So we couldn't get a sleeper bed for the 11 hour train ride to Xi'An from Beijing so reluctantly settled for a hard seat. The train was an overnight train so we were in for a comfortable sleep
From India I had visions of a hard seat being literally a wooden bench from the cattle class but it was a seat similar to those on English trains....luxury!!!
It turns out they seat all the foreigners together so we were sat opposite an English couple, so we sat and chatted about each of our travels around India, played a bit of cards and then attempted to sleep!...Sarie managed to get around 6 hours and I managed to get 1 and a half hours..
Anyways we arrived at half 8 and were welcomed by a 'Sarah Wain' board for our free pickup. Vicky and Lee decided at £2 each a night they will join in. As well as the fact it said, 'Free Beer' on their website!! In the taxi to the hostel we were planning that if we drank about 8 beers each a day then we would get our beds for free in theory!!!
Who were we kidding, as we arrived we checked and it turned out that you only get 1 free beer when you check in...dammm!
We were welcomed to our room by an american named Karl and he had the best Mullet I've ever seen, it was epic! a nice short back and sides and then he turns round and there it was, a massive curly mullet...very erm....cool!! the first words we exchanged were the mullet saying "if you're gonna leave the room, can you shut the door"...jeez, hello and good day to you too sir it certainly is a pleasure to meet you....Little did we know that this guy turned out to be a cool guy! giving us his 3 chinese phone numbers as well as his email so we can meet up in Nanning, as well as multiple lectures about the history and politics of China....what a guy!!
That night the 4 of us decided to head to the Muslim Quarter to the street stalls to get some food. Night markets everywhere and we found a little Chinese restaurant serving noodles and bbq kebabs with various meat, for a ridiculous price. We filled our boots and got a large beer each and it came to £4 for the 4 of us!!
We had planned to visit the terracotta warriors on our second day in Xi'an and after an early wake up and a sleepy bus ride to the Warriors we bagan our 4hour exploration of each individual pit. We had heard that it was best to see the short film on the history of which dynasty the warriors had originated from and when they had been discovered, this gave us a great insight to what we were about to see. We thought it would be best to start at the 'least' exciting pit, so entered Pit 3 first. It was pretty impressive still with a few warriors and then pit 2 was the tomb of Emperor Qin, showing the grounds of where he had built his terracotta warriors, which didn't have as many warriors this time but was a huge area, it had the odd warrior missing a limb or just a head but no full warriors. Then we went to the last and final pit 1....The biggest and by far the most impressive!! there were around 6,000 warriors and horses!! each one had a different face and there were the soldiers, the generals and the infantries all lined up to supposedly protect Qin even when he was dead.
We then caught the local bus back, again falling asleep and headed to the main bus station to catch the bus back to the Hostel. On our way we found a little shop ran by a fat little kid! seemed a bit strange, so out of curiosity we asked how much a 600ml bottle of beer was....25p!! bargains so we took every bottle he had and made our way back to the hostel, me and Lee sharing a beer for the bus journey! this is the life!!
The next day we rented out tandem bikes and cycled round the wall that outlined the Xi'an city. Biking on a tandem was a struggle! but we eventually got the hang of it! It was ridiculously hot too which made it all the more harder, and the fact that we were given 100minutes to get around the wall which is supposedly 30km!! that was never gonna happen! me and sarie could hardly go straight!! Lee and Vicky seemed to be naturals with the bikes but we gave it a good shot, in all fairness they had adjustable seats, whereas ours was a bike for midgets...my knees were up by my chin!...after stopping many times for tea breaks, we managed to get round the wall in 105minutes...and the bike renting company charged us an extra £1 for being 5 mins late!! We were not too impressed!!
Xi'an was soo much fun, it was a complete change to the fast hustle and bustle of Beijing. We also visited the great mosque which was pretty unique and completely different, set in a garden..we spent most of the afternoon there when we were hungover after the England game...the fact that it was on at 2.30am ourtime was bad enough and then playing drinking games before didn't help and then the rice wine found itself involved in the game which then ruined the night...after having it in Nepal, I should have known better! it's leathel and should be used to fuel cars, not to be consumed in our bodies!!...lucky I didn't go blind!!
That evening we went to the Wild goose pagoda and watched the fountain/light show which was very impressive!! dragged on a bit but was still a great way to end our time in Xi'An...then we parted our ways with Vicky and Lee, they were heading off to Chengdu whilst we headed the opposite way to Hangzhou and we should bump into one another when we get to Guilin.
As for the Mullet, well we may bump into him somewhere along the line, although we think we may have walked in on him laying on his bed having phone sex so maybe we'll try not to distub him anymore!
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