Our flight was booked to Tibet but first we had a little problem regarding permits. The Chinese government, in a move that only arouses suspicion, doesn't like people going into Tibet unless they pay the government some extra money. Furthermore, if you technically played by the rules, you can only go as part of an organised tour, so that the government knows you will never be on your own and perhaps see or hear something they don't like. If you go by the new fancy train that they just opened last year, it is quite easy to go without a permit because they never check for them, but we would be flying and that was a different story. We found a hostel who was quite happy to arrange us a permit though and we had a week to go see somewhere else and then return, collect the permit and catch our flight. We did our research carefully regarding this because there are countless stories of people getting fake permits and being ripped off but this place seemed to come up trumps by previous travellers reports.
Everything arranged we jumped on a train for the 6 hour ride to the town of Datong. We rode hard seat class which is the cheapest type, and as it happened to be on this train, the only type. It is not quite the same as the soft class carriages we had become accustomed to. The seats aren't so hard really, they've got a bit of padding, but they're not so much seats as high and straight backed benches which sit three people aside, facing into another three people. It is quite difficult to do anything other than sit up and sit straight. Some food came along which, as is always the case on trains here, was much better than it aught to have been and really quite cheap too, though most people brought their pot of instant noodles and just filled them up from the large water boilers at the end of the carriages. The sensibilities and considerations of many travellers, in what we have previously referred to as convict class, can be less than savoury but our luck was in for this particular trip and our neighbours were all quite civil. That said, about half way through the journey four boys got on and took an empty seat and chewed their way through a bag of sunflower seeds, spitting the shells on the ground and smoking away in defiance of the signs. It was unlikely they would have gotten any form of reprimand for this anyway as the train guard would have first had to take the cigarette out of his own mouth to talk to them.
We reached Datong, were pointed in the Direction of the one hotel the tourists get sent to and made arrangements for the following days excursion which would once again be an organised tour. Our hotel was pretty dreadful. There was little hot water, most of the lights didn't work, our free breakfast was not to be found and every time we walked down the corridor I kept seeing scenes from 'Towering Inferno'. Except for the pillows which were filled like a been bag and would end any pillow fight, we had a reasonable sleep. We also enjoyed the view across the square to the train station which was covered in flashing neon lights in an array befitting to a casino in Vegas.
Datong is the town you stay in to see two sights. One is the Hanging Monastery and the other is the Buddha caves. The Hanging Monastery at Mount Hengshan is about 1400 years old and it was still a working temple up until the 20th Century. It clings to the cliff face at a height of 50 metres, though this used to be a height of 100 metres until the introduction of a dam a little up stream. It has about 80 rooms and very rarely for a temple has Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism elements and idols inside.
We were expecting massive crowds when we went to see it because this is the big sight in the area but it was much quieter than we imagined meaning we had time to lean over the terrifyingly low hand rails and ponder our precarious position. As we were leaving it seemed like a whirlwind of tour groups all arrived at once and as we sat, now back at the bottom watching them clambouring all over each other and posing for photos, we realised we had timed it just right. The place had immediately transformed from serene and contemplative to a theme park struggling under the numbers. It's a wonder the thing hasn't fallen off the wall as it could never have been built with so many people in mind. Next came lunch, included in the price, and we were back on the bus, two hours back into Datong and then an hour out the other side to see the Buddha caves.
The Buddha caves are, as you might have expected, caves. There's about 40 of them though once again pre-Olympic preparations seemed to be responsible for the closing and renovating of about half of them. What we saw though ranged from dull through to down-right-Indiana-Jones-like as we wandered into caves that had been scraped out from the soft clay cliffs (not like the good solid ones holding up the monastery) leaving big caverns with giant Buddha statues inside. Some were sitting, some standing and some were having a nap. There were big ones and little ones and even a few in between. That was all quite good too and then we returned to Datong for one more night, passing a mining town which is quite literally a town sized mine, with a town's population of workers who all live in it and all work just at the mine. It was very Dickensian and a reminder where the rich Chinese really get their wealth from.
The next day we caught the bus to the next tourist town which is called Pingyao. Pingyao is a particularly scenic and well preserved ancient town, dating back through the Dynasties. It was at one time the financial centre of China, home to the country's first bank and they reckon, the first bank in the world to use cheques though I have my doubts on that claim. There is reason to suspect that the town remains in such good condition because it has been discreetly replaced in bits and pieces at odd points with new 'old bricks' and the like but it still remains a very attractive town and a real insight into the old china. As is normal, there is a perimeter wall and you can walk around that. We also took a look through the governor's house and a few other buildings of repute. The buildings are all of a specific style. Grey brick and with a courtyard out the back and lots of little out buildings which all form a compound together. Lots of red lanterns (though they're electric now) and cobbled streets too. It was very attractive and a constant aroma of coal fires from the chimneys drifted through the noticeably cooler air. The hostel we stayed in was apparently built for the visiting emperor but he never came in the end to use it.
After a very long walk in the heat with all our bags out the wrong side of town and then all the way round to the right side, we caught a bus to the next biggest town, to catch another bus back to Beijing. We read this bus would take between 5 and 6 hours. It took 10 and we arrived at our hostel about 1 in the morning. We then had to check in, pop round to the other hostel that had arranged our visas (but we didn't want to stay at), wake someone up that came all the way into work to find us our visas and then try and grab some food from a man on the pavement with a brazier. All done, we had about two and three quarter hours to get some sleep before getting up again really early to catch a taxi to the airport for our flight to Tibet.
No comments:
Post a Comment