Ni Hao - Chinese for Hello from Xi'an, Central China
We arrived here at around 9am in the morning after a 12 hour sleeper train from Beijing. We had to book the more expensive soft sleeper rather than the hard sleeper due to them all being booked up. At least we would get a good nights sleep ..... or so we thought. In our 4 Bed cabin we shared it with a Chinese couple in their early 20's which the male snored louder than a grunting Wild Boar.
So we arrived at Xi'an train station very sleepy but fortunately our Hostel did a free pick up service from the train station so we were met at the station and driven to our hostel. We Checked in and headed to our room to catch up on our sleep. We had booked a 6 bed dorm and opened the door to an actual pig sty. The mess was from our two roomies, a young couple from Yorkshire in England who after 3days we found to have the personality's of two planks of wood.
We climbed through dirty undies and socks to our beds and decided to catch up on the sleep we missed on our "SLEEPER" train. We woke up and went for a wander in mid afternoon around the city. Our hostel was pretty much smack bang in the middle so we were walkable to Xi'an's main monuments. The Drum and Bell Towers were the 2 most famous and both typical Chinese architecture, beautifully lit up at night so have some good photos. We ate at a Hong Kong style restaurant where we both had pork and was excellent.
Our 2nd day we went to visit the World famous Terracotta Warriors. It was very interesting to see but I wont bore you with the details as this is a blog not an advertisement for it. When we arrived back in the city we went to check out the 'Muslim Quarters' which was a matrix of back alleyways with stalls and shops set up as far the eye to see. We browsed at some of the items on sale which ranged from Baby Chicks that had been dyed different colours to refurbished oil containers. Brishay almost bought a new born puppy; Jonny did however buy a Pomegranate. That night we decided to go to Pizza Hut for supper which had a menu the size of a Bible, could pretty much order anything apart from Human on your pizza. We had a stuffed crust meat pizza so have probably eaten rat, seagull and chipmunk.... little bit of Parmesan cheese and it tasted beautiful none the less. Checked out some of the shops after dinner where Jonny finally managed to find his first Chinese football top in the Nike Store. FC Chanba who are the local team in Xi'an. Am sure it wont be the first football top he buys this trip...
Our last day we, along with our retarded room mates booked to go see the Panda breeding park 2hours outside of Xi'an. The place was pretty run down but there was heaps of heavy machinery about the place so it possibly was in the middle of renovation. We seen two 6month old infant Pandas who were both very playful with each other and a mating couple which have good pictures of Brishay handing one of them some Bamboo. It was a typical Chinese Zoo other than the Pandas with small enclosures housing Monkeys, Goats, Black Bears and Leopards all found in the Chinese Mountain ranges. This was the 2nd best Park in China to see Pandas so we were both glad we visited as you cant really visit China without seeing a Panda.
We were dropped back off at our hostel where we picked up our bags and made our way via a local bus to Xi'an airport for our flight to Guilin. The flight was only £10 more expensive than another sleeper train and was only 1hour 40minutes instead of 22hours on the train. Guilin is meant to have quite breath-taking scenery so our next blog will be from there.
Until then Toodle Loo - Scottish for Goodbye
J + B