China- Xi-an

  Xian, China
Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Howdy all,

Tis been a while so I thought I'd give ye an update of whats happening. So after our 14 hour train ride, which actually turned out to be a good laugh and way better than I had expected we arrived in xi-an around 7 am.

After fighting our way through the crowd to get out we got a bus to our hotel. Then Mill took us out on a orientation of the city.

10 Part of the surrounding wall

It has a fully intact 14km wall surrounding the main part of the city. Of course the city today has gorwn well out past it. You could take a walk around the whole thing, or a bike ride for that matter as it is quiet wide the whole way around. But after hearing from other people I didn't bother doing it. They said it got a bit boring after a while as it all looks the same.

They have a Muslim quarter, this is where the silk road ended and as such is about as far as the Muslim religion had spread. It is not as obvious as what you might expect from some of the middle eastern countries. Its hard to spot those that are muslim and those that are not as there is no real difference in the style of clothing. The women don't seem to cover up or any of that. The only thing was a cap that most of the men seem to wear.

09 The Muslim Quarter

The muslim quarter now is a big market. You can buy all sorts of food from dried fruit like pineapple and kiwis to meat and spices and nuts etc. It was really nice just to go around and try different thing although I wasn't as adventureous as some of the lads here.  It also sold some lovely Saddam cards which I had to buy, for 5 Yuan (50c) you can't go far wrong.

There was no road trips outta here, well except to the terracotta Warriors which we did on the last day,  so we spent the two days just wondering the town itself.

06 The Mosque

We got to see the great Mosque, which is a really peaceful area where they come to pray, and just wandered around all the little side alleys to see what we could discover.

The one thing with these cities that after you see the main sites they all start the look the same. They are crammed with people, lots of them always trying to sell you stuff, lots of cars, buses, motorbikes and bikes all beeping and racing around the place. it can be a real experience just to cross the road as they don't really slow down for anything or anyone.

The one thing that would really stand out for me about these places is the amount of food stalls set up everywhere. You can have whole streets one after the other of hot food stalls, some of which isn't that nice looking.

17 Terracotta Warriors 2

On the last day we took a bus out to the Terracotta warriors. It was one hell of a bumpy trip but it was worth it just to have a look. We spent a few hours here before heading back to the train station to get our 16 hour train to Shanghai