Temples and Caves

The Hanging Temple
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Hello All!

Well its taken some time to find electricity the past few days.  It keeps shutting off on us just as we decide to blog.  But its up now so here we are!

We decided to leave Beijing and head via train to Datong a smaller city west of Beijing by about 7 hours.  It is a coal mining town and quite dismal there.  We took a hard seat train which means we sat with the locals in booths (4 to a booth) and of course like everything here it is the "smoking section"  there is no non-smoking.  It was pretty entertaining.  We were and continue to be celebrities, freaks, side shows, whatever way you look at it.  My knitting drew an extra level of curiousity.  At first we thought it was because I was so talented...turns out it was because I was only using two needles and the fewest they seem to work with here is four!  So we arrived in Datong and found a very helpful CITS office (like a travel agency for white folk who stumble into their station)  They booked us a hotel and a tour for the next day, as well as, our next connecting train and a guesthouse at our next destination.  All for a hefty service fee of $1.25   The hotel at first glance was quite lovely that was until the cockroaches came out!  Lets just say we slept with the lights on in the room and I got up several times during the night to just make some noise.  You will all be proud that despite some gagging noises neither of us screamed or threw up in the end.  Having not eaten in several days due to our vegetarian status, we stumbled into the hotel restaurant.  Their staff did not speak english but luckily had an english menu.  We ordered "vegetable dumplings" and "tofu".  They brought us some hot water to drink.  Not tea...hot water.  Our food came out and we bit into the PORK dumplings.  The tofu was marinated in ground pork.  We called the waitress over and I attempted some sign language and pointing.  She lost her mind.  She started laughing uncontrollably, dropped her pen, kicked it across the floor by accident and then ran away and NEVER came back.  So, we called over another waitress.  Before I even opened my mouth she waved her hands at me and ran away.  We ate our white rice, drank our hot water, paid our bill and went back to the room and ate some trail mix.  Thankfully, our food ordering skills have greatly improved, we even have written down 5 different ways to explain vegetarianism and now we are eating again.

A cave sculpture
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The next morning, we set out on our tour of the Hanging temple and the Yungang Caves.  The hanging temple was amazing, a temple build on the side of a giant cliff by driving beams into the rock face.  It was a bit scary and very windy.  We had a wonderful lunch and moved on to the Caves.  30 minutes into the 2 hour drive, the second van of us broke down.  After much ado the driver of the small van jumped into our van and we drove away leaving the other tourists with no explanation.  We headed to the gas station to fill up a bucket with gas, bring it into the van and drive with the windows wide open so we didn't die of the fumes, back to the van.  In the end, the van would not start so we piled GET THIS...35 people into our minivan.  They made us close the shades in the van and duck down so the police would not see us.  They then drove us for 1.5 hours to the caves.

The big buddha cave carving
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The caves were beyond explanation.  I'm not sure the pictures can even capture the grandeur of these ancient cave carvings.  I hope the pictures will help explain.

We then loaded up the van again and snuck our way back to the train station.

We had a lovely dinner with two very kind guys we met on the tour. (what up boys?)  Then caught the overnight train to Pingyao.  This was our first time in a sleep cart in Asia.  It was very comfortable, clean, and we shared it with a lovely newlywed couple from Seattle on their honeymoon.