Hidden Army

Trip Start Mar 14, 2006
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Trip End Mar 15, 2007


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Flag of China  ,
Sunday, May 7, 2006

Simply going to book my train ticket to Chengdu led to one of those great traveling coincidences were on trying to find the advance ticket booking office (for some reason inside a bank) I met Idan & Lihi from Israel trying to do the same which at this point we didn't know we would be spending more than just the time in the ticket queue together, even if it was a long 2 hour wait - so much for advance booking.

Also here was Oralia from California but teaching English in Okinawa as it turned out we all had the same plan today of seeing the Terracotta Warriors (big surprise there) so we decided to go together. Idan & Lihi ended up changing their minds at the last minute about their destination (well they did have 2 hours to think about it I suppose) and also decided to go to Chengdu so we booked our hard sleeper tickets together while Oralia was unable to get a ticket to Shanghai for days, it was like trying to get out of Beijing all over again Colourful
Colourful
 .

After a shortish taxi & bus trip we arrived at the Terracotta Warriors even though the taxi driver seemed to want to drive us the whole way but we felt the 7 CNY for the bus was a slightly better deal than his proposed price.

Another 90 CNY later we were inside and hunting for warriors which actually took us a while to find after entering just about every building in the complex before the main one with the Terracotta Warriors standing to attention - I'd be surprised if the did much else mind due.

After plenty of photo taking (mostly be Oralia who I think must have taken pictures of every single warrior) we left almost running away from the other army of vendors attempting to sell little Terracotta Warrior statues. We passed the tomb of the first emperor along the way which is nothing more than a mound but no doubt so much more if it is ever excavated with supposedly lakes of liquid mercury inside.

Back in Xi'an we all headed to the Muslim snack street for some dinner with the others trusting the fact that I was still upright and breathing as a good enough guarantee that the food were I ate yesterday was ok. This time around we had a bundle of mutton skewers which tasted a lot better than they looked, which to be honest was not really hard.
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