Originally Posted by
RichardInSF
The caves are definitely open in the afternoon. The problem there is that if you want an English tour, they will wait until enough English speakers show up before sending out a group. Still, on that, the odds are strongly in your favor that you should have no problem.
Bear in mind that the caves are not anywhere near town or anything else so you might want to arrange round trip transport from Dunhuang.
You really do want to see the caves, IMO, they are very impressive.
I went with a Chinese tour and the info provided was far less useful than what I had gleaned from my art history class (10 years prior, but still reasonably fresh in my mind). For that matter, even my LP's two-sentence descriptions of the individual caves were more informative than the official script.
I was actually underwhelmed by the caves, perhaps in part to large number of temples I was subjected to during my formative years, but the dunes were a lot of fun!
Lastly, based on my memory, neither the caves nor the dunes were all that difficult to reach from Dunhuang City. I'm thinking 20 minutes and very cheap; we passed the airport en route to each of the aforementioned destinations.