Got the sh*ts and visited a sh*t city
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2008
1
28
349
Trip End
May 14, 2009
Datong,
Shanxi,
China
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Woke up in the early hours in Pingyao and the heavens opened...from my back door! It was through the eye of a needle stuff and was consistently arriving every 15 minutes. I couldn't believe there was so much, I felt like I was going to implode!!! This continued for most of they day I'm afraid.
We also had a bit of an issue with Geckos Adventures again. Basically they had put us on two buses to Datong that would take 8 and a half hours and then upon arrival and check in, we would get on another bus for one hour to the grotto caves!! This was bloody ridiculous as this meant that even if we left at 7am, we wouldn't get to the caves until 5pm at the earliest!! And that would be after nearly 10 hours worth of travelling
Yunang Grotto Caves
. In the end out tour guide (who is excellent by the way and has sympathy with us) told us that there was a charter bus that would do the journey in 4 hours!! When we asked why that hadn't been booked he said that the other way was cheaper! What about the fact that we would have to do all that travelling in one day and therefore basically lose a day!! He made a few phone calls to change the bus for us, but can you believe that Geckos made us pay for the charter bus ourselves!! There is definitely going to be an email to them when I reach Shanghai.When we finally reached Datong on our own Charter bus, we checked into what can only be described as a joke of a hotel. It was called the Fentien Hotel. It was right next to the train station so all you could hear were the sound of the trains. The water was only available for showers for a 2 hour period in the evening. The bed linen was black with grime. The floor tiles were broken and I kept stubbing my toe on them. And to cap it all, you didn't even get a key to your room, you had to keep asking the reception lady to come and open your door for you. This wouldn't be that bad except I couls have been anyone asking to get into our room. The whole group was not happy, so we made an executive decision....
Instead of staying the night, we decided to go straight to Beijing on an overnight sleeper train tonight instead....with no help from Geckos again of course!
I was too ill to visit the grotto caves but Lorna went and got some photo's. She said that I didn't miss much and that it seemed pointless coming to Datong just for this!
Anyway, we went and got some grub and then jumped on the 23:00 train to Beijing which was due to arrice in the Capital at 5am tomorrow morning, so we get a full day there instead.
