Quick Note: A tuk-tuk is in principle a cab, but isn't a car. It's a motorcycle, or sometimes a bicycle, towing a little trailer that the owner built up to be a small enclosure where the fare sits. It's usually meant for two people, although some have spots for 4. We always had to cram in, since we had four people, plus all our bags.
Once 6 PM came around, and Shaolin was closing up, we caught a 2 yuan bus to Dengfeng, the city nearest to Shaolin. Once there, we tried haggling for a price with a cab driver for a ride to Kaifeng, but they wouldn't do it for a reasonable amount of money. We were getting tired and hungry anyway, so we caught a cab to a hotel and booked a room. Getting a decently priced room for four foreigners is hard. They always jack up the prices for us, and even worse, only certain hotels are OK for foreigners to stay in. They won't let us stay in really cheap places, only the upscale ones, "for our safety".
Once that was all taken care of, we went out for dinner which was actually my breakfast. It was the first I had eaten in the day. As for why I hadn't eaten... well, see "Bowel Movements Continued...". We chowed down, and then explored Dengfeng for a while. I picked up a few Kung Fu movies, and a USB cable for my digital camera. I had forgotten to pack the USB cable with me, and I had filled my memory card in one day, so I was panicking a bit as to how I would get them off my camera so I could take pictures the next day. The cable only cost 5 yuan. That's under a buck. Staples sells them back home for 25 bucks. We walked around Dengfeng for a while longer, then went back to the hotel to sleep.
Early the next morning, we checked out (the receptionist was still asleep on the lobby couch, actually), and left for the bus station. Our cab driver the day before had promised he would meet us this morning at 6:30 to take us to the bus station, but fell through, to no one's amazement. We took a tuk-tuk to the bus station and made it with time to spare.
The bus ride was brutal. They had closed up all the windows, and relied on air conditioning, but there were too many people. The air just got thick and humid. It felt gross to be in there, so we kept opening the windows, preferring the horrible smog to the humid, sick-smelling air. One plus was that the bus had Shaolin movies playing, and they were quite good. I saw the end of one movie I never caught the name of but I do know it was done by the famous H Brothers, who are awesome Kung Fu directors. The second movie was The Banquet, which was good, but my understanding was limited by the tiny subtitles, and my broken Chinese. The plot was essentially the same of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but with cool sword fights and beheadings.
Once in Kaifeng, we headed out and saw quite a few things. Kaifeng is interesting because it's a very old city, but it never really industrialized like the other cities have over the last 20 years. It's rare to see such a large city without skyscrapers. The best I can describe it is that most large cities look like a very Chinese Toronto. This city was unique because it didn't really have any buildings over 4 stories high, but it was a big city. It also had city walls surrounding it.
So we saw the Iron Pagoda, which was cool, but surrounded in all sorts of pirated crap. It was an unusually tall pagoda, and wasn't actually coated in iron, but was covered in dark brown tiles that look like iron, hence the name. Chris actually climbed up the whole thing for an extra 10 yuan, but regretted it later. We do enough walking as is, I didn't need MORE fucking stairs to climb. Besides, the pollution was so bad that you wouldn't be able to see anything worthwhile anyway.
We also saw another pagoda, the Fan pagoda. This one was the oldest in Kaifeng, dating back to the 11th century, and was covered in little (also beheaded) Buddhas. What's cool about this one is that there was 108 different carvings of him in the pagoda. I took a lot of pictures of them, but there was no way I was going to get all of them. It wasn't nearly as tall as the other one, and was actually built in a manner reminiscient of Mayan temples. It was off in the back alleys of Kaifeng as well, so it was deep in a poor area, as if to hide to the pagoda. You never would've known it was there if you didn't ask to be sent there.
We killed a large portion of the day in a large market, like a giant Nan Chan Se back in Wuxi. It was largely all the same shit, so I wasn't terribly impressed, but the others had a great time clothes shopping. I feel like I'm missing out on a large part of the fun in China, because I don't like clothes shopping, and I can burn DVD's myself, so all the fun of cheap clothing and movies are lost on me. I'm sure I'll be all giddy once I finally have my suits made.
The final bit of fun in Kaifeng was the night market. This was really cool, and finally got me over my funk of being ripped off the day before. Finally, a market with different stuff in it! There were different forms of food everywhere, going from typical barbeque to screwed up barbeque (you could eat silk worms) to fully plucked ducks with their heads still attached, to random desserts. All sorts of really messed up foods. The off streets were filled with lots of souvenir like stuff, as well as more clothing, and everything. I picked up a few Buddha things, and an awesome Chairman Mao poster, and the best part was I didn't even have to haggle or feel ripped off. The prices were mostly set, with no budging on the price, but they were fair prices. I was ecstatic.
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