After some deliberation we now find ourselves in Luoyang after a 9 hour train journey from Yichang on Saturday. It's a smoggy chinese city but from here we could go to the UNESCO World Heritage Longman Caves. These caves/grottoes are full of Buddhist rock carvings dating back nearly 2000 years. We went out yesterday, Chinese National Day, along with thousands of Chinese holiday-makers. The grottoes were very cool, the rock carvings were so detailed.

Other than that we really haven't done alot. We walked, and walked, and walked around the city and discovered that the food here is the worst we have come across, nothing like the chinese take-aways at home. It's either very oily or very bland, not to our taste at all. Trish is looking forward to stew and mash potatoes when she gets home.

Luoyang is an ancient Chinese Dynasty capital but you wouldn't realise this as you walk about, nothing seems to remain from it's historic past. We walked around the "Old Town" today and everything is very new and recently renovated for all the tourists, very disappointing. However, we are still getting pointed at, laughed at, whole families stopping in the streets to stare at us as we walk along but we're used to it and just say hello which frightens them even more.

Tomorrow we get the 4 hour bus to Xi'an to see the world famous Army of Terracotta Warriors. This, hopefully, will be one of the highlights of China.

P.S. Commiserations to the Gaels, big brother will just have to try harder when he returns from his next travels.....