From the place I got to yesterday, I stood by the road for a while trying to flag down a car. After about half an hour a van, that had already passed me, turned around to pick me up. They were farmers and we had a nice talk while heading for Fugu on a bumpy road. Fugu lies by the Yellow River on the border to Shanxi which is the province I am about to enter.

I was hoping to catch a bus to Datong, but heard that there was no bus, so had to wait until today. When I got to the bus station at seven in the morning I was disappointed for two reasons. Firstly the bus wouldn’t start which delayed us for almost an hour. Secondly – it was a van, not a bus. That meant it would be a bumpy ride. But there were two other surprises that were almost as bad. The van had absolutely NO heating, so we were all freezing cold the entire six hours. And finally, it was full of Chinese men puffing their cigarettes. In some buses there is a ‘No Smoking’ sign, and I love to play the policeman enforcing this sign that many ignore, but this bus didn’t have the sticker. At times it seemed they were smoking to keep warm, because there were always at least two smokers at it. Sometimes there were 5-6 puffers at the same time. I felt like standing up and holding a presentation on smoking and it’s nasty side effects. Not to speak of passive smoking! Because of the lack of heating, nobody opened windows to get the smoke out because it was so cold… I decided at the end of the trip that I’ll return on the train.

Aaaaanyway – when we got to Datong, I went to the hotel where I had stored some items, and took a long hot bath, ate lots of good food and drank two and a half litres of Ice Tea.

Tomorrow I will work on more pictures for the website, back up the ones I have taken the last two weeks, wash all my dirty clothes and thoughts… And I will work on the Chinese website which I am really looking forward to.