We left Xi'an by bus, which turned out to be one of the most easy and comfortable journeys we have had for a long time. Although the Chinese can be perseved as quite a rude nation, at times they can be so friendly and helpful, especially those who speak a little English. We had brought our bus ticket in advance, luckily the woman in the ticket booth spoke English, so we just had to find out which bus we needed to get on. After showing our tickets to a couple of people we were directed to the right bus and herded into our seats. They even arranged with our bus driver (who spoke no English!) to ring the hostel we were booked into when we were near Pingyao, to arrange for our pick up, which was really kind of them.

The bus was luxury, leather seats, air con, TV showing Titanic (maybe not so good!!) and the roads were so straight and smooth, the 6 hour journey seemed to pass in no time at all. The scenery we drove passed was ever changing, cities, flood plains, huge canyons and vast areas of terraces used for growing crops, however here they seem to grow all different crops next to each other in small rectangles, rather than massive fields containing just one crop, it must all be very labour intensive, especially since the terraces are all dug out in very steep mountain areas.

We we quite unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road by a toll booth, just off the main highway about 2km from Pingyao and told to wait there "a few minutes" to be picked up by our hostel. We were glad we had already booked a hostel otherwise we would have had a bit of a walk! Although there were a couple of tuk tuk drivers who wanted us to go with them to other hostels, so we would have been ok, at a high price though!

Finally however, after about half an hour, some people from our hostel turned up and we all squashed into the tuk tuk for the drive into the ancient Pingyao town. It was like going back in time as we drove through the city walls, down the quiet cobbled streets and amongst the old style houses all with red lanterns and chinese pictures decorating them. This truly is a part of old school China, exactly what we wanted to see.

Pingyao was a thriving merchant town during the Ming dynasty and the centre for trade between the south of China and Mongolia.The country's first banks were set up here to enable the huge transactions of silver to take place. However in the 20th century the city fell into poverty and due to the lack of money to modernise the streets of Pingyao have remained unchanged ever since those days. Today the main source of income is tourism and ironically there is no bank here now!!

Friday we explored the town, which didn't take us very long at all, within an hour we had walked around most of the town. The main tourist strip is in the centre but as we walked further away we saw all the locals sitting in courtyards or doorways, always in small groups, usually with a small child at the centre, the family groups really dote on their children here. There are many old histroical buildings in Pingyao but the most stunning is definitely the city walls, built in 1370 they are 10m high and more than 6km in circumference with 72 watchtowers and many gates at certain points on the way around.

We are staying in a very cool little hostel, the perfect place to relax, with beautiful architecture, plenty of comfy sofas to sit on and read books, great food and beer, DVDs and a playstation! So we were happy to stay here for a few days and chill out and save money, even though we had seen pretty much all there was to see in one day! It was pretty quiet except for a great group of people who we have been chatting and drinking with in the evenings.

Today we have had a final quiet day of chilling and reading, although Andrew did go along to a Chinese version of "It's a Knockout" held by the South Gate. This event travels around all the local towns and people can compete in various activities. Andrew had a go at the wall climb, in which he got a very respectable time of 6 seconds, in fact noone else was anywhere near him in time! Its a shame we are not here for another day, as the winner of each activity gets a T Shirt and can represent the town in the finals held in Beijing!!! Can you imagine it!!! As the only Westerners around you can imagine the attention he attracted!!

Got to make the most of our last two weeks of travelling now, so Pingyao has been a nice rest before the craziness begins again! Tonight we are back on the hard sleeper train to Datong, should be interesting!!

Lots of Love

Sarah and Andrew xxx