Luoyang, Henan, China
November 17, 2013
After the shenanigans yesterday with my phone I woke up in a much better mood and decided to get myself out early and catch the bus out to the Longmen Grottoes and make the most of my last day in Luoyang. I had my bag packed up nice and early and checked out so that I would be ready for my train to Zhangjiajie later on when I got back.
It doesn’t take long to get to the grottoes, about half an hour on a bus outside the town for 10p and your there. The Grottoes run along either side of the Yi River with most of them being on the West bank. The Grottoes themselves are basically a series of caves carved out of the limestone cliff face with many many images of Buddha carved within them. There are about 1400 caves in total housing over 100,000 carvings and statues of Buddha……that’s a fair few Buddhas.
They are really impressive to see, ranging from very small ones only about an inch high which you see many of in just one little cave up to the very impressive 75ft one set up high on the West bank. It was a really nice day out. A nice bit of sunshine and a nice meander along the river bank weaving my way up and down the steps that steer you along the face of the Grottoes. It seems really popular with the locals and is a good escape from the town as well as being only one of three Grottoe sites in China and a World Heritage site. After I’d wandered along the West bank there is a small bridge that takes you across to the East side where there are a few more little caves dotted about as well as the Xiangshan Temple and the Bai Garden Temple which houses the tomb of Bai Juyi.
The Gardens are pretty nice and good to chill out in for a while, nice and peaceful. You also get a really good overall view of the Grottoes from the East side looking to the West, very impressive indeed. It was good to relax and meander round for a good few hours before heading back.
I was starving when I got back so popped over the road for a bite to eat, this time in a restaurant as opposed to the street food I’ve lived off for the past couple of weeks. Hmmm well seeing as I don’t read Chinese and they had no pictures on the menu I decided to point randomly at some sort of main dish and asked for a bit rice as well. I’m not quite sure what I was served up but it looked and smelt a bit interesting to say the least. I think it was either animal bladders or some sort of artery or part of the heart with a few vegetables mixed in. The smell and taste was a tad pungent to say the least but it still got scoffed down and I wasn’t ill so that’s all good.
I had met a Chinese lad in the hostel called Lee the other day who had been really helpful to me since I arrived, he got me a VPN set up on my laptop to get me on Google properly and FB and such like and I took a quick wander out with him to see if I could grab a cheap phone somewhere as without whipping my laptop out everywhere I don’t even have a way to tell what time it is. We spotted a few that looked decent enough but when he had a play about with them and switched the language to English there was still a lot showing in Chinese so to be fair they were a bit faulty and not worth wasting the money on so I ‘ll hang on until I hit Hong Kong before I sort something else out. After killing a bit of time and chatting with my Mam, Dad, Sister and Zac on Skype I caught my Taxi to get my overnight train to Zhangjiajie. The station is a different one to the one I arrived in and is probably the smallest scruffiest train station I’ve ever seen. I thought at one point I had missed another train on this trip. A train pulled in at the exact time that mine was due and I showed my ticket but was turned away to go and sit back down with the other Chinese travelers. Eventually though another one arrived and I was allowed on. First time I’ve seen any bit of transport in China not run on time!
The train was really canny, not good for getting much sleep as your squeezed in 3 people high on bunks in an open carriage but the locals were friendly enough and we tried to have a craic on the best we could.
Next stop Zhangjiajie.
