Smog City
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2006
1
162
172
Trip End
Jul 01, 2007
Xian,
China
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
So after an over night train ride, Suzanne and Ian followed behind on a later train. I also met Joe and Lewis for the first time.
The first day was pretty relaxed, walk around the city, up the bell tower and onto the ancient wall that surrounds the old town. In fact we sat there for a while just gassing and having a cheeky beer!!! Later in the day I met a cool Chinese girl in my dorm room called Song, who took me out for local food.
The second day, Paul and Sonia arrived from Beijing and we all went off to the see the main attraction of the area...the terracotta army
Archer
. Of course cheap effort and doing it ourself. A lot of people had said they were disappointed by them..for me no way!!! The whole area is quite tourist developed, but the first time I saw the army I was really taken back. Yes, it does get a bit same same after a while, but the size of the warriors and complexity is staggering.The area consists of three pits, with number one the biggest and restoration work still taken place. The huge burial mound near by has not been touch at all and here is believed to be the resting place of the first emperor.
Completely satisfied, the night was spent chilling and waiting to wake up in the early hours to see Milan rob Liverpool in the Champions league. Sat chatting to Song again and got a dirty MacDonald's to cure the spate of constipation..nice.
As I left Xian with Joe and headed onto Chengdu I had a vision of what post apocalyptic world would look like.....skies completely darkened with dense smog and pollution. As we rose in the airplane (gods knows how he knew which direction he was going) we past above the clouds and got a view of the sun...the first in 3 days. This is polluted China at its worst!!!!
