Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Our final day in Xian got us up early in order to go for a bike ride around the City Walls of Xian.
The bike ride was great, about 14km in total with wonderful views the whole way around. The main downside being the rather sore bum at the end of the ride.
But something equally as interesting to me is what we did before going on the bike ride. In fact it's something we do at least once a day, if not more often.
And before I go on I want to clarify that I am definitely one of the worst offenders.
Every day, at some point, we make our way to either MacDonald's or Starbucks. Not for the food, mostly, but for the coffee. Specifically real milk in our coffee.
Half of Dragon's job as tour leader seems to be directing us Westeners to places we can get a good coffee. And as much as he hates it, if that means telling us where the nearest McCafe is he will tell us.
It's made me realise how much our culture is really addicted to a nice hot cup of tea or coffee.
We can cope with most things that are culturally different. We're getting used to the squat toilets, even if we still complain about the particularly dirty ones. We can put up with people smoking in the elevators. We can eat food we wouldn't normally eat.
We can even put up without a lot of things. We're all struggling but we're learning to live without Facebook. Right at the moment we're learning to cope with not having totally clean sheets to sleep in.
But we cannot cope without our teas and coffees.
Quite fittingly, just as I finished writing that sentence Joy walked past our compartment on the overnight sleeper train on our way from Xian to Chengdu and offered everyone a Nescafé satchel coffee she just made.
An offer which I happily took up so now I will stop writing and sit down, looking at the beautiful countryside and sip on my coffee like a true Western tourist.
- comments