5 hours on a private transfer bus (as opposed to 8 hurs by public bus) sees us into Pingyao...

Pingyao seems a beautiful little walled city, it's buzzing at the moment as they are getting ready for an international photography fesitval, there's flyers and posters and artwork everywhere - brilliant!!

Our hotel is very sweet - in a similar style to our lovely hotel in Beijing - all arranged around a courtyard where you can sit and drink tea. Everything is lit up at night with red lanterns, and although there's a lot of international travellers here at the moment, we get the feeling that it's normally a sleepy sort of place.

We have spent our two and a half days here just wandering around and looking and taking photographs! We have also never been so popular in our whole lives - chinese nationals with massive cameras point them at you from all angles as you are just walking down the road!! I was waiting for Ian outside our hotel with my backpack as we were checking out and I had five massive lenses in my face all at once - we're feeling a little like superstars!!

The funniest thng when we were waiting for our taxis to the next overnight train was Shannon - one of the guys in the grou and myslef were both asked to pose with a couple of chinese people in the street infrot of the Bell tower and as this was quite normal at this point we were embarrassed but thought nothing of it and 10 minutes later the people were back and had developed the photograph to give us a copy each!!! The Chinese people on the whole seem very friendly and want to practise their English, whih we are more than happy to help with through sign language!!

We are sad to leave Pingyao, but next stop Xi'an and the Army of Terracotta Warriors - time for the next overnight train....