XingCheng

When we finally arrived in XingCheng we head straight off to find the hostel we have chosen in the Lonely Planet. However it seems that non Chinese people cant stay in budget hotels or hostels here and we are greeted with 'no room'... no room my arse.Apparently this is highlighted in the Lonely Planet as being for our safety however the only vibe we got from locals is shock to see us in the city nothing sinister.So for all you budget hotels in London please refuse the next Chinese person who darkens your door and send them to the Hilton or Ritz....JOKE of course. We give up and head to a 3* establishment. We faff around pretending the price is too high and get 10GBP knocked off the price. So the room is lovely...bathtub!!!sofa and big t.v all for 10GBP a night...but i'm reminded not to get used to this. In the morning we check out and head off to see the old city wall. The wall was built in 1430 and is 3274m long and 8.5m high and was used to protect the city during the Ming dynasty.Its pretty disappointing to be honest and Charlie reminds me of my new nickname (Karl). Hey im just honest.

 

Next we head to The Confucius Temple. It was built in 1430 and covered 16800 square meters making it the biggest Confucius Temple in Liaoning and the oldest one in the three provinces of northeast China. There were some pretty pictures to be had in here but again it wasnt that amazing. Even Charlie said he was mildly disappointed lol. 

 

On the way back we head into a market with lots of food stalls. Charlie tucks into the hearts of some animal BBQ'd (im sure neither of us want to know which animal) as is the case with my non discript meat on a stick....plus some corn on the cob...all of less than 1 GBP. I also purchase some proper authentic green tea for my mum and we have a short scout for a China Football shirt for Charlie (non successful) and head back to the hotel to collect our backpacks stopping on the way for an ice cream to warm up (weird i know) but China has no bar scene that we have seen yet so we cant pop in for a drink (me a coffee...Charlie a beer). Next stop the train station for our train back to Beijing....the next five days are going to be jam packed but im looking forward to it!!