Well, we only just about survived the overnight train journey - 12 hours this time and it wasn't a nice train! We had the top four bunks in a cabin of six and the two guys on the bottom bunks proceeded to chain smoke through the night and the toilets were a mess - YUK!!! But we're here now so it's all good!

But life is all good now we are chilled in Xian, it's the home town of our guide and he loves it so harps on about it a lot. Dumpling dinner (Xian speciality dish) is up there with our best meals to date - millions of dumplings in the shape of what's inside - the pork ones look like pigs for example, not great for veggies!!!

The highlight of Xian is the trip to the Terracotta warriors - a man made army of thousands of clay life size warriors so the emporer can take them to his after life. Bloody selfish if you ask me as he had his little b*****s carving amazing detail on these things when they could have been building houses or something much more useful!! Pretty spectacular none the less.

We got some exercise in by riding bikes around the top of the 20m wide city walls and walked around the wild goose pagoda had a kip to recover from the night train, got my head shaved like a monk and that was that.