Sunday, August 22, 2010

Books and temples

More exploring... Late morning we find ourselves in the excellent Bookworm, an English-language bookshop-cum-library-cum-cafe-cum-bar. Nice to find a replacement for our beloved Neilson Hayes library in Bangkok, although this is much more commercial. In fact, the food is pretty expensive. However, it has a great atmosphere and a very good book selection, not least on all things China. I was quite surprised to see Jung Chang's uber-critical Mao: The Unknown Story on the shelves. On Sunday mornings they also do children's stories.

In between hunting for children's shoes (shoes and furniture seem to be an ever present theme since we arrived), we visited the rather attractive Dongyue Miao temple. It was founded in 1319 but has been rebuilt numerous times since then. It's a practising temple, and while there we witnessed some lovely music played by black & white attired monks. A refreshing respite from the hubbub outside.

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