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Tues 8th,Another very famous landmark to visit today The Forbidden City,Marc has gone to Shanghai so Bas from Holland has taken his place and joined us for the day,had hoped to visit a few places of interest today but like the Summer Palace yesterday this place was massive too,with more than 72 buildings,9,999 rooms to explore over 178 acres its no wonder it took us 1/2 the day to get round,having taken 12 years to build it was out of bounds for your average Joe Blogg for 500 years not suprising when you think of the luxury they lived in compared to the squaller the normal people lived in,but were not bitter,a quick visit to Jingshan Park and then onwards to Tiananmen square,,made famous by the student demonstrations in 1989,called the biggest plaza on earth it covers 100 aceres,it was here that Chairman Mao raised the flag of the Peoples Republic on Oct 1,1949,at 16.45 we were there to see the flag lowered with a guard of honour today,saw another show tonight this time an acrobat show of about 12 different acts,all amazing and so enthralling.
Wed 9th,A morning of booking things,Datong train and Hotel,yes HOTEL,only because there are no hostels here,hostel in Pingyao and hostel in Xian so not a bad mornings work,we managed to get to visit the military mueseum,a lot of things to see but not as interesting as the war memorial in Seoul,catching the train to Datong at 12.04 tomorrow only looks about 5mins on the map but it is 6hrs so cant wait for that,have my mp3 player and a book so should be ok,Beijing is a great place would imagine its really busy and hot in summer now a bit cold but no waiting around,Ian is really trying to get into the Chinese way's,eating lot's of the food and also spitting, needs to work on the noises a bit but he is getting there.
thurs 10th,left Beijing today and caught the 12.04 train to Da Tong,we will never moan about crowded trains again,used to moan about having to stand the 25 mins to padd,the train took 6hrs and people actually paid to stand that long,we had already paid the £4.50 for our seats so we were ok just a bit cramped at first,must be a nightmare in summer,one bonus was some of the scenery we went throgh was stunning,got off and got stalked by a taxi driver who did us a favour in the end as we wanted to buy our next train ticket in advance so he helped us with that,all looked a bit dodgey as we headed for his car but we agreed the price before getting in,still a bit worried but he dropped us off at the hotel we were save,next ordeal nobody speaks any English anywhere,so using our 6 words of Chinese we know and more pointing we managed to get some food,think we were the tourist attraction for the night as we certainly had a few people watching us,all good fun.
Fri 11th,Got woken up at 7am by the hotel music,well it sounded like a couple of young girls screaming,tried to do a trip on our own today knowing it was going to be hard work,first task getting breakfast came down about 9.10 but the girls just kept giggling so I did my normal Michael Jackson moonwalk out of the restaurant,second task catching either the no 2 or 3 bus to the Yungang grotto, after walking round in the freezing cold trying to evade another dodgey taxi driver and not finding the bus stop,we spoke with the taxi man,he kept on saying no bus will take you there but just thought he was trying to pull a fast 1,agreed a good price with him and got in,after about 20mins we pulled into a buiding site and thought here we go miles out of the way on our own and probably a few of his mates around the corner,no need to worry he was sound,he was right about the bus there was no way they would get through the terrain we did in this rickety old banger,we could laugh about it after when we knew we were save,Da Tong is probably the dirtiest place I have ever been to and it all looks the same but it was worth putting up with just to see these Caves.Built in the 5th century,there was 51,000 ancient statues carved by the Turkic-speaking Tuobo,work began in Ad 460 and took 60 years to finish,there were over 252 caves then but only 45 remain today,these are the oldest Buddhist carvings in China the biggest a massive 17m high,this was an incredible sight when you look at the work and the detail in the carvings and the tools they had to work with,will be a big tourist attraction in a few years as they are rebuilding the old palace and adding a lot more buildings,taxi man was waiting to take us back what a result.Had a look around the town,so funny walking about you would have thought we were some kind of superstars,all the staff tapping each other and pointing at us,we took the limelight from the caves for an hour as the white man had arrived,even nanaged to order food in the hotel,what a day
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