Patty here. It was our last full day in
Pingyao yesterday. We didn’t get out of our room until around noon because we
slept in and also gave our parentals a call and chatted for awhile. Being in
Pingyao made us miss home a lot.
Pingyao is an ancient city famous for its
medieval walls dating back to the 1300’s which today are still perfectly intact.
It reminded us a lot of Civita Di Bagnoreggio where Jeff and I got
engaged. Being in Pingyao is like going
back in time; cobble stone streets, no cars, only bicycles and a few mopeds
travel on the roads. Red lanterns hang from most buildings and at night the
streets exude old fashioned charm. The people inside the city walls thrive on
tourism, so naturally, many things are overpriced. A café mocha at our hostel in Beijeng cost us
10Y, in Pingyao it’s usually around 20-25Y. We did manage to find a cute little
restaurant that was recommended by our book that served solid meals at
reasonable prices so that was good. But, because it was so cold outside most of
the time, Jeff and I really kept to ourselves and stayed inside our room planning
ahead for our travels to South East Asia for the bulk of most days. It seems
our itinerary has changed quite a bit in fact. Here is the tentative map of
where we’re headed in consecutive order:
China: Xi’an, Kunming, Yuanyang, Yangshuo,
Xingping, Macau, Hong Kong
Vietnam: We will try to extend our visas
from about two weeks to three or four weeks.
India: We’ve decided to change up the order
in which to go through the countries because of our India visa. It may
unfortunately expire before we get much of a chance to see it, so we began
looking up costs of flights to India and back to southeast Asia. Turns out
flights aren’t that bad.
India back to Thailand and Cambodia, then
work our way south to Malaysia and Singapore.
From Singapore to Bali, Indonesia.
Indonesia to Australia, where we may spend
a week or two, but are coming here because we can get better priced tickets to
New Zealand from Australia.
Australia to New Zealand: we will stay two
to three weeks here, depending on timing and budget. From here we’ll fly back
to Australia and then probably to Thailand, then Thailand west. We haven’t
really figured it out past this point yet!
So there’s a bit of an update on where
we’ll be going down the line.
After chatting with our parents yesterday
morning, we ventured into town and grabbed breakfast at our hostel. Although it
was noon, we ordered French toast, eggs, and coffee. We have been craving food
from home so much! We would have done anything yesterday for a home-cooked
meal! Anyways, breakfast food was as close as it was gonna get in Pingyao. So
after eating, we headed to the walls of the city which are still in
impressively good condition for being seven hundred years old.
The neatest thing we saw were the preserved
tracks made by the carriages that transported people and goods through the town
back in the day. In this picture you can see the grooves in the road are the
dark wide rectangular areas inside the gates.
Maybe this is a
better pic:
Here is an
example of a horse-drawn cart that would have done its part to leave these
tracks. This type of cart would have only been used by the wealthiest
inhabitants and/or business people who travelled through the town.
Not sure if you can tell from the picture
but in ancient times the people used bronze or iron to wrap around the wagon
wheels which obviously caused a lot of friction between them and the road.
So after our little history lesson, we
headed back to our room to relax and get away from the cold. We ended up booking
another hostel and ironing out our plans for the rest of China. So it looks
like our China itinerary is set and not changing. Because we’re happy with our
plan for China, we have already brought out our South East Asia book and are
now planning our travels through this part of the globe. After reading just a
tid bit about all the countries in this area of the world it feels wrong
skipping out on places like Malaysia and Indonesia beyond Bali. And since
they’re soooo cheap to travel through, we’re going to do our best to get a
taste of some of these places as noted in our tentative itinerary above.
The power went out again briefly yesterday
again while we were in our room, so it seems to be a regular occurrence in
Pingyao. Luckily, it didn’t last long or interfere with our planning.
We headed to dinner at the cheaper
restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet called Dejuan. At this point we were
craving anything that did not have oil in it. Northern China tends to use a
little bit too much of a good thing. Unfortunately our prayers were not
answered, but again the food was still pretty good. We ordered shredded chicken
with onions and green peppers which was a local specialty and probably our best
choice. And we ordered spicy minced meat and tofu dish but the meat was no
where to be found… and our third choice was a chicken and coriander dish with
bountiful amounts of cilantro mixed in. Since our meal wasn’t overly satisfying
and we didn’t pay for any excursions that day, we decided to explore the world
of Chinese desserts so we ordered some fried bananas enveloped in a batter and
candied. It was interesting.
We decided the only way we would order it again, is
if it had chocolate syrup on top with walnuts and some vanilla ice cream on the
side.
That was our last day in Pingyao in a nut
shell.
Good night J
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