This was a gentle morning start, with pickup for our tour by Peter and the driver at 9 am. We wandered down to the restaurant for breakfast before 8 am and were met by a massive assortment of choice from fruit and toast all the way through deep fried ,fried, boiled , steamed, raw and in between. God knows what they do with what is left as it seemed there would be a huge amount of wastage. I settled on toast and bad espresso, followed by some bacon with French toast and hash brown, concluded with some fresh watermelon, melon and dragon fruit accompanied by a glass of apple juice (which was actually lemon). A good start to the day I say.
Peter was of course on time and we then set off to the Hanging temple through the countryside out of Datong for an hour and half. On arrival we were not disappointed, a beautiful sight to this Taoist, Buddhist and Confucius temple suspended half way up the side of a cliff. Not too busy today and it was a lovely clear sunny day so off we set to climb up and explore this unique structure over 1400 years old. A magnificent temple which was lucky to have survived by serving all three faiths, similar to the in Mosque/Cathedral in Cordoba, Spain. It was narrow, slippery and steep but we did well and finally ascended, glad we had done it. I would doubt with an increase in tourism in this area that tourists will be able to climb it soon, but we will see.
The next stop on our tour was the Wooden Pagoda in Ying Country which is the oldest wooden structure in China, all built with joints and no nails. It was built in 1056 and has a massive 11m statue of Buddha in the middle on the ground floor ( 5 floors in total). You are not able to climb this structure as like Pisa it has a notable tilt and looks in need of some repair soon. By now it was almost 2pm so we stopped for some lunch at a restaurant and ordered 2 bowls of vegetable and a beef noodles and a potato “naan” bread. Veg was great with potato noodles but the beef was average. Once again way to much and left over half of it, but had to order 2 bowls.
It was then a drive back to the hotel and drop off for the day. Jane decided to go looking for a new top, so I decided to get the steps up and go for a walk around the city wall and see if I could get on top. Walked for nearly 2 hours and no luck I’m afraid as all the doors were shut. Eventually settled on a cup of average Starbucks coffee and a bit of English shortbread before heading back to the hotel to meet Jane. It was then quickly off to the south City Wall entrance to watch the water and light show that Peter told us to see at 8pm. This certainly was worth it and went for over 30 minutes. We were the hit of the evening for one young girl (about 3-4) who was fascinated by our skin and wanted to continually say “hello”. When the show had concluded we wandered back to the shopping area for a bit of dinner (now 9pm) and were so lazy we settled on Pizza Hut, China style. Because we sat down we had to order a pizza each, so we got 2 of the smallest ones of which we only ate half and took the rest back to the hotel. Ordered a beer with the pizza and it was delivered in a 500ml stubby WARM with a glass of ice. Very hard to buy a cold beer in this city!!!
Oh well back to the room and bed to catch up on some blogging and get a bit of shut eye.
No comments:
Post a Comment