Life in Cambodia

Taiyuan and beyond

With visas expiring and no available seats to Xi'an (our next destination) we could only flee to the town of Taiyuan, halfway between Beijing and Xi'an to renew our visas for another month. We sneaked in by the skin of our teeth, on the last working day before expiration. Unfortunately, the renewal costs $100 each and takes 5 working days, so we've got time to kill. We are currently in Shanxi Province, not to be confused with the much more happening Shaanxi Province. Maggie, to say the least, was a bit under the weather, but we managed to make a break for it, and though we must return to this little town to collect our passports in a week, we skipped out to the town of Pingyao for a few days. Allow me to mention that Taiyuan is a dirty little town that we were all too happy to escape. The one thing of note that we did see were tattoo artists plying their trade on the side of the (extremely dusty and dirty) road. You could hear them yelling taaaattooooo, taaaattoooo so we went over to check it out and sure enough, there they were needle in (glove-less) hand, doing a tattoo right there in the open. Anyway, onto Pingyao, which is billed as the best preserved ancient walled Han Chinese city, and whatever else you want to call it, it was a wonderful place to lay up for a few days. We'd been in ancient walled towns before, and seen Buddhist temples before, so we just hung out and took things easy. We were in a really nice guesthouse with free internet, free DVD movies, good food and cheap laundry, so we were happy to lay around and relax. The town's tourist stuff is centered on only a few buildings, but once you get off the beaten path, it was like stepping back into time. Narrow little winding alleyways that led everywhere and nowhere, and while there wasn't much to see out there, it was nice to experience a relatively authentic ancient town experience by just wandering around and noticing the little things that are so easy passed by. With days to kill yet, we booked our onward tickets to Xi'an and headed north to the city of Datong, with the idea of staying there for a few days before return to Taiyuan (for the visas) and onward to Pingyao (and Xi'an.) Though Datong is a big place, I figured there wouldn't be too much going on, but we were wrong about that. As soon as we pulled up to the hotel, foreigners were thick on the ground. We knew strange things must have been afoot. We arrived relatively late, so it wasn't until the following day that we really got out and headed first to the Yungang Caves, which, according to the guidebook, no one leaves unwowed. Luckily, it was only a short bus ride out to the caves, which are basically huge grottoes carved into a cliff face. Inside each cave (and all over the front of the cliff face) are Buddhist carvings, which date back over 1500 years. There were about 20 or so caves that were open to public viewing, and a fair number that were not. Some of the little grotto/caves were heavily damaged from any number of reasons: weathering, vandalism, the coal mine right beside it, the Cultural Revolution, etc. Some grottoes were completely empty and/or defaced, but those that remained were quite impressive. The artwork was very ornate, and where weathering had allowed it, extremely colorful. Everything ranged from tiny little inch tall Buddhas to huge 50 foot tall Buddhas and everything in between. Some of the caves you could walk into, but most of them, you had to content yourself by peering over the fence. It was, however, the most impressive were the ones that you could walk into and view the ceiling, little nooks carved out of the wall for more Buddhas, bodhi trees and other beautiful designs. We stayed for a few hours ohhh-ing and ahhhh-ing our way around and then decided to hike a bit...

We heard that there was a section of the Great Wall close by so we struck out of find it. On the ride in, we could see bits and pieces of it along the way. An old guard tower on this hill, a little stretch of wall on that hill. We walked and walked but other than cruising through some mining towns, we didn't find much. We did see a huge earthen fort that was most likely part of the wall defences, but itself was walled off and we couldn't get to it.

We thought about heading out to a further temple, but it was late (and the car was too expensive) so we hopped back into town and headed to some local sites, specifically hitting up the "Nine-Dragon Screen," basically a highly colorful and ornamental piece of the ancient city walls that is covered with...you guessed it, nine dragons. From there, we just strolled around town, checking out the pedestrian market and whatnot. On the way back, we saw some more tattoo artists and stopped by to watch, only to figure out that these particular artists were only doing temporary tattoos (as compared to the all too real ones in Taiyuan.) Being temporary, we figured we'd get some ourselves, which was kind of dorky but fun all the same--Matt got the very masculine and bad-ass like dragon on his left inner forearm and I opted for an abstract celtic-esque wrap around the right wrist. You should have seen the crowd gather to see the application, it was like we were getting real tattoos--I think we helped the guys get some extra business. Anyway, the tattoos quickly faded, but it was a good day.

From Datong, it was on to Taiyaun for the night and onward to Xi'an for a few days. Just as a quick side-note: Taiyaun has become our least favorite place in China. After arriving there Thursday night so we could get our passports on Friday morning we hardly could have predicted the annoyance the city would cause. Up early Friday morning and after a quick breakfast of Nescaffe, biscuits and juice we headed down a few doors to the ATM (one we have used many times in other cities) and no go, the machine didn't accept our card. Ok, we try another. No luck. Ok, maybe one more. Still no luck. Ugh. After (no joke) 10 ATM tries at 4 different banks and 3 hours latter, we were beside ourselves, the passport office closed from 12-3:15pm and we had to get back to Pingyao by 7 to catch an 8pm train! We had half the money to pick up our two passports. We got mine out of hock and then were making our way to the last ditch effort: Bank of China 2km down the road (through full 2 km of dust, dirt and road construction, building construction...) of course the ATM did not work for either of us there. So, I took a number (201 was my lucky number and they were serving 150 of course) to try to get an advance on one of the credit cards and sat...at 12 the guard said 'our regular 10 windows will now close to only 3 windows...' @#%&! I was prepared to wait and did for a good 40 minutes before I got up (when only 165 was called) and tried the ATM again...SUCCESS! I couldn't believe it (I had to practically squeeze out a little girl in the attempt), but I felt, yes we were now in business. I walked out of the bank elated and headed the 2 km back to our hotel to get Matt...as I walked I guess I started letting my mind drift a bit and well all of a sudden I felt a small finger at my back, I turned and gasped as I saw a young kid quickly pull his hand away, with a cigarette half hanging out of his mouth with a smirk on his face and start off in the opposite direction. Bad news. I quickly looked down at my bag and saw the zipper had been pulled back halfway and opened it expecting my wallet to be gone; thank God, it was there, with the passport just out of hock, but it could have turned out bad. My complaining came to a slight stop and I thanked God and all the good karma for looking out for me at that moment. With our cash and bags in hand, we headed for the passport office, camped out and begged them to let us in early (they didn't), but we finally got in, Matt was first in line and we grabbed the goods and ran to the bus station, got a bus with 5 min. to spare and made it back to our little Pingyao in time for a shower (much needed) and food. We got our train to Xi'an and now, after a few days in Xi'an, its west into Xinjiang, but those stories are for another day.

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 4:41 PM