Shanewilson's travel blogs:
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Now in Xian
Entry 91 of 270 | show all | print this entry |
I love it when the overnight train gets into a new city at a respectable time... this time, the train arrived into Xian at 9am after 11 hours on the track. Xian is another huge city with millions of people, but the main reason for coming here is to see the Terracotta Warriors. It was a feeling of De Ja Vu as I drove through Xian for the first time, especially with its huge square wall separating the old city from the new.
We were transferred to our hotel, the Jing Cheng which is situated south of the city's Southern Gate. The hotels we've been staying on this basix Intrepid trip have been very comfortable, and not too different from the standard of the proceeding Original trip which is a higher budget trip for Intrepid. I'm quickly learning that I don't really care where I stay as long as there are friendly people. I could of stayed in a five star hotel with my x room mate on the other trip and hated it.
All horrors struck when I had a peep inside my plastic blue envelope holding my Aussie passport. For some stupid reason, it wasn't there. I instantly knew it was lost because I don't keep it anywhere else. But I still emptied everything I had onto the bed and looked into every single crevice but no passport. F ***. Talk about panic. I kind of joked with other travellers about what would happen if I lost my passport in China... I would be stuck here forever. As you can probably tell, China doesn't rate up there as my favourite world-wide destination - the bureaucracy makes it more difficult. I couldn't believe that my worst nightmare had come true. I kind of went into panic mode and thought maybe the laundry has my passport but ended up on the idea given that I could remember the laundry lady laying everything flat in front of me. I resorted to the idea of reporting the loss to John, the tour leader, with the intention of getting his advice as to where I go from here. A Canberra Consular official kind of put my mind to ease by saying that a lot of Aussies lose their passport in China... but I dread the inconvenience and cost that I have to go through to get one back. It will be interesting to see how I go in getting an exit visa re-issued. Anyway, I suppose worst things can happen to overseas travellers and an outcome is surely not far away. Just one of those things to test my patience!
John invited the group to a feast of Mongolian Hotpot. I can now see why he suggested that we don't wear white... it was messy. Given that I didn't have my second meal until around 4pm that day, I didn't really have an appetite but gave it a try. Boy, it was very different to anything I've had before. In the middle of the table there is a hole for a very large pot with two sides... one spicy and one not so spicy. To this juice, you add a whole lot of meat and vegetable delights held on sticks. If you want something, you simply dip the delight into the hot pot and keep it there for a few minutes before eating it. It was definitely something different, and adds to the many enjoyable eating moments on this trip. But I had one thing on my mind the whole meal... the damn passport.
After the hotpot, we returned to the hostel for a round of drinks which returned my mind to more pleasant thoughts. The hostels here in China are quite comfortable and provide the full array of services including drinks, internet, laundry and tours. Maybe it would be possible to travel independently around this country... but I'm not going to be one of them:) I can imagine how miserable it can be getting a long train independently here in China.
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