My Month Long Travels Part 5

  Wow, it is so much more difficult keeping a blog updated when traveling. I am currently in South Korea but I am going to update you on what happened between Xi'an and now, which is quite a bit.

  I left my friends (they headed back to Changzhou) and got on another slow train for Luoyang, which is a smallish city but is famous for several locations that I wanted to see. The train was rather full but I had made sure that I reserved a sitting seat. If I had to I could do the standing ticket again but I decided from previous experiences that it should be avoided if possible.

  This is a picture below is of the landscape. It was quite difficult to get a good picture on the train, the windows were rather dirty however the entire land kinda all looked like this, brown and dead looking, but had really neat mountains. 

  On every slow train the tables have a tray for putting trash and during the journey an employee comes around and empties them. This works for making sure the train is kept clean, especially when people eat items such a sunflower seeds which have the possibility to make large a mess. 

  This is the hostel that I stayed at. When I arrived it was round 8:00pm and dark so I ended up taking a taxi to a rather abandoned looking area. It looked nice, however the bathroom had a little bit to be desired. In a random note, Asian hostels you usually get plastic house slippers to wear around and into the bathroom, I do not know if this is the same in western hostels.

  This is what is looks from the outside, it is the entrance surrounded by brick.

  The next morning I got up 'early' and headed to the long-distances bus station to take it to the Shaolin Temple that is quite a few miles outside of Luoyang. I was very impressed with myself for acquiring my ticket for several reasons. I had never bought a long distance bus ticket or even gone into a station, plus I could still not really speak Chinese. I am able to speak and recognize a few essential but other then that I rely on situations and body language. I bought the ticket and then had people point to the bus I was to get on. The driver looked at my ticket and pointed to his bus. I got on and hoped that I would arrived at the correct destination. The bus actually stopped off at the site on its way to another city.

 This is the inside of the bus. I had the farthest back seat that was actually a bench that went across the back so I was squished back in a corner with a family on the other side of me. 

  Some pictures I took on the way to the site. 

  I took this picture during the crazy, annoying wait. To get to the site a rather steep curvy hill was to be driven up, however some cars decided to get stuck or went to fast and slide. This caused a two hour wait for others to get around. I am not really sure exactly what happened since we were further back but right before we continued our journey I saw a car in the middle of the road being pushed out of the way. It did not look like something that would cause a two hour back up. I was ready to leave the bus and was rather annoyed (also glad that I decided to bring my book along that day). Nothing seems worse then being in a confined spaced with many people then being in a vehicle that should be moving but is not in a confining space with many people. 

  The Shaolin Temple is considered the cradle of Chinese Zen Buddhism and specific type of martial arts such as Shaolin Cudgel. The martial arts was one of the reasons I wanted to see it. After the bus went through the really long wait it was only about 15 minute and we were there. The bus stopped and someone said something to everyone in Chinese. I figured out that this was were I was to get off, so I took my bag and exited the bus, the family and myself were the only ones leave the bus. I then went exploring the site. 

  This was an actual training ground where individuals learned about the art so they had training areas and buildings for studying the art. They had performance of the martial art and my timing was perfect to see such a performance. They did many flips as well as stances and breaking strips of metal on their heads. It was really neat to see. Near the end of the show they picked three young guys out of the crowd and had them come to the stage and copy what the students/performers were doing. They say you can tell someone who is really good at their job or sport because they make it look so easy. Well these performers did this really well, the young men struggled quite a bit at copying the moves. There was quite a bit of laughing that occurred from the audience. You can enjoy people doing silly things in any language.

  This was the Shaolin Temple. 

  I had to take a picture of this guy.

  This was one thing I really wanted to see and is called the Pagoda Forest. As I mentioned in an earlier post a Pagoda is erected as a tombstone for a Buddhist monk. That technically makes this forest a Buddhist monk graveyard. The larger the tombstone the more important the monk. 

  After seeing the beauty of the snow and the martial arts I was ready to head home, however I had not prepared enough and did not really know how to get back to the hostel. I had thought that the bus going back to Luoyang just stopped by and you could get on but I was apparently wrong. I was kinda stuck and unsure what to do. It was near freezing outside and going to get dark in the next few hours. It was too far to walk back and would truly have been a stupid idea. However, as in all touristy spots, there is always a taxi driver to the rescue but for a substantial price. So, all in all I paid 19 yuan for a trip to the Temple and 200 yuan for a trip back. I was a little annoyed with myself for not having prepared, but life happens. Below are pictures I took out of a not as dirty taxi window on the way back.