Datong is a dump

I am going to be honest and up front with this one… I was shit scared to go to Datong. We chose this destination because of the spectacular Hanging Temples and a massive 17 foot stone carved Buddha. While looking online for a place to stay we instead found cautionary tales from other travelers. One posted nothing but RUN! Others said that barely anyone speaks English and the city definitely wouldn’t win a beauty pageant.

My worst fear came true… the comments were right. When we stepped off the train we discovered that Datong is an industrial city ripe with pollution and smog. To me it smelled like a dirty welding shop, but ten times worse. Braeden disagreed with this comparison, but couldn’t really describe it. It was grey and it was ugly. But we didn’t come for the city. We quickly found an English speaking travel agent and he arranged transportation for us to the sites.

For 100 Yuan each we were whisked away in a private taxi to the Yungang Grottoes to see the ancient cave statues. This definitely makes the list of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Each cave had massive stone statues of Buddhas and other figures of worship. One room had a thousand little Buddhas carved into the four walls. The largest, and most spectacular, was the 17 foot statue. Others rivaled at 15 and 16 feet, but couldn’t even compare!

Next stop, the Hanging temples. The temples sat about 20 meters off the ground on the side of a mountain. The photo in our guidebook is what convinced us to take the trip to Datong. Unfortunately the admission was pretty steep for budget travelers like ourselves at 130 Yuan. That is about $20 Canadian. We judged it as a waste of money and took pictures from outside the fence!

The Grottoes rank number one and the Temple number three. What was number two you ask… the taxi ride! The scenery was a mixture of rocky hills, run down villages, and out of control driving. Our cabbie had his hand permanently positioned on the horn. There were absolutely no rules to the road: people were passing as traffic approached… in the oncoming lane! I thought we were going to have a head on collision with a semi-truck at one point. Another close call- our driver almost hit a motorized scooter carrying five, yes FIVE people! And none, including the small children, wore helmets. Despite the craziness, I oddly felt safe and even dozed off.

We got dropped off downtown and hated what we saw. The streets were dirty or ripped up and there were large mounds of dirt all over. We were constantly stared at and had idea what to do with ourselves. Since we had about 8 hours to kill before our train left, we decided to sit in McDonalds drinking coffee for a while. But that got old fast. Lucky for us a Chinese girl started talking to us to practice her English and she took us to a restaurant! We went to the train station early because we figured we could relax, read, and write. Instead we were stared at even more. Braeden went to the bathroom and left me alone for about five minutes. In that short amount of time a group of men moved into the seats around me. They just all stared and tried to speak to me in Chinese. When Brae returned they continued to stare and bother both of us. I was so creeped out I got up and went to the bathroom. At the sink I met an English speaking Chinese girl who came and sat with me. She translated what the men were saying and it was even creepier. They kept pointing at our bags and said that Canadians are rich. I thought they were going to rob me on the train so I slept with my pack under my feet.

Seventeen hours in Datong was more than enough.