Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

That’s right. We’ve managed to join our Intrepid tour and let’s put it this way, they don’t beat around the bush.

Interestingly, our original itinerary was going to go to a few places on the outskirts of the Tibetan Himalaya, but had to be rerouted due to the protests that have taken place there recently. No drama, China has plenty of scenic places to go to.

So after a few hectic days in Beijing, which was still a few days short of what you could easily spend there (managed to squeeze in Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, other odds and ends, a side trip to Great Wall and, I feel just as impressive, Terminal 3 at Beijing international airport on our way in), we were off to Datong and the Yungang caves. Datong is not so exciting. The caves on the other hand are very impressive and worth the visit. Basically a set of Buddhas carved out of the side of a hill. To clarify, that’s about 51,000 ranging in size from a couple of cm to about 17m tall, spread out over about 45 caves. Not bad if that’s what you’re in to.

Then came Pingyao. Not to do things by halves, the entire city centre has been declared a World Heritage site. I agree, why stuff around with a few things here or there when you can just do it properly once We stayed at a guesthouse smack bang in the middle that must’ve originally been the dwellings of a rich merchant or equivalent. Very cool and something different.

Now in Xi’an, famous for the Terracotta warriors (tick), massive city walls (tick), Big Goose Pagoda (tick) and Great Mosque (tick). I’m beginning to feel quite touristy for some reason…

Overall, I’m just amazed though. All the places we’ve seen have been far more modern and western feeling than I expected. Apart from a total lack of newsagencies selling western magazines, it’s almost like travelling through Europe. This might change as we get more off the beaten track over the next two weeks, but still. Construction going on everywhere of course, but plenty of brand new roads, shopping centres and gleaming new sky scrapers already completed.

Lots and lost of smog though, so they obviously still have a few challenges ahead of them. If anyone can tackle them though, I’m beginning to feel it’s the Chinese… I just hope that they tackle them before it’s too late…

Our travel style that is. But we’ve managed to get away with it once more :) In other words, we were able to get our China visas. On the other hand, I’ve had more relaxing stopovers…

As I mentioned in an earlier post we accidentally managed to leave the application for our China visas until the very last minute (at which stage the application process had of course become far tougher due to recent protests in Tibet), so we had to reroute our trip through Hong Kong for a few days. Fortunately, Hong Kong is as efficient and modern a city (with a Chinese embassy to match) as we’ve come across. 48hrs after arrival (and 24 hrs before our flights to Beijing) we were the proud owners of a one month visa to China and able to continue our trip as planned. Phew… I’m going to need a holiday when I’m done with this trip. Apparently Australia is nice this time of year. (btw, on a slightly different note, not long till we’re there!)