After a restless nights sleep in Xi'an, in a bed which can only be described as a cyropractors dream. We took the glass lift to attend another classic chinese take on the English menu. Brown bacon and anemic sausages were part of the buffet menu next to the rice grule and steamed buns. The Chinese really do not understand breakfast, it's almost as if it is a nasty inconvience that must be taken care of before the day can continue. Needless to say I stuck with toast, on the subject of toast it has become apparent to both Laura and I that toasters are a little strange in China. Several of our buffets have had the same issue, the toasters only toast one side of the bread, when you flip it to toast the other side you end up with one burnt end. It's a lose, lose situation.

A new Tony arrived to pick us up at around 10 am, a luxury for us to have a lie in. Tony quickly became "Camp Tony" as we discovered the previous night he appears to be the only camp chinese man we have met. Tony looks like a cross between Frank Butcher of Eastenders fame and a dodgey russian car dealer, although Laura thought he sounded like Kim Jong Il from Team America. He took us to the city walls where we were free to look around for 30 mintues. Unfortunately the heavens opened in Xi'an to continue the 10 days of rain which was not going to end anytime soon. There is not alot you can say about the city walls, they are beautiful in their own right but they are just walls around an ever changing city ready to swallow them whole. "Camp Tony" wasn't really improving the situation, as he had snuck off to smoke a fag.

After the city walls we were wisked off to the Wild Goose Pagoda. A lovely building and the temple there is still used by buddists. The buildings were delicately decorated and a beautiful site of worship. "Camp Tony" wasn't greatly informative compared to our previous guides and therefore we feel we missed out slightly as he had a habit of saying 'yes' to any and all our questions.

Tony was really starting to grind our gears by lunch time and clearly had no interest in us, apart from the odd money related question about where we live. Unfortunetly for him he seemed to grasp we were rich from our answers and we suddenly found ourselves in a "shopportunity" where we were treated to lunch before a tour of a 'furniture factory'. A member of staff escorted us round and showed us various items, including a life size terrocotta warrior; just what every backpacker needs!! These type of trips were meant to be excluded from our tour.

After lunch and the 'shop' we were taken to the real Terricota warriors, one of the sites we were most excited to see. Over 8,000 warriors every single one different in face, body and hair. The site consits of 3 pits. Pit 1 is by far the most interesting as this is where the majority of the work has been done. The warriors were orginally painted in different colours and being buried for so long this has been preserved. After one week exposure to the air changes the warrior to a dull grey, we were lucky to see a freshly dug up piece which still retained it's colour.

At pit 2, Tony decided to inform us he had a "runny tummy" and disappeared for 20 mintues while we continued to look around. After which Laura also managed to find herself in a photo with a randomm chinese girl, she spoke little English so we weren't sure what she wanted at first. Pits 2 and 3 are not nearly as interesting, however we did see the "perfect warrior". Out of the 8,000 warriors only one remained completely intact after excavation.

After another "shopportunity" at an expensive gift shop, we were on our way to the train station. Three hours earlier then expected of course, mainly because we declined Tony's constant suggestion on having a local massage! While on our way to the train station Tony fell asleep in the car, at this point and despite my insistance that the seat belts be un-trapped from the back seat earlier in thee day. we were informed "China has safe roads" and there would be no need. So with no seat belts on and Tony asleep our driver steadly increased his speed to over 100mph on wet roads (idiot). We couldn't wait to be rid of the pair of them by the end of the day (they even had the cheek to hint for a tip!)

The day was worth it to see the terracotta warriors.........just