrad stal za to. Nicmene elektrinu si zavest nechali, na kazdem baraku satelit jako krava :) Na kazdem rohu vetsi ci mensi skladka, vsude potulni psici, bozi. Jeste ze jsme ockovani proti vztekline. Nicmene obyvatele vypadaji spokojene, pred vetsinou domku parkuji auta dost draha i na mistni pomery, holt jiny kraj...

... site, if a bit crowded, and the 2 hour drive there gave us a chance to catch up on our sleep! From there we had some lunch and then went to the Yungang caves. These grottos are the earliest Buddhist carvings in China and are incredible. There are a number of caves containing huge carved Buddhas - up to 17m high, and many smaller carvings. The work and dedication that went into them are astounding and the first one literally took my ...

... Inside was huge and from what I can gather the upstairs was very much the same as the large gathering room for worship I was standing in now. As I walked around my attention was captured by what lay outside the windows more than what lay within. One ...

... line under these words. The Lower Huayan Monastery was built in AD1038 during the Liao Dynasty (AD907 to 1125). It is supposedly one of the best and most complete monastic buildings left of the Khitan ethnic group remaining to date and is also the oldest building in Datong city. Bhagavat Storage Hall is the main building and it is a storeroom for Buddhist Scriptures. It was also ...

Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya Wow! Let's talk grottoes shall we! You know stone carvings, carvings in stone, stones, carvings and a billion Buddha's! Early morning found Jiang Ni and myself out front of the train station trying to find the right bus that would take us to the Yungang Caves (Datong Grottoes). We asked a million people and ...