Xi'an - with round up of Nanjing/Zhengzhou/Luoyang
Trip Start
Apr 03, 2008
1
16
26
Trip End
Jul 02, 2008
Xi'an,
Shaanxi,
China
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Really sorry it has been so long since I last wrote anything on the blog. I have updated the map pin points on the map, so you can see where we've been.
So - we went to Nanjing from Hangzhou on the morning of Friday 2nd May. The journey took about 6 hours, and so we arrived in Nanjing mid afternoon. It was quite tiring spending that long on a 'hard' seat (not really hard, just very cramped!), but we were lucky to be sitting next to a Chinese girl called Grace who spoke very good English and chatted to us for ages.
When we arrived in Nanjing we got the metro (there's only one line in Nanjing - but there are more stations now than the Lonely Planet says...) to Sanshan Street. Then we walked to find the hostel - Fuzimiao Hostel. It was hard to find, but we were helped along the way by lots of lovely people! The room we were given was not great - it was full of a big group of Americans, and no window in the room. We decided to stick with it for one night though. We walked around the area, seeing some small markets and grabbing some snack food.
Then we spent ages looking for a recommended restaurant, but it took us ages to find, and when we did although the food was good, it was very quiet so it was a bit disappointing.
On Saturday 3rd May we asked to be moved into a dorm with a window, and we were with no fuss or extra payment. Once we'd moved our things to our new room we set off for Zijin mountain by metro and then on foot. It was a long walk to the base of the mountain where we caught a cable car up to the top, with beautiful views on the way. We walked all the way back down the mountain, stopping off at an observatory on the way which had some really interesting old instruments in it.
In the evening we had dinner at a cafe called Coral near to the hostel. It was really nice, served good meat dumplings, and also had an all you can eat deal on drinks and snacks, including ice cream!
On Sunday 4th May we played cards in the morning with an Austrian girl and an Australian guy that we had met the night before. When they left to catch a train back to Shanghai, we set off to see Zhonghua gate in the old city walls. Only sections of the walls remain, but they are very impressive, and the gate is fantastic - there are 4 layers of gates, so that's serious security!
At about 3pm we headed back to the friendly Coral cafe, and had lunch of the lovely dumplings and a brasied beef dish, followed by lots of other lovely nibbles. We ended up spending about 2 and a half hours there... The service is so friendly though, the time just flies! We headed back to the hostel and had some beer while playing cards. We headed out to a bar that had been recommended to us - The Castle Bar. It is next to the bell tower, and is a little underground place. It was good fun and cheap, with a pool table. The night we were there, there was a Swedish band playing, which was fun. The rest of the music left something to be desired in terms of variety, as they appeared to have a serious Beatles obsession, playing the whole best of album back to back for over an hour... We left at about 12.30am, grabbed some Chinese late night street food of vegetarian dumplings, and got a taxi back to the hostel.
On Monday 5th May we packed up our things, ordered some lunch at the hostel and set out to find the Memorial Hall for the Massacre of Nanjing - it was a fair walk away, and when we finally arrived it was closed for some reason! We weren't the only ones who seemed to be confused, but we didn't find out why it was closed. The building is amazing though and there are some very moving sculptures outside. We walked back to the hostel to collect our bags, stopping on the way to buy some food for the train journey, and having a rest in a beautiful little park filled with bird cages.
Then we went to the train station to catch a 7 hour train to Zhengzhou. Nanjing train station is really nice, with good views and nice facilities, so anyone with more time than we had could spend a bit of time there before their train!
The train was very very very busy, and it made us very grateful to have reserved seats as there were people standing for the whole trip. There was no room for our luggage, so we had to spend the whole journey with our huge bags between our legs underneath the table. It was not comfy! We arrived late (about 2330) into Zhengzhou, and got a taxi to the hotel that we had booked. The taxi driver was very helpful, and the fares seem very cheap there. There was a problem with our booking for the hotel, but luckily they had rooms available, so we were still able to have the twin room that we had booked. For a Travellodge style room we paid 143 yuan per night, so about 5 pounds fifty each!
On Tuesday 6th May we got bus number 16 from outside the long distance bus station to the Yellow River (Huang He) - getting off at the last stop after about an hour of standing on a small bus. We were expecting that the river would be quite rural, and that we could just walk around up there. But that couldn't be further from the truth! There is a big 'scenic zone' park, with strange heads carved into the rock face (a bit like Mt Rushmore), an enormous square, and lots of tourist attractions. What made it weirder was that there were so few people there! We took a cable car over the hills to get a good view of the river, and then after we had eaten some lunch, and watched a man with his flock of trained pigeons that flew according to his whistles (?!) we rode a big slide down the side of the hill (all rather surreal...) before returning on the cable car to get a bus back to Zhengzhou. Luckily we managed to get a seat for the trip back to the city. We walked back to the hostel via the food market off Erqi Lu, grabbing some food for dinner. We ate on the dirt mounds (remains of the ancient city walls) near to our hotel, watching some locals use the space for Tai Chi, reading, walking dogs and practising their circus skills...
After picking up some food for breakfast the next morning we got an early night as we were planning to be up early.
On Wednesday 7th May we got up at 6am in order to go to Shaolin Si (Shaolin Temple) for the day. We got a taxi to the bus station, bought a ticket and got on a mini bus. All seemed well until we stopped off at a temple that wasn't Shaolin. After talking to the bus driver, it turned out that we were on a tour bus, and that unless we wanted to buy tour tickets for the extra stop off points, we would have to wait until it was time to depart. We were very very annoyed, but we were told that after 45 minutes of waiting we would be off to Shaolin. This turned out to be another lie - before we reached Shaolin, 4 hours passed and we stopped and another temple as well as a restaurant for some lunch. Ali and I didn't buy a ticket for this tour, so just waited it out until we got there. On the way we spoke to a Chinese speaker who had also been mislead into thinking that he was getting a direct bus, so at least we weren't the only ones.
At one of the stops along the way we were lucky enough to catch a group of girls practising martial arts (with swords, fans and sticks) in the car park - that was very interesting as it seemed to be genuine practice, with no fee charged, nor a large audience.
We didn't really find out where we went wrong on the transport side of the day - it was not obvious that there were other buses to Shaolin. We think that it is probably best to get a public bus to the town of Dengfang, and then a taxi up the hill to Shaolin, but we aren't certain. If you do end up on a tour bus like we did, we found out that they really ripped off the people who did pay for tour tickets, so don't buy them unless you really really want to!
Once we arrived at Shaolin at 12pm, we split away from the group and explored on our own. We walked along to the Pagoda Forest, which was very beautiful once you escaped the parts where the tourists gather. Then we walked along to the cable cars in order to get into the mountains. We ended up with a woman following us (we think trying to convince us to go on the cable car), and we couldn't shake her for ages. Eventually we chose the shorter chair lift as the woman at the ticket office for the other cable car didn't seem to be able to tell us how much the tickets were (we did ask in Chinese...), and seemed generally very confused! We walked up the steep path up the mountains for a while, and got some amazing views. Unfortunately we had chosen the wrong cable car for reaching the rope bridge and trekking path that we were aiming for. That was disappointing, but we had a nice walk nonetheless. After walking back, we caught the cable car back the rest of the way down the mountain. Then we visited the actual temple, and saw a demonstration of Kung Fu at the martial artts school next door. It was very very impressive.
On the way back to catch the bus back to Zhengzhou, we saw thousands of boys in sports uniforms practising varius sports. They must all have been part of the many martial arts schools that surround the temple. it was quite a sight to see so many of them.
One we arrived back in Zhengzhou we tried to get some dinner, but everything seemed to be shut, and we had to settle on some instant noodles in our room.
On Thursday 8th May we felt quite anoyed with the problems of the day before, and the generally unhelpful attitude that many people we had run into seemed to have, so we packed up and checked out of the hotel after getting some early lunch in the hotel restaurant. We got a taxi to the train station, and then booked a train to Luoyang for a couple of hours time. Before catching the train we bought some food, and tried to call ahead to the hotel in Luoyang to make a reservation, but we could not get through. We had standing tickets for the train, so we spent 2 hours sitting on our backpacks in the area between carriages where people go to smoke. It wasn't pleasant, but luckily it didn't last too long. On the way we saw lots of caves that people lived in, in the side of the mountains.
Once we arrived in Luoyang we went to find the hotel that Hostelling Internation recommend in the city. Luckily they had dorm beds available, so we booked in for 2 nights. The only other person in our 6 bed dorm was a guy from the Netherlands called Stefan who had been travelling in China for 4 months. We all headed out together to find a roasted duck restaurant that I had read about. The food was excellent, but the service was pretty full-on (about 6 members of staff around our table...). We had a whole roast duck between the 3 of us, served with pancakes and lots of trimmings, as well as a noodle dish and some vegetables. It was more expensive than our average meals, but still amazing value at about 4 pounds each. On the way back to the hotel we picked up some beers and drank them in our room while chatting.
On Friday 9th May we got up early to go to visit the Longman Caves. We caught bus number 81 at 8.30am, which took about an hour to reach the caves. We bought some breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomato and chilli (it appears that scrambled egg is one dish that is common in the UK and in China!) and some coffee, and then headed off for the caves. They are so impressive - Buddhist carvings made into the rock centuries ago. It is very interesting that many of the carvings have been taken away by collectors, and many of the remaining ones had their heads smashed in during the Cultural Revolution. The main caves were very busy, as there were quite a few tour groups, but once they passed there was usually enough space to get close enough to look at everything.
The 80 yuan ticket entitles you to visit caves on the other side of the river, as well as a tomb, gardens and a lovely temple, all of which are well worth a visit and are much quieter than the main attraction. From the other side of the river you also get a wonderful view of the caves. Mid way through seeing these sights we got some lunch of cold noodles with cucumber and dressing. It was delicious, and I think we'll be having that dish again when we see it.
We were all very tired when we got the bus back to Luoyang, but Ali and I had to go to the train station to buy a ticket to Xi'an for the next day. After sorting this out, and having a shower and a rest, we went to the Old City (not very obviously old at all...) for some street food for dinner. There was a great selection, and we had a combination of vegetable wraps, pancakes filled with spinach, mutton kebabs and watermelon. We had been aiming to go to the Night food market, but that was closed at 9pm. Luckily there was lots of other food in the streets surrounding it.
We went back to the hotel and had an early night.
On Saturday 10th May (yesterday), the whole of our dorm (now with 3 french tourists as well) were leaving for various destinations, so it was busy! Ali and I got to the train station before 9am, but had to wait around as the train was delayed. When the train arrived though, it was a double decker train, and we had window seats on the top deck - it was very cool! Unfortunately we didn't have seats next to each other, but about half way through the journey, another traveller offered to swap seats so that we could talk to each other. The train journey took about 5 - 5.5 hours. When we arrived in Xi'an, the hostel that we had booked (Xiangzimen) came to collect us and drove us to the hostel location (a great location next to the South gate). This was a real relief as I was feeling really unwell with an upset stomach and just wanted to go to bed! I did go to bed for a while, and Ali ewnt out exploring for a few hours. When she got back I was feeling pretty much back to normal, so we had some delicious Chinese food for dinner in the restaurant at the hostel, and then found some bars for a couple of drinks.
Right - phew! That was quite a lot to cover in one post. I will try to do it more regularly from now on!
Hope you're all well -
Kate xxx
