National Day Holiday: Day 1 - A Long Day of Traveling

October 3, 2011.

The first time that I have been on a train in Mainland China.

It wasn't too bad.

Early that morning, we boarded a D train (aka the 'fast' train... but not the bullet train - which has had loads of negative publicity in China) and took it down past Shijiazhuang. The train ride was fairly pleasant. We headed south... all the way out of Hebei and into Henan, the province just south of ours.

In four hours, we were at Zhengzhou (郑州), the capital city of Henan... and a major transportation hub. We didn't stop there for long though. As soon as we got off, we started searching for a long distance bus station. The bus station is located in the central courtyard right next to the train station. We got our tickets..

...and waited.

We had to wait, I think, about 2 hours before our bus departed. That meant we crossed the courtyard with all of our luggage to invade and occupy the nearest KFC. Unfortunately, the KFC was already stuffed to the brim with other travelers.

When we finally got onto the bus, it was late into the afternoon. The ride to Dengfeng (登封) - our final destination - was about an hour and a half. With a map printed off our hostel's website, we got off at the bus stop and walked to the Deng Feng Shaolin Temple Traveler's Hostel (which had been recommended to us by the Lonely Planet guidebook for China).

Here's the map of Henan. You can see Zhengzhou. Dengfeng is a small city that wasn't marked on the map. The little purple square is Dengfeng:

And that's it for Day 1. What's next? The next day, we set off to watch some monks perform at the Shaolin Temple. We also climbed Songshan - one of the Five Sacred Mountains of Taoism. You will hear about how a little 5-year-old boy raced me to the very top of that mountain... and won, I am a little embarrassed to say. This first day though, exhausted from our travels, we climbed into our beds and crashed.