Datong (Shanxi province) and Xi'an (Shaanxi province)

Datong city is pretty rubbish so we only stayed there 2 nights. We went on a tour of the Yungang Caves and the Hanging Monastery. The caves were great, there is about 21 of them built into a large section of cliff face with over 51,000 Buddha statues carved out of the rock inside. They took 40,000 people 64 years in the 5th Century to build it. The biggest statue was 17 meters high, but we still have to see the world's tallest seated buddha in Sichuan province at 71 meters high.

Then we saw the Hanging Monastery. It was built on the cliff face due to the vally always

flooding and destroying houses. So the monks had to absail down the cliff with what climbing equipment they had then in the 5th Century. It was home to Buddhist, Taoist and Confusionist

monks because they thought that with the power of 3 religions they could control the floods below.

After the sights we had to wait another day to catch a coach to Xi'an in the next province. The journey was 15 hours, but it was at night and it was full of beds not seats. The beds wern't exactly spacious, but they did the job to pass the time. Today after getting here at 6am we went to see the Terracotta Warriors. 6,000 pot men all with individual faces in what looked like to be an aircraft hanger was quite the sight. We also met a Japanese guy in the dorm in Datong so he came along to Xi'an so we all went to the Terracotta Warriors.