A bit of tiredness in the group

China is a huge country so some of the days are mostly driving. This morning we were heading for Chengde 525 kilometres away.

Part of the trip had nice scenery but not much of a view – haze or pollution? Unfortunately we think pollution, Beijing is not far away so it's probably why we didn't see much of the sky. The roads were good so we arrived at the hotel in the afternoon but not with enough time to visit the nearby Puning Temple. That'll be tomorrow.

Most people relaxed in the hotel afternoon. The cities start to look a bit the same and be less charming than in the West of China so people are less eager to go out and explore in the afternoon when we come to a new city. After about 40 days in China the ones who're staying on the truck to Mongolia are also starting to look forward to going to Mongolia for a change in scenery and to be more out in the nature again. Half of the people on the truck are going home when we reach Beijing and they're starting to look forward for that. 

After dinner ten of us went to a KTV bar to do a bit more karaoke before we leave China. But this time people seemed a bit tired and few actually wanted to sing, so we went home after and hour or so. Not like the 3-4 hours of singing like the two earlier KTV-evenings.

China has definitely been interesting but some things like cities, temples and food start to be a bit the same. Some of the sights have been amazing where as others have been so disappointing. As we also wrote yesterday the way the Chinese like to reconstruct all their sights doesn't really add much good to the sights. When they i.e. reconstruct Buddha statues, city walls or forts they just look all too new afterwards. Too much concrete, too nice looking somehow and with no passion of having the statues etc. look like they used to. The history is somehow lost and it could just as well be a brand new place not a 2000 year old cave place or temple.

Truck moving bee  hives

Yan, our Chinese guide, is tired and sleeping - again again

Back to the 80'ies

Quick lunch

Lunch stop exploration

Saying hi to the "Station man"

Carl and Malene on the roof of our hotel. The view = not great

Let it snow

Watching a bit of television. Haven't done that for the last 3 months

Our noisy neighbour

Text on t-shirt makes no sense at all

Interesting decoration at the men's toilet at a restaurant