We have been BUSY. Tonight is our first night staying in one place for two nights in a row since leaving Beijing. The little map on the website will show you where we have been.
We are currently in Yangshou, Guanxi. It is a 'sleepy' little backpacker town on the Li river. I say 'sleepy' because everything in China seems go-go-go. Even this place is crazy. Out the window here there is a traffic circle that is just constantly full of buses, taxis, cars, bikes and scooters weaving in and out and honking. Just beyond that there is a night market starting to set up. There are a few tent covered stalls cooking up (with a lot of flair!) everything from "field snails" and "beer fish" to tofu and eggplant.
We ate there last night and it was delicious. Even the field snails were good. And it was cheap.
We have been spending way too much money. When budgeting for China we forgot to include all the clothes, souveniers, and tours. They really add up. It is nice to stay here for a few days: we spend 6$ a night on a nice hotel room and a few dollars for each meal. Tomorrow, if the weather is nice, we will rent bikes for about 2$ each for the day and cycle around the rice paddies. Really nice change of pace because this is what we did since we left Beijing on the night train to Datong.
Datong: Datong is a coal mining city with lots of history nearby. We toured a hanging monastery (literally hanging off the side of a cliff, about 50m above the bottom) and these AMAZING caves filled with very large statues of buddhas. We stayed only for the day and took a night train to Taiyuan.
Taiyuan: Another coal mining city. I had a business meeting there and Tara got to relax for a few hours. We had an English student to take us around to try some local food and show us what the prices of street food SHOULD be (they try to overcharge us 2-4x usually). The next morning we took the train to Pingyao.
Pingyao: This small town is still surrounded by original Ming dynasty walls. Most of the housing is original and the streets were all cobblestone and all that. It was quite touristy but the city still functioned as a small Chinese town so you'd see old men with old donkeys pulling old carts right beside a brand new BMW full of tourists. We left that night for Xian.
Xian: Xian is a large (~6 million) city that is famous for the terracotta warriors. We stayed there one night. We had a really nice room with all stone floors and a stone bed and it was only about 20$ a night. We saw the terracotta warriors, which were pretty cool (but not 8th wonder of the world cool as the signs claim) and rented bicycles to go around the city walls (about 14km). We left the next night for Chengdu.
Chengdu: A 'smaller' city (about 2 million) famous for the giant panda research facility. We stayed there for a night and went to see the pandas in the morning. They were quite cute. You actually get pretty close to them and they aren't behind bars or glass or anything. The baby pandas were of course the best. We watched one of them climb a 20 foot tree only to break the branch and fall to the gasps of all the tourists snapping photos. We left the next night for Guilin/Yangshou.
The red pandas were my favorite. Some people were paying about 7$ Canadian to get their pictures taken with them.Yangshou/Guilin: We stayed in Guilin for the night and headed out to Yangshou (an hour by bus) as quickly as possible. We really like it here. Like I said, just a small town on the Li river. We were planning to go to Yunnan province next but it will be another LONG train ride and then some long bus rides to get to the places we want to see so we decided to just relax here for a few extra days. We would stay here for longer but the prices will go up 2x-8x for the May1-7th holiday. So after this we will head south and stay in a quiet border town or maybe head into Vietnam about a week early than we planned.
China is really big. Even with the sleeper trains and going at the pace we have been a month isn't even close to enough. We have been going non-stop and having to miss things along the way just to see the few places we have seen. There's just so much history everywhere; so much natural beauty as well to see. I think the next trip to China will have to be 2 months or longer.
Anyway, we'll get some pictures up as soon as we can. Hopefully tomorrow. Hope all is well with everyone!
-Andrew
