Thursday 24 May We arrived in Jiayuguan city, a Chinese frontier town with only three things going for it and that is the great Wall attractions. The great Wall was started in the seventh century BC and was worked on for years. We visited the large Fort of the same name, part of the great Wall fortifications, then Hanging Great Wall and the first beacon tower.
Friday 25 May Today we drove to a 60 km to the city of Zhangye which has an extremely large sleeping Buddha, evidently the largest indoor one in China, I'm really looking forward to getting into some small village which is far more interesting than this tourist route.
I discovered that the Bank of China is the only bankamat that accept the National bank Cashcards all the others say, referring your card to the issuer, which made me think that all been stopped, so I went online and found that they had sent me a message through the online message system, this resulted in me making a phone call to New Zealand and seven minutes she later found out that was just a credit card that had been stopped, why they couldn't have sent me an e-mail telling me there was a message waiting I've no idea, perhaps it is too high-tech them!
We have been checked into a hotel car park for the night at 50 Yuan per vehicle, is right in the centre of the city so that was good value. We paid a total Toll of 70 Yuan today. Helanshan, the trip today was for km and we drove through the mountains starting off at about m and climbing most of the day, we realise we are at m when we started seeing yaks, and were soon to reach our first pass at just under m and then we drove on at an elevation of about m passing a toll booth at this elevation and it was on to another pass at just under m, and then down to metres again, it was interesting the amount of agriculture that was going on at this elevation.
As we drove along this plateau between the two passes we saw dozens of tents all with their motor vehicles, be it motorbikes, motorbike trucks or even cars parked alongside their tents, evidently it is the season for collecting some Chinese herb which sells for Yuan an ounce or similar good return.
