Beauty and the Beast

Trip Start Aug 10, 2008

Trip End Ongoing

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Where I stayed

Overnight train

(Datong hotels)

Flag of China Datong, Shanxi, China
Sunday, October 26, 2008

Last night we had our first trip on an overnight train with hard seats. There are three classes of travel - soft sleeper - similar to the kupe class through Russia, hard sleeper - 2 sets of triple bunks in open compartments, and hard seats - very hard, upright bench seats. The latter were what the real Chinese took and were much cheaper so we gave it a try. Again we found we were the centre of attention - people wondered why we were traveling on this class. We hauled our backpacks up onto the overhead luggage racks and settled in for a long, cold and uncomfortable night. We were to travel by train at night and explore the cities during the day - buying each ticket as we got to the next destination. This was a feat in itself with long unorganised queues of people and with ticket sellers that spoke little English - we wrote our requirements in Chinese and just passed over the paper.

Arriving at Datong we had two things we wanted to see - both out of town but we were lucky to be shepherded into a tour company that arranged visits on the spot and withing half an hour we'd booked on a tour to leave at 9 and had somewhere to store our luggage

Hanging Monastry

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Our first stop was the Hanging Monastery, 65km southeast of Datong - a gravity defying wooden structure built into the side of a cliff, held up with long support stilts. It was a beautiful 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 breath away as we entered the cave and looked up at the huge icon.

Datong city was certainly not as beautiful - a dirty busy place with lots of neon lights, I'm glad we were hopping on the train again that night. To make matters worse, my tonsillitis had returned with avengence and my head, throat and ears were pounding. I managed to get some antibiotics from the chemist - with Zsuzsannas help because speak - and I hoped they would work quickly.