The Tang Dynasty Hotel Downtown Xi'an

... take a giant **** all over the ground in the middle of the waiting room... who will clean that up?? it was gross and funny at the same time. Our train ride to Xian took a quick 22 hour ride ha. When we first got on we had to sit in hard seats because the sleepers were all sold out. That was an experience. The floor was covered in food and spit, and we were pretty tightly jammed in. Luckily after about 8 hours of that a private room with four ...

... by a tour guide trainee named Audrey. We had a nice chat, and in fact this was just the 'warm up' phase for the tour as she did not join this one. I was picked up by a car with two more visitors and the tour guide ... which means we had a private driver for the tour and a very intense tour guiding service. The other visitors - what a coincidence - have been two girls living in London, one being German, the other one being Austrian. Counted correctly, this sums ...

... edge at one stage and the poor kid that nearly got flattened survived fine and made a full recovery!! It took us an hour and a half and like everything in China there were plenty of bumps along the way so our little bums were extremely sore after. We also went to see the Terracotta Warriors, which were absolutely mind boggling... There were thousands upon thousands of warriors, chariots and horses being excavated and our photos look a bit creepy cos they look like ...

... is beautiful at night with the bell and drum tower both lit up. The bell tower would originally ring at dawn to open the gates and the drum tower drum to mark nightfall and to close the gates. The citywall surrounding the innercity is 13.5 km long and within the wall....4million people live!!!!! Amazing hey, 8 million people in total in Xi'an but four of those live within the wall..still find it hard to believe but when you walk through the streets you sort of ...

Since arriving in Xian on Friday I have been pretty busy visiting various sites and meeting lots of new people. The hostel I am staying at has a great bar and lots of people meet there every night. Not just people who are staying there but also lots of locals that seem to drink there. On Friday night at the hostel they always have a dumpling making party so I took part in that with a few of the other guests. The guys that I ate my dumplings with were all from New Zealand. We then ...

... t change from this point were nearly as hard as the floor. Lauren found out when she went to plop down on it and didn't bounce. Given my lack of sleep to that point, I wasn't looking forward to laying down on that later. After settingly in, we re-boarded our bus to visit the Shanxi Provincial Museum of History. We didn't have much time to see this since our flight arrived late that day. So, we had to rush through, which was too bad because the ...

... was as pleasant as it could be for two people who haven't exercised in 8 months. later we took a taxi over to the big goose pagoda that has a huge fountain complex in front of it. every night the city puts on a light and fountain show set to music. pretty and all to look at. but one must of course fight the thousand other people who either want you to buy a photo of the fountain or pushing you to get in front of you for a better view. i was here first, sitting politely, simply does ...

... I think we, or at least I, expected something even bigger, something unbelievable. I'm still glad we did it. Tennley and her husband got on the bus, mid-aged chicago-couple, americans. The question still stands, why is the sky over Beijing grey-brownish? Pollution or bad weather? Me and John where positive, pollution, and they reconed weather... Just like kids ...

... of the ladies on our tour celebrated her 70th birthday yesterday as well, so we had cake and beer (in fine Aussie fashion) to celebrate. The cakes here are very light and very gaudy - bright and sweet, just how we like them :D I am again collecting the labels from the beer bottles as we go - which seems to give people the impression we're drinking our way across China (now where would they get *that* idea??). Xi'an is one of the few cities ...

... into the 10 times more expensive hotel which had recently been built just up the road. It wasn't terribly fancy, but at least they had a clean drop toilet, but no showers. It was very cold and damp in the building, but not half as grim as the dorms in the other place. The staff had to be seen to be believed. They were so unhelpful and friendly and difficult to find!

As we met for dinner in the adjoining 'restaurant', the clouds ...