World UNESCO Sites that I have been to before

1) The Great Wall of China

This is one place where I bet most of the people have been to. The tour agencies especially love to bring the tourists there, and the PRCs can then rip the tourists. I was lucky enough to have Yuxi’s uncle drive us to this ulu part of the Great Wall of China, and you can read the rest of it here if you are interested.

2) Houryuji

I was quite surprised to see that it is listed as one of the UNESCO sites. I wasn’t too awed by this place, besides the fact that the deers keep asking for more senbei from me.

3) Mount Wu Tai

After watching all the weird Chinese Kungfu dramas, I was quite happy to go to Mount Wu Tai. It is a Buddhist place where many devotees go to pray. I uh.. didn’t pray much except when we are doing the turns around the mountain in the car. The taxi driver could have won the F1 race if he had competed. Vegetarian food there is in abundance, and all the restaurants that I saw (and eaten at) separate out the normal and vegetarian food so it was quite easy to order. Warning: They do not speak English at all, and it is quite touristy in the sense that there are many souvenir sellers. Expensive prices. Most of the tourists are locals.

4) Historic Centre of Macau

I went with my parents to Macau in 2013, and I thought that it is a very boring place. There are many casinos there, if you like to try your luck at the tables, but other than that, there was nothing much to visit except for this place. It is a very Portuguese-inspired place, and the church was in ruins. I totally was not impressed with this place, especially with all those tourists who were shouting all over the place. Eww.

5) Nikko Temples and Shrines

It was close to 0 degrees when I went to visit the shrines and it was cold @@. They are famous for the monkeys engravings and paintings on the shrines. I thought it was quite Chinese-like, but other than that, I remembered more of the warm drink that I got from the vending machine than the temples themselves.

6) Yungang Grottoes

My impression of this site is that there are a lot of Buddhist statues. I think by the time I reached the end of the attraction, I gave up trying to take photos of them as I was sick and tired of seeing all these Buddhist stuff. One could have mistaken that I was going on a pilgrimage.

It seems like I'm really not very into all these stuff despite being a history major student. Would you?

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