2 - 7 February

We arrived early in Xi'an and headed straight to the hostel. It was way out of town and there were no bars or restaurants within a two mile radius, we had defintely made the wrong choice.

The first day we spent there, we tried to get to grips with the city, it was huge and really dirty. Not the best place I had ever been to, but not the worst either. It had no life or soul to it like Beijing.

The second day we headed on an early morning tour to Ban Po village, a tomb of an emperor and the terracotta army.

Ban Po was our first stop, it was a prehistoric village. Then we headed to the tomb, but what we didn't realise was that they hadn't actually found it yet. We got there and spent five minutes there. It was a basement in the bottom of a building with a man in a box in the middle of the room (presumbly the emperor himself) surrounded by a neon model of China, which was then surrounded by hundreds of crazy plastic dolls. It was surreal to say the least, ah well only in China!

The terracotta army was great. There were three excavated pits, two of them full of broken pieces, but still worth a look and the third and most famous pit was full of thousands of men and horses pain stakingly pieced back together since they were discovered thirty odd years ago by a man looking for water. Apparently the farmer who found them sits at a desk sometimes and signs autographs, we never saw him but that would have been great to see.

At night time we got dropped off within the city walls and had a few drinks. Half way through our first pint we ran into the Danes and we all had a bite to eat and caught up. We then headed out to meet Huw and Nicola from our Vodkatrain days at a KTV place, which is a basically a private room you hire out in a posh bar and sing karaoke until dawn. The Chinese love it! Adam and I love it too, the night before we had been practising in a bar by ourselves. When we turned up no one had even started singing yet so we cracked open a few beers and showed them how it was done. Soon enough they were all singing. At the end of the night we said our goodbyes and all said we needed to meet up over the next few months.

The next day because of our blow out the night before we had a quiet one and ate and drank in our room.

On our last day we headed up to the Muslim Quarter and saw some crazy street stands and then at night we met up with one more person from the Vodkatrain, Pat and his girlfriend, Robyn. We had a good out and then had to catch the train the following day to Chengdu. Panda time!