On the third day, I decided it was the right time to go to Luoyang. The name “Luoyang” is beautiful despite my friend Scott told me how horrible that city was beforehand. I got up really early that day, went getting my breakfast in the small “market” right outside the campus, you could get everything there, clothes, fruits, snacks, water, Cantonese food, northern Chinese food and of course accessories too. I even got my good pair of pinky gloves as well as my hat there in a little shop. Everything was so cheap (because they are all targeted at poor students?)! I got 2 flour cakes for just 2 Yuan! Very oily… but yummy!!
This was a long story, but I went to this wrong shabby hostel when I was in Luoyang. On my way to that hostel, I saw those kids playing with ice on the floor (you see how cold it was then?!), the picture wasn’t really good, but I could understand their excitement because the snow was late this year…. I mean, last year.
Anyway, so I went to this scary and dirty hostel, paid but only realised later on that I went to the wrong hostel. At first I was too stubborn (and snobbish) to change to this other clean, warm hostel, because I paid for the night already, but Cindy and her boyfriend insisted that I should change after I told them about the hostel, haha, it really was a bad hostel, I guarantee! In the evening I went back to the hostel and made up a story about staying with some friend in Luoyang, but the old hag just couldn’t give me a cent back. My childish revenge was to steal the cheap lock and didn’t flush the toilet when I left for the new hostel. HAHAHA. That was how I met my Irish and Scottish friends :)
Anyway, after putting down my things (actually just a towel) in the shabby hostel, I went to the famous White Horse Temple (ba ma si) alone. The ticket selling guy spent the whole 5 minutes staring at me, giving me this mean look which almost made me tell him I wasn’t the real student card holder, in the end he let me go of course. I was so glad it was winter and I was wearing a hat and everything! Heh, after all I’m the lucky bastard!
There was this Hongkong tourists group (haha, I didn’t breathe any Cantonese when the tour guide was explaining, I was pretending to hang around and didn’t understand a darn thing :p) and I followed them for a while to learn the history about this famous temple :D It felt so great upon hearing Cantonese! It was really funny how I couldn’t understand what people were saying to me even when they were speaking Mandarin, most of the Zhengzhou people speak really accented Mandarin. Anyway, after 15 minutes the group went sparse and I was as aimless as before.
The monk in the picture was very nice and helpful! He talked to me (haha I was trying to take a nice shot of him clearing up the burnt incent sticks, he probably found that quite annoying!) and pointed me directions :D It’s all about luck, my friend!
It always makes me laugh to see how Chinese are trying so hard to make those touristic spots looking as nice as possible but always fail to do so. See that big sunbrella? Why would they put a sunbrella right outside the temple? What was the use of that? Let me know if you know :)
This is the famous White Horse Temple. Traditional Chinese characters rule!
The monk told me to have a look at this Indian style under construction temple. I saw 2 Greek (I guess?) and 2 Chinese guys, they followed me and went to see this temple. I grabbed my chance and asked one guy to take my picture. He asked if I was from Guangdong, I said yes, he said I’ve got the look and he worked in Guangdong for a while so he could tell. I don’t know if I was looking like a southerner but it’s interesting how people could just look at you and tell where you’re from.
There was no one but me… luckily the sky was bright and the place wasn’t scary… I also walked to see the monks’ living dorms. It was very simple and one old monk stopped me from getting too close by saying there wasn’t much to see. I believed him and it was getting late.
Later that night, as I wrote before, I changed a hostel and befriended one Irish guy named Shane and one Scottish called Kyle (they were super funny blokes) :) Within half an hour they named me “The Hong Kong Bitch”, because I couldn’t hold it and said Shane’s feet stunk, haha, but they really were! It worried Cindy sick after I told her I was sharing a room with 2 foreigners, hehehe…
The next day we travelled together to see Luoyang.
