After affording ourselves a little lie-in we checked out of our 'home from home' for the last time. I headed out to find a bookstore containing English books for the gruelling 17 hour train we were about to catch and Dave went to search for more high quality goods to fill his house and fridge door. i wandered the streets for a while, taking in the mass of humanity that was swarming around making the most of their October holiday. I eventually found a bookshopand headed for the 3rd floor where apparently English books were available. It turned out all the books there were designed for people learning English rather than fiction so my selection was limited to grammar books or the classics. After some time I settled on 'Great Expectations', deciding Dickens was somewhat more readable on a train than some of the other heavier tomes. How a Chinese person is meant to learn contemporary English from unaltered 18th and 19th century texts is beyond me, some poor devils must head to England and expect people to be saying 'by my troth' and remarking on girl's having a 'charming and sweet countenance'.

Next I headed for a session on the internet before it's time to tackle the crowds and head for the train station. We found it impossible to find a taxi driver willing to navigate the busy streets around the station and had to settle for a tuk-tuk who quoted well over the odds. We made good speed towards the station but halfway our driver pulled across and turned round. We pointed to the Chinese for train station in our Lonely Planet once more and he suddenly pulled out a calculator with double the original price on. We angrily told him 'Look here old chap, this isn't on' with our least polite hand gestures but he merely laughed and drove on. On arrival at the Train Station he once again tried the higher price but we unloaded our bags and gave him what we'd originally agreed. he started to get angry as we walked away but wew were having none of it and he screamed one last parting shot before driving away, it was a sad way for our stay in Xian to end as we'd really enjoyed our time there.

After an almighty cruch in the waiting room we boarded the train and found we were in seperate compartments for the journey. I spent most of the light hours updating my diary and getting to know young master Pip (that's the character in Great Expectations, not some smutty innuendo for the less couth of you) and settled in for a decent night's sleep.