Kaifeng

We arrived in Kaifeng at about 6pm, we jumped off the train, put our bags on our back and walked to the exit, i heard the train starting to pull away and dropped my bags in a sudden thought of 'oh fuck!'. I then proceeded with this thought in my head with shouting out over and over 'shit, shit, fuck'. Tom stopped and asked what was wrong, i didnt even bother checking my bags, i was 100% certain of it, he asked again 'whats the matter'. I said probably the worst words a person in the middle of china can say......'ive left my wallet on the train'. Not just money, it had my passport, insurance card, BOTH of my debit cards and all of my money, to put it blunty, i was fucked.

The train was already picking up speed, i didnt even bother turning around, there was a police station at the train station, a man came out and with the use of hand action and toms wallet we got the message across.

He told us to sit down and he got on the phone, i was running through my head how on earth i would go about getting another passport, debit cards etc, for some reason i was quite certain i was going to get it back, i guess its was the goodwill of the Chinese people that i had encountered so far that led me to this thought.

A few more train operators came into the room and helped us carry our luggage into there office, by this time i was on the phone to my parents to let them know just incase i have to cancel all my cards and how long i should wait before i do it.

Luckily there was one person who talked english who worked there and he advised us they were calling the next station to ask them to look for it. I left it under my pillow when i took it off to sleep. I didnt think no one would pick it up other than the workers who change the bed sheets, all in all i was still pretty confident about getting it back.

Time ticked away, we were hoping to see some of the famous night markets of Kaifeng but it got round to 8pm and still we were being told they will let us know soon. At about 8.30pm the man told us they had found it and it was coming back on a train now, i was, as you can imagine, relieved, i thought, at the least i would have to head to the next city to pick it up myself.

As they were changing shifts they took us into a really nice swanky room where we could wait. 10pm came round and in came the workers.....They had my wallet!!! Shaking all there hands with a massive smile on my face i said thankyou.

10.30pm after a good 4 hours wait, we were in Kaifeng, we missed the night market but i was just happy to have everything on my person`:)

We had a look in the lonely planet book to see if there where any hostels near by, all of them were in the centre of town and we were outside of the city walls. We got a cab to take us into the centre of the city. In the cab we passed by the busy streets full of night markets, most where shutting up now (the guide book said the night markets are worth a visit to kaifeng alone). We got dropped off in the centre of town and picked a direction to walk in and headed off trying to find a hostel.

The markets where shutting up but the streets where still full of people, tramps and piles and piles of litter from the markets.

It was rather strange but the street names on the map of our lonely planet book differed from the actual signs on the streets. Kaifeng is pretty small so we knew we were down the right road just different names, i guess its because the book is over a year old and maybe, for some reason, they changed the street names.

Anyway we found a hotel (you can usually tell as they have numbers like 40,60,120 yuan) in the windows, stating the prices of the rooms.

We headed in there and with my newly learnt word 'binguan', meaning hotel, we quickly discovered they had no rooms. Asking where there was another cheap hotel we got pointed across the road to a rather expensive one. We sat on the pavement for a while with my torch in one hand and the map in the other trying to search for another hostel sign on the map.

We eventually found Dajintai hotel, which is the one we were looking for whilst walking around the streets, we must of passed it 3 times. Getting ourselves a nice cheap room for 40 yuan (£4) each was a good finish to the day.

There are a few 24 hour restaurant in kaifeng and managed to get a late night snack before heading to bed.

The next day we did what we usually do on the first day in a new city, walk around and get our bearings.

Upon walking around we soon discovered there wasnt really much to do here, a few temples, a park and the night market and that was pretty much it. We killed the rest of the day walking around, we just wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the night market.

7pm came round and we headed out, our hotel was down the same street the market is, its pretty much right outside. The streets were changed into a mass of stalls (easily over 300 of them), tables & chairs and plenty, plenty of people.

The streets were heaving, walking up and down the streets we noticed that, to our dissapointment, most of the stalls sold the same things.

It really wierd in china, you will find street of 50 shops selling the same thing, everywhere you go. This market was the same.

There were about 3 different types of stalls, one selling sweets, like peanuts in sugar, sweet rice puddings etc, the other selling grilled fish and meats, a lot like the Qingdao stalls i mentioned, and the last sold noodles, potatos etc. That was pretty much it, just hundreds and hundreds of these stalls selling the same thing, Very dissapointing.

We decided to stay in kaifeng for a few days, even though there wasnt anything really to do.

The biggest rip off we have come across so far was Longting park. Admission for 45 yuan, the place was surrounded by streets so really we could of just of paid and walked around its perimeter and seen all it had to offer. It had some crap statues of some people doing stuff, that really is probably the best i could describe it seriously. It had a temple at the top of the park which was filled up with more of these disney land type figures. I think we spent 30 mins in there, 20 minutes of which were spent sitting down thinking why the fuck did we pay to get in.

Kaifeng was a big let down, the park did it for us, we actually went back to the hotel checked out and got out of there and headed to Zhengzhou which will hopefully be better than Kaifeng.