As soon as I woke up, I rushed to the bus station so I can make a trip over to the Shaolin Temple. I headed for the official ticket office, got a ticket, but then people started trying to get me to follow them. I wanted to play it safe, so I went through the official station and found the good bus. But it seems I just missed the last bus, so I had a long wait for the next one. Some people tell me to get off the bus, make me cross the road and have been board a bus doing a tour there. It seemed a little slower than the official bus, but maybe it worked out the same.
When I got inside the Shaolin Temple area, I noticed maybe 1000 students out in the open doing exercises and training to fight. Then I saw a martial arts show for the tourists on a stage with music. A lot of little kids in this one because they aren’t afraid to do the dangerous things.
Then it was the temple itself. The signs explained how many of the buildings have been rebuilt recently. Unlike other places, I could read some of the stele which appeared in the courtyards. Some was from visitors from America and it shows how world famous the place is.
Next I visited Bodhidharma’s cave, I had to climb one of the nearby peaks of Mt. Song (one of the five famous mountains in China) to get there. On the way up the stairs an amazing thing happened, someone passed me and I could got keep up with him! It was a young Shaolin monk training. This was first time someone was faster at climbing a mountain than me. After a while he was coming back down. He was not walking, but crawling on his hands and feet!