July 8th, 2006
10:30pm
Right now I'm in Luoyang, Henan Province. We arrived at about 8 this morning after a 12 hour train ride from Beijing. We got off the train and went to a temple called White Horse Temple, which was the first Buddhist temple in China, approx. 2000 years old. After that we came to our hotel and had breakfast, then went to non-other than THE Shaolin Temple.
Of course we saw plenty of kung-fu warrior monks and got to see a show of them demonstrating stuff. After that we came and had dinner at some restaurant in Luoyang that was pretty good. Came back to the hotel, finally got to shower (we all needed one really bad). After that, Dan, Carson and I walked around Luoyang, had a second dinner, talked to people. Granted we have only been here for one day, all of us agree that we really like Luoyang. I think i like it the most. The people here are so friendly and polite, much friendlier than in Beijing.
The place is much smaller. I guess Luoyang and the surrounding area has about 6 million people, but Luoyang proper really only has about 1.5 million people. I don't know what it is about this place, but I instantly took to it. Ok, well I'm exhausted after so much travelling so I'm going to get some rest.
