06 May: Zhongwei

Our train got into Zhongwei this morning at about 09h45 and we walked to our hotel, Hua Ming. Luckily we could get into our rooms and have a shower before heading out for a walk around the area and some lunch.

We ended our walk outside the Gao Temple, which we all wanted to visit because we'd read that they've built a house of horrors in an old bomb shelter under the temple! The Temple itself was gorgeous and worth the visit regardless. You get to climb up into the higher roof levels and they have such great painted stories all around.



I far preferred it the Lama Temple in Beijing. And then we got to the house of horrors bit which was *most* peculiar. Quite dark with lights and sounds that went off on a sensor. And it was quite cold underground. Mostly it was all just these weird kinds of torture scenes in luminescent colours!

And then, just when we got back to the hotel for a little relax, we bumped into our Tour Leader who was about to head off on a walk to the Yellow River. So we went along. It was *far*. Out of the area of town we'd previously walked thru, to an area that looked much newer. As with all of China we've seen so far, loads of new billion storey apartments blocks are all going up at once. The construction here is on a scale like I've never seen before!

The Yellow River really was not that impressive at all. We decided to get something to eat at the local market on our way home, but they weren't yet ready for the dinner crowd. We did have some nice dumplings with pork filling tho. And then we headed back to the hotel for a bit of a rest. Actually, on the way back we stopped and bought some more street-food: like a weird sweet batter thing they were cooking. Not too bad. And to ensure we got our dose of surreal for the day, we also saw a guy with 3 monkeys on a leash walking down the road past us!

Then we had about an hour's relax before heading off to dinner and a birthday drink for our Tour Leader (it was his 30th today!). He taught us a dice game, called Liar's Dice, too. Good fun.