I woke up at 7am this morning and tried to go back to sleep,
I think I dozed for about an hour before the noise of building work and a very
loud drill started up, right outside the window (although we are on the 5th
floor, it’s still really loud) The smell of cigarettes hit me when I woke up,
it really is disgusting!
After we were showered and dressed we went downstairs to try
and sort out arranging a tour guide for the desert and grasslands. This was a
lot harder than it sounds because no one spoke English and I only know a very
small amount of Chinese, thank god for google translate! It took us an hour to
try and find out where we could find an English speaking tour guide and an
English map (the staff gave us a map that was all in Chinese). We decided to go
out and explore by ourselves and try to get our bearings of Hohhot. We had a
few places that we wanted to go to in the city but it took us an hour of
wandering in what we thought was the general direction before we could get a
taxi! My first impressions of Hohhot were not great, it was extremely busy, far
busier than Beijing and every taxi we saw had people in it. We finally got a
taxi and went to the Da zhao and xilitu zhao temple which was still in use by
monks and we even saw them chanting. I’m
not sure if we were allowed to take photos but we did anyway, there were lot’s
of gold statues with people kneeling in front of them with incense sticks. It
was so hot though, it was meant to be 22 degrees but it felt a lot hotter, we both got sunburn and were worn out by the
end of the day.
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