"I had a pillow somewhere between Moscow and Beijing that smelt exactly like a human dissection." - Dr. Tim
Xi'an was great fun. We stayed in Yuan Shuan Youth Hostel (after a close call of staying in the YMCA) which is good enough. We decided to start sleeping in dorms to save money so there was 4 of us...me, Mikey, Tim and Paul...an English pilot ("I don't have any faith in planes.") that we picked up in Beijing.
Had to walk through someone else's room to get to ours which was a bit bizarre, and the only other door was one which said 'Danger No Entry' which lead to nothing. Tim ended up turrning it in to his own en-suite bathroom...as he did with a bottle on my bed side table.
All the girls who worked there are really friendly. The girl who works in the travel agent particularly impressed me. Her name's Weeney (named after Winnie The Pooh but she didn't know how it was meant to be spelt). The first time we met her was when we tried to book our onward train tickets. She had a dead fish floating in a fish bowl on
her table. Apparently that's the 5th one she's killed recently...she hasn't fed them because she doesn't see the point. Errrmm.
Her and her mates ended up coming out with all of us for beers, along with a few other random backpackers, and we all painted Xi'an red.
Banter.
I bought her 4 new fish on our last morning.
"Where's the best place to buy fish?"
"The fish market."
So now there's 4 (hopefully alive) fish floating in a hostel in Xi'an...one of which is called Simon.
Went to see the Terracotta Warriors, which is the 8th wonder of the world now (apparently replacing Andre The Giant). Pretty damn impressive considering someone just stumbled upon it in the last 30 years. A life size army. Met Bill Clinton there.
The 4 of us moved on to Chengdu which was also class. Went to see a panda reseach centre. Classic. Very cute, and the baby pandas were hilarious...falling off trees like lemmings.
Found out on the way there that there's a 'Red Panda' which got me very excited. Couldn't imagine it. My mind was racing with ideas of what they'd be like...would the black bit or white bits be red??
Well I can reveal that red pandas just look like racoons, and are carnivores, and are in no way like pandas. Disappointing.
Went out for a few huge dinners, really spicy, with loads of randoms. Absolutely brilliant. We met our first Irish...a guy named Dave with his Singapore girlfriend who was fluent in Mandarin...so we got local prices.
Mike's getting quite in to his Mandarin phrase book. He tried talking to a guy on the train the other day and attempted to say his bunk was 'High'. The guy thought he pointed to 'Heroin addict'...so he steered clear of Mike for the rest of the trip. Mike retired to his high bunk to shoot up.
The phrase book is bizarre. It has 'What do you think of Adolf Hitler?' in it.
Going on a 4 day horse trek tomorrow. May seem like a bad idea after our last horse experience but it sounds good. Will be the 4 of us and another guy we just met in Chengdu. Off to buy hats now.
After the trek it's back to Chengdu, where we'll be parting from Dr. Tim and Capt. Paul, then we're flying across China and on to Hong Kong. The flight worked out cheaper then the train, thanks to Sam of Sam's Guesthouse. That guy has alot of fingers in alot of hot pots.
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