Temple entrance.
Anyway, the temple was nice. It was a Tibetan buddhist temple, like the Lama temple in Beijing (which I still haven't been to). I've been to a lot of temples in China before, but this one had one interesting, Tibetan-looking stone building. There were also some very old signs in Tibetan, Chinese, and two Mongolian-looking scripts. It was a functioning temple, but we didn't see anyone praying. We ended up spending close to half an hour there before getting back on the buses for our next destination - a small (3 million people) city called Baotou.
We had lunch at a big restaurant which also had a wedding happening today, so there was a lot of noise and music and nice food not for us. Halfway through our meal they started the fireworks. After lunch we got back on the buses and set off for the desert while listening to the guide talk about Baotou - former home of Attilla the Hun, and currently China's "rare earth valley", famous for its mining and steel production. So there wasn't much to look at.
The Yellow River.
The drive out to the desert from Baotou took a little while, and we had to cross the Yellow River, which supposedly gets its name from the colour of the water (and "brown river" didn't sound as good). Eventually the bus drove over a ridge and we were confronted with sand dunes, exactly like in Lawrence of Arabia. We parked at a big resorty place and had to take a cable car across a valley to get to the desert.
The place is very touristy, and pretty cool - it looks like Egypt, and wasn't as hot as everyone was saying (in fact I was fairly comfortable in my hoodie, but then again they are mostly British). There were a lot of Chinese families there, with kids running around and playing in the sand, much like Australian kids do at the beach.
The silly sock things are to stop sand getting in your shoes. According to the signs they are called "Sandy-socks".
There are a lot of cool attractions here, and first we all went "sand surfing", which is nothing like what it sounds like. 10 or so people get in a big open truck (one of which is decorated to look like a pirate ship) and the driver hoons it out on the dunes. We ended up in the middle of the desert, near an odd metal structure which from a distance looks like a radar station, but up close looks like a small Burj Dubai under construction. We got to stay there for a while and get some photos in the dunes, then we got back in the truck for another wild ride back.
Let's go surfin' now...
After this most went to ride camels, but a few of us stayed behind. Only two of us (one was me) was interested in the other apparent attraction, the quad bikes. These were great, faster and more fun than the trucks, but unfortunately you can't drive them yourself like I did in Harbin. The ride didn't last very long though, and we spent a while waiting for the camel train to return. We came across some other cool things, like paragliding and amphibious trucks in the valley, but unfortunately didn't have much time left (or so we thought - the camels did take a while). When we were all back together, I and a few others took the cable car back. The rest tobogganed down a near-vertical sand slope, then took the cable car from a stop at the bottom of the valley.
We then got on the bus back to Hohhot, which was a fairly long drive. So long that we ended up not going to a handicraft factory as planned, and instead went to a Hohhot supermarket to get souvenirs at about 8:30. This was quite strange and they didn't have many interesting things (except milk wine, and Mongolian hip-hop CDs). Then we went for dinner, which was already cold. We didn't get back to the hotel until about 11, then we had to set off early in the morning. All we are doing tomorrow is driving back to Beijing. They say if there is no traffic we should get there about 1pm. There is no chance of that of course.
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