Day 2. Mogao Caves

Day 2. Mogao Caves 

Mogao Caves

We went to visit the Mogao Caves today. Mogao Caves were build 1800 to 1000 years ago. At that time, Dunhuang was the last town on the Silk Road before entering the desert where many merchants would die. So many people paid artists to build these caves to seek blessing from or worship the gods or thank the gods after they returned with wealth. It became a place where lots of ancient arts were preserved.

One can only visit the caves through guided tours. Before the trip, I called the visitor center to ask how to reserve tickets with our passports since the official website required Chinese IDs. They told me that there were three time slots (8:30am, 11:30am, 2:30pm) where foreigners could get the same-day tickets without a reservation. So we got a taxi and arrived the visitor center before 11:00am as instructed, and bought two tickets for the 11:30am tour with our passports for 516RMB (~$75) without a problem. There were several options for the tour. I paid a little bit more for the English tour so that Claire could understand; I also paid more for the longer tour where we would see 8 caves.

To start the tour, we were first sent to see two introduction movies. The second one was in a dome theatre, giving visitors an experience of inside a cave. Super cool.

We then took a bus to the caves. We walked to a line where we got our assigned tour guide. Each person was given an ear piece to hear the guide. Our guide took us to see different caves and explained the history and all. The tour felt really short: we spent about 10 minutes or less in each cave, and there were so many things to see.    

There were hundreds of caves. No photography was allowed inside any caves. Doors were put outside of the caves a few years ago to protect the statues and paintings. The guides coordinated with each other to decide which caves to show the tourists so that no cave was too crowded. There were CO2 and humidity sensors inside the caves, so they would close a cave if the readings reached damaging levels. One cave that every tour visited was the giant buddha. You can guess how big the statue was by the size of the outside red building.

Occasionally, there were some paintings outside of some caves. I asked the guide why they were not protected with some casing. He said that those were "only" 200 years old so they were not worth the resources. 

After the guided tour, we visited the bookstore. The books were not cheap, priced at $50-100. We also went to a building with four replica caves. 

We then returned by bus to the visitor center. Claire got an ice cream. We took a taxi back to the hotel.

Hotel

Our hotel was Dunhuang Zhongzhou International Hotel 敦煌中洲国际酒店.  This was my favorite hotel in the entire trip. The location was great, only 10 min drive to the caves with a taxi fare of less than $3. There were taxis lined up outside of the hotel, extremely convenient to go anywhere. The hotel offered delicious breakfast buffet. 

We also ate at the hotel restaurant for lunch and dinner. The portion was huge and we always had lots of leftover even though I ordered only one dish for each of us. The lady at the hotel restaurant kindly offered to keep our leftover food in their fridge. She heated them up and served us at our next meal. 

There was a cat at the hotel lobby. It was a street cat that liked to visit the hotel. The hotel staff would give him food and shelter. He was friendly to everyone. Claire spent quite some time petting the cat.

Show

We booked the 9pm show Dunhuang Celebration 敦煌盛典 the day before. A driver called me and took us to the show. The show started as outdoor seatings. It was an actual full moon on the second photo! The seats moved to different directions, and even indoors during different acts. The show was a feast of lights, drones, and fireworks. We really enjoyed it. And the ticket was only $40 per person. After the show, the driver dropped us back to the hotel. What a fun day!

Things I did not like today

Despite an enjoyable day, there were a hiccups.

In the morning, I not a notification that my Chinese SIM card was not out of balance. Since I needed mobile pay for everything, I called the mobile network company to fix it. It took a long time for someone to find out the reason. It turned out that the $35 pre-paid card did not include outgoing text. It included data, minutes of calls, and incoming text. The day before at the airport, I sent one text to the driver, and that made my balance in the red, so the stopped my service today. I needed to pay $1 online to buy outgoing text service to my phone. This was one of the several examples where companies here made up complicated rules, which resulted in annoyance, inconvenience, and me paying a little bit more money.  

Another thing different than other countries was that we had to show our passports everywhere, both at Mogao caves and the show, so we ended up carrying the passports with us all the time. This would be the case throughout the trip.