Oh Busdriver where are you now?

Yes, off to an early morning start -was woken at 5.30 to have a leisurely cup of tea with an American guy I met in Beijing who seems to be following my path. He arrived at the guest house as I was leaving. My first experience with the Chinese bus service wasn't as pleasurable as my train experience. The bus doesn't actually pull into Pin Yao - old preserved town, so I'm bundled into a cab and driven to the freeway where I am to wait for the bus and then flag it down. The freeway also seems to be a morning hot spot for the Chinese to exercise. This proved entertaining as I had 1 guy jumping up and down continuously whilst focusing on a small bush?! Yes, that's what I thought. As the traffic is quite sporadic at this time of the morning, some of them even walk whilst stretching on the actual freeway. Anyway, the bus arrives, pulls over and I clamber on board. Simple so far. Suddenly it seems that the door won't shut so the next 20 mins is spent with the bus driver and co banging at the mechanisms with hammers and tightening screws etc. Once they are satisfied that they've fixed the problem we head off. The scenery is quite incredible. I view this through the 2 big cracks in the windscreen. We pass miles and miles fields and scatterings of cave dwellings. Kind of like Goreme in Turkey. Suddenly, our bus passes a broken down bus on the other side of the freeway from the same transport company. What eventuates is that all the passengers on my bus (all 4 of us) are kicked off the bus with our luggage whilst the bus drives away to find a turn off to get on the other side to pick up the passengers from the other bus. Phew! Anyway, so here I am sitting on the side of the road waiting for another bus that is heading to Xian to stop for us. Many buses pass but they don't seem to be heading to our destination. Finally after about an hour into waiting, like a mirage, a blue shit heap appears in the horizon. The bus pulls over and there is some communication with the driver and the conductor of our bus. Money is exchanged and I'm once again bundled onto a bus. This bus is full to the brim. People are actually standing in the aisle. Great! The trip will take about another 4 hours from this point. Not to worry, I am escorted to the dodgey seat next to the driver so I have a birdseye view of the traffic he is about to crash into and I get the horn right in my ear for the remainder of the journey. Anyway, I made it...

Ping Yao

Spent another day wandering round this beautiful town. It is such an incredible place. You are left to your devices as no one hassles you. There is such a mix of old and new. In the sense that there is a lot of preserved sights but there is also a lot of dilapidation. At times I have a feeling that I could be in the desert of Morocco or at least somewhere in the Middle East due to the sandstone colours of the surrounding city wall and the roof tops. It's dusty too and windy. It really is the cold here. Looked at the weather for the closest major town to where I am and it got down to -10 degrees yesterday! See, I wasn't just moaning. What this means is that I can't really venture west anymore. I am not physically equipped for such temperature. I feel that I might be catching a cold (moaning). Tomorrow I will head south - another early bus ride at 6am, to the city of Xian.

The Proposition

Disappointedly I missed out on filing past Mao with the hoards. It wasn't meant to be. Damn congress. I visited the Summer Palace - where past royals would escape the summer heat in the Forbidden city. This was for the most part under reconstruction. The city is preparing itself for the games so it seems many touro sites are scaffolded. I'm good at doing scaffolding tours. Ie Athens before the games too..

I knew that it would be cold in the north but I hadn't expected it to snow. Yes, there I was wondering around this fantastic antique / flea market about the size of the Queen Vic markets looking at the communist propaganda when the snow began to fall, slowly at first and then much heavier (people were cheering!). The market was fantastic. I now own an original Chairman Mao clock in a spaceage red. The Communist children on the face of the clock wave in unison to the ticking. I also haggled for some Commi prints. 1 original and 3 replicas. I was trying to explain to the man that I wanted an original print so I took out my mandarin phrase book and attempted to ask which print was Original "kai-twor sing"? He looked at me blankly as my pronunciation was so bad so I pointed to my dictionary. The old man was peering over at my shoulder at my open book, unbeknownst to me I was pointing to the word immediately above original, which was orgasm.... Well that had the old fella blushing... I'm not sure if he's had that haggle before!

Left Beijing last night. I must say that my first Chinese train experience was a good one. I had one of those fantastic hard sleepers. They provide the pillow and doona which was one of my concerns as I have only a sheet and thought I may freeze to death. The journey took 12 hours and I was woken at 5.30am to get ready to disembark. Very organised - especially as I'd been advised that I would be reaching my destination at 10.30am.

So here I am, in this beautiful township of Pingyao. It is surrounded by a 6km Ming Dynasty wall and has the charm of other walled towns ie Jaisailmer in India and Sarlet in France. It is exactly what you would imagine China to be. The architecture is incredible as the entire town was Unesco preserved in 2002. There is something reassuring about wandering around cobblestone paths.