China is amazing. Actually, I’ll modify that, Luoyang is amazing. The people are friendly, the women are beautiful and the weather is good. Things are cheap too; I managed to break my own record today by getting dinner for 6 RMB (60p). I also just bought a camping flask for £2 (after getting a 10% discount) and a 2 hour high-speed rail ticket to Xian for £12. Life in Luoyang is good.

My journey to Luoyang began in Pingyao, where the only train I could get was at 01:04. I sat up and waited in the hostel and Bob, the hostel manager, organised a taxi to come and pick me and some other guests up who were getting a late train. I’ve asked in another hostel what these are called and I’m told they’re called tricycles, a tiny, 3-wheeled motorbike with a kind of enclosed area at the back. Me, two other passengers and all our stuff fitted into this tiny space, that only had a tarpaulin-type covering for the sides.

Once we were at the train station, in normal Chinese train-station fashion, we were only let out onto the platform about 5 minutes before the train departed. Naturally, with large numbers of people, this involves a lot of rushing and shouting, but in this case there were only a few of us, so it wasn’t a problem. I still got asked to move my stuff behind the yellow line, however.

Once on the train I found my bed (I was on a hard-sleeper this time) and settled down for the night. After a disturbed night’s sleep, we arrived in Luoyang. I walked around for a bit outside the station and managed to find the information desk in what I thought was the bus station. It wasn’t, but the woman managed to draw me a map of where to go for the bus I needed. I finally found bus number 5 and as I was asking the bus driver whether she went to the stop I needed, a girl who spoke English butted-in and offered to help. She knew where I was going, confirmed that the bus was going in the right direction and we talked for the remainder of the journey.

Once I was at the hostel, I decided that as I was already packed and had most of the day free, that I wanted to go to Nanjiecun. I spoke to the women behind the desk in the hostel, who happily spent about 2 hours helping me plan my trip there. Several hours and a bus-ride later, I was in Zhengzhou, the closest city. Even though the woman in the hostel had actually booked me in to two separate hotels, I decided I needed to get some cash out, as I had been in so much of a rush in Luoyang that I hadn’t been able to get any. I tried about 2 cash machines before deciding that I needed directions to another one and walking into a hotel. The girl behind the desk did not know much English, but we managed to communicate that I needed some cash or an ATM machine and she walked me to the closest one. This was around the corner, it was cold and windy, but she happily did it anyway. When this didn’t work, she walked me to another one (which was next door). Finally, when we found one that worked, I decided that as the rooms we so cheap and she had gone to all this trouble, that I would stay in their hotel. It was opposite the bus station, too.

See the post on ‘Nanjiecun’ for more on what happened the next day!

When I was back in Luoyang, I spent the afternoon exploring the old town. This comes alive at night, with streets that are empty during the day crammed-full of street sellers during the evening. It was a really energising trip, as this was exactly what I hoped a Chinese city would look like. The next day I went to the Longmen caves, which are really a set of statues carved into the wall, but they’re very impressive anyway. The evening, as far as I remember, was spent updating my blog, speaking to someone about Taiwan and getting my visit to Xi’an organised.