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I checked out of my hotel and tried to get a train to Zhengzhou, but the person said a lot of things in Chinese and it didn’t seem like it would work out. I tried a bus instead.

The bus arrived far from the center of the city, so I needed to find another bus to get me to the train station area. The first bus I tried took me the wrong way, so I got off and then got on the right one. I have a friend of a friend who lives in this city who was able to help me too, thankfully.

I arrived and found a cheap guesthouse. I think it is one that is illegal for foreigners to stay in, but I wouldn’t get in trouble for that, only the owner would. Only 20 yuan for a four bed dorm room, but I was the only one in there. It was cold and next to the railroad, but good enough.

At the train station I was having a tough time and the pressure of so many Chinese people behind me as I tried to decide what ticket to buy next. I finally had to just walk out of line and come back later.

I went to the Henan Provincial Museum today, which was free. There were many students there who greeted me. In the lobby the crowd began to grow and grow until 20 or 30 students were surrounding me, joined by their teacher, asking me questions to practice their English and asking my phone number and e-mail.

Later I met with the friend and her boyfriend. We had some Chinese food for dinner, including fish. Actually they ordered only the fish head, but it was from a huge fish and it was pretty good.

My train was scheduled to arrive at 3:42AM. In the mean time, I had a seat next to a very rude Chinese man. He drank a lot of tea and he couldn’t sleep, so while everyone else was trying to sleep he was walking around, talking to people, and trying to sleep himself. He would put his legs everywhere in strange positions, on the seat, the table, pressing against me. It wasn’t until 2AM that he slept a little bit and then I could try to sleep too.

I got off the train in the city of Zhengzhou, but I wasn’t sure about staying here. I wanted to get to the city of Kaifeng. First I tried the bus station, they said no buses. Then I tried the train station, which had a train at 4:52AM. At this point I was very tired after walking up and down that mountain and then not really getting any sleep afterwards.

When I arrive in Kaifeng, the first buses were starting at 6:00AM and after some breakfast I got on a bus that arrived near the recommended hotel in my book. This hotel was pretty bad, but at least I had a place to rest.

Later in the day I wanted to go visit the Kaifeng Museum, but when I got there it was closed (it is Monday). I walked more and saw some of the city walls. They are rebuilding some parts. After walking more, I did visit the Temple of the Chief Minister. I rested the rest of the day.

The bus dropped me off on the street at 4:30AM. The streets were empty and no taxis. I was on my own. The bus driver said walk one direction, but I wanted to know where I was so I opened up my computer where I had Google Earth cached. I had just crossed a river, so I was able to match that up and get my location. Next for my destination, I had a Chinese map of the area since I don’t have any English map (even in my guidebook), but I couldn’t get it to match up until now. I found out the Chinese map reversed the North-South directions.

I walked to the entrance of the mountain (photos), but it didn’t actually open until 6:30AM. Today was an expensive day since the entrance fees and even a fee to check my luggage added up to $33. And this was the minimum, I could have done the cable car too.

After getting on the bus, I noticed the driver was handing out vomit bags to motion sick Chinese passengers. At the end of the bus, I noticed a couple of the passengers throw their used bag over the side of the mountain. I also noticed I took the wrong bus. I took the one to the cable car when I wanted to walk. It took a long time to get a bus to get me in the right direction.

Finally at about 10:00AM I got to the path to start climbing the mountain. It is so foggy at this mountain that stairs disappear into the mists when you look up or down. It was a pretty hard walk up, but I made it and saw the gilded hall at the peak of the mountain.

After finishing everything, I walked to the bus station. I didn’t actually know where it was, but I saw some buses and just followed them. The bus station was the smallest one I’ve seen in China. There was no ticket office and the station seemed to be run by three women knitting in the lobby. Finally they got me on a bus to Xiangfan, one of the larger towns in the area.

In Xiangfan, I wanted to take a train. I didn’t have any map of this city, but I think I saw the train station before the bus stopped. After running away from some people, I got to the train station and got my ticket for my night train.

This morning I visited the Longmen Grottoes. Thousands of caves and carvings are here and it is an important historical site. It it similar to what I saw in Shanxi province last month. Longmen picks up where Yungang left off since the capital of China moved.

Next I visited the grave site of Guan Yu, a famous person in Chinese literature and history. The sign says only his head was buried here.

Afterwards I walked through a market nearby. I noticed a store selling fake money to be burned for dead relatives. It included some fake 100 US Dollar bills, which was interesting.

Later in the day, I took a sleeper bus to my next destination, Mt. Wudang.

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!

Time to go visit some of the places I missed last time I was in China. I took an overnight train south to Henan Province from Beijing. I arrived in the city of Luoyang. At one time it was the capital of China and there is a lot of old history here.

Today I visited the White Horse Temple, which was founded almost 2000 years ago. All day I’ve been making sure not to trust anyone and just be careful. A friend warned me that people from this province tend to cheat you a lot.

One thing I’ve noticed in China is the lack of headphones when listening to music. People here like to listen to music from their phone’s speaker. Even if other people are trying to sleep, it is still ok to max your phone’s volume.

I got to see the Olympic stadiums finally. I took the new Olympic subway line to the last stop, which was near a park. This new park is the largest in Beijing and it looked like I needed all day to walk around it, so I just walked in a small area.

I walked south across a couple roads and then noticed some stairs going down into the ground. They were not connected to any sidewalk, so it made me more interested so I took a look. I expected to go down to a locked door. Instead through an open door at the bottom I saw a tunnel which held a three lane road and no traffic to be seen. A little unusual since I checked Google Maps and it doesn’t show up on there. It made me wonder if this could be connected to some secret government and military network of roads. The stairs I wandered down was an emergency exit and I heard alarms sounding inside the tunnel which goes east-west beneath the Olympic park.

I found out what happens when you don’t pay for your electricity in Beijing: it gets turned off. Right away. All electricity here is purchased with pre-paid cards which plug into your electric meter. The same goes for mobile phones, everyone I know uses pre-paid cards. Not everyone has a credit card too. It is interesting to see how all of this forces people to save more money here compared to the US where borrowing is normal for everything.

I know some Pilipino teachers at an English school in this city an hour outside of Beijing. They cooked some Pilipino food for me, which was nice since I haven’t visited the Philippines. I also got to see karaoke (or KTV as it is called in China) for the first time in China. They have huge rooms here I noticed, enough to fit 15-20 people. It was ok, just loud.

I also got to see some apartments since these teachers were thinking about moving out of their school dormitory. Not including utilities, you can rent a one bedroom apartment for 800 yuan ($117) or a 2 bedroom apartment for 1100 yuan ($161) per month. The second apartment comes furnished with beds, couches, refrigerator, and a LCD TV.

The owners of the school asked if I’d like to teach English, but I wasn’t too interested. The school is dirty and I don’t like how they teach here, not too great of a school.

I was going to make one more trip to Beijing. According to the information in my hostel, there is one bus going to Beijing leaving at 7:20AM. I got up an hour before and was ready to go until I saw I was locked inside the hostel. I had to wait until 7:00AM when they officially opened, so then I could check out.

I decided to walk to the bus station since I don’t want to deal with any drivers. I knew it was going to be close, but I was hoping the bus wouldn’t leave exactly on time. It was 7:23AM when I asked for the ticket and they said the next bus was at 11:30AM. I missed it.

I decided to go back to the nearest big city of Ji’nan. Once I reached there I found a bus to Beijing. I almost missed this one too, it was backing up and about to leave, but I ran out and caught it. I arrived in Beijing after 4:00PM.

I decided it would be a good time to visit that one English school since they invited me for Karaoke before. It was a pain to get there however. The bus station I was dropped off at was not near any subway station, so I had to guess on the buses. I ended up taking 4 different buses until finding the right one, and in the end I missed my stop. After 7:00PM I finally reached my destination in the suburbs of Beijing.

After an early wakeup, I took the high-speed “D” train to Ji’nan. I’ve been reading about the plans for high-speed rail in China and they want to create the largest network of this type in the world. So far, Qingdao is one of the few cities that is connected.

My destination was Qufu, the hometown of Confucius who lived 2500 years ago. It proved difficult to get there today. The first part was easy, using the high-speed rail to get to the nearest big city of Ji’nan. Next I had to take a bus. At the ticket counter they were saying something I didn’t understand when I tried to buy the ticket. It didn’t sound too good. And then the bus didn’t have the name Qufu on it, but a different city, so not a good sign. I took it anyway, I didn’t have much choice.

The bus dropped me off on the side of the road and there was a sign that said 5km to Qufu. Some other Chinese people got off the bus and headed into various taxis and vehicles. No one offered to help me or offered to share a ride. After they all left, I was there alone. One driver agreed to drive to where I wanted for an inflated price. Problem is, there are about three places with the similar name, he stopped at the nearest one, I wanted the farthest one. I had enough, and decided to walk the last 2km with all my bags. My book warned about all the people like this in the town.

Finally, I made it into town, walked past a hostel that looked good. I visited the Confucius Temple which had a steep entrance fee of $13, which I can’t say was worth it. Outside of that there are drivers and merchants all trying to get my attention. The town is such a tourist trap, in my opinion. I was kind of angry, so I just bought some instant noodles and stayed in the hostel the rest of the night.