We arose early in the morning and packed as quickly as we could, ignoring the breakfast apparently included in the room price, god know what that would've been like! We had to fend off the driver we'd told the girl on reception we didn't want but she'd booked anyway (price: 160 Yuan) and headed via a supermarket to the bus stop for a local bus (price: 1 Yuan) up to the Longmen Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The caves were created by Buddhist monks from the ...

As we rose & packed to get ready for the trip to Luoyang the hostel was already starting to feel like home. We handed our main rucksacks in for storage and pottered about for the day, wandering the streets and using the local internet cafe, on the 6th floor of a shopping mall. As afternoon hit we headed for the train station and felt like celebs as we were ushered into the designated soft seat lounge (we'd been warned about the ubiquitous 'hard seat' section ...

I was really looking forward to our tour of the terracotta warriors and excitedly boarded the bus with a motley crew of fellow travelers and an insanely perky chinese tour guide. The warriors are part of the tomb of the man credited by most historians as China's first true Emperor and the man who built the great wall Qin Shi Huang. It is a matter of debate whether they were to guard his tomb, follow him into the afterlife to help him rule there or a huge decorati...

The hostel we'd found online was a nice cosy place just by the South gate of the Xian city walls. There were many Western tourists and the staff all spoke good English, it felt very much like a rest after the trials of the past few days. Sadly, however, Taiyuan would keep rearing its ugly head in the form of dodgy stomachs that both Dave and I were suffering from for over a week afterwards. Indeed, my first toilet experience in Xian ended in the sacrifice of a pa...

It was with relief that we checked out of the hotel, we really hadn't warmed to Taiyuan and were looking forward to heading on to Xi'an, home of the terracotta warriors and a more tourist-oriented city, hopefully it would be easier to get around and get what we wanted there! Before that, though, we had the day to visit Pingyao. We headed to the scrum of the bus station and fought our way through another throng of touts to get the public bus to Pingyao. We squeeze...