Lots of soldiers, and great food.

Trip Start Sep 30, 2005

Trip End Sep 01, 2006

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Flag of China Xi'an, China
Monday, November 21, 2005

Leave Beijing on a train, 13 strong including guide, and 14 hours on a train to look forward too! turns out i needn't worried, the train births here are luxury compared to india, clean and well organised, plus there are lots of us, so the pressure is off, and this thing even has a dining car. after investigating we find the dining car, a few of us attempt to get a beer, the women in that cart takes an instant disliking to me (impossible i hear you scream), and says no beer, unless you eat (and lots of chinese stuff as well), even though the place is empty, barring some sympathetic cops (sympathetic to her), we leave with our tail between our legs. our guide comes back with us, and it turns out its ok to stay, with a small cover charge, this lady rants at us for the rest of the night, or until she goes to bed, we eventually find ours at 3 am, sleep comes easy, but so does noise to the chinese early in the morning, and woken with a bang, and lots of announcements over the loud speaker and cheesy music at 6 am

1. Stuffing our faces!

. kate can't find her ticket for ages, then just as we prepare for our fine, it appears!
arrive xian (shean), hotel, wash, the hotels on this trip are plush compared to india, and where we are going to be in thailand. we might get too used to being pampered. enjoy it while you can. we all then shoot out for a group lunch, which was easily the best chinese food i've eaten in my life, and it just keeps on coming, till i feel sick like at christmas, and just want to lounge on a sofa, and doze, strangely satisfied, lovely jubley. probably the best meal on the trip, just worried about un doing all the previous good work, just before the beaches in thailand. the food cost 2 pound each, wow, much cheaper than beijing or shanghai. we then explored the town a little, with its pagodas, and lots of jade on sale, trying not to buy things we don't need, its pretty cold. the town is surrounded by an old city wall, which you can cycle around, if your not to full, and it isn't freezing. xian, was the ancient capital of china for a 1000 years, and our local guide is very proud of this. we spend the afternoon in the muslim quarter, which has the biggest mosque in china, the muslim people being the largest minority group in china (FACT). it seemed to cross chinese traditional architecture with muslim architecture, and had a really erry feel to it on the foggy day.
after a long sleep (interrupted by football, the hammers scoring in the last min stu), we woke excited, terracotta warriors

2. Surprised at Chinese Mosque

! i was excited, caus its so famous, but i'm not sure if i actually knew what they were, lame yes, but i didn't mention this to anyone else. factish update! a couple of thousand years ago, some power hungry tyrant united china (through war and death), then used 750 000 people over 30 or 40 years to build himself a tomb about 50sq km in size. because he had so any enemies, he had replica terracota soldiers to protect the tomb. he had the area booby trapped, and then had all the skilled people who built the traps, buried with him alive, along with his thousands of concubines, and a shed load of animals for sacrifice. he wanted originally to bury his army with him, but a general told him that they were needed after his death. so every terracotta soldiers face, was molded from a member of the army. Unfortunately as clever as all this sounds, he used wood for the roof, so the whole thing was burnt down by his enemies not long after he died. not so bright. the soldiers were impressive, and work is still happening. another crazy man, seeks immortality, good morning.
we spent the afternoon with some mentally diabled kids, who danced and performed for us, and was lots of fun, but time to move on.

random story from beijing, kate points to something in the shy (Animal behaviour expert), look at those two eagles, i look up and see a small plane fly by, 'kate, they are kites, they have pink wings'. education is not what it used to be, look at my spelling!

(Kate here just saying that at least I successfully identified the birds I just couldn't see the string!)