The first day we went to the the Longmen Caves. According to the Longmen Caves Research Institute, there are 2345 caves and niches, 2800 inscriptions, 43 pagodas and over 100,000 Buddhist images at the site. Many of the images were damaged by the Red Army and other anti-buddhist groups over the years. What remains is very impressive, the images range in size from about 2cm tall to about 40 metres. We spent most of the day looking around the site and then headed home.

That evening we went to a restaurant that is supposed to be famous for it’s beijing duck, very tasty it was too!

The next day we grabbed a tour bus to the Shaolin Monastery. We got to see a few uninteresting sights along the way but the final trip up to the complex was pretty cool. We saw a large training field with hundreds of Shaolin students doing their exercises. We walked though the Pagoda Forest, an area with over 240 tomb pagodas for eminent monks and abbots of the temple. The Temple itself was pretty impressive though by this point Quynh and I are starting to suffer temple fatiugue and find it hard to get too excited. The highlight of the day was the 30 minute martial arts demonstration, certainly wouldn’t pick a fight with any of these guys! One the 2 hour trip back from the Temple we watched Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, classic.

Tomorrow we have a 5am train to Xi’an so early to bed.