we had an 18 hour bus ride into Xi'an (or she-an as the chinese pronounce it). it would have bee a fairly comfortable ride if we didnt have a man that would wake himself up with his tremendous snoring! it was like a bloody jet landing!

once getting into Xi'an we noticed the abundance of pollution, it was so bad i had a slight coughing fit! the scenery was just roads and the sky was grey with smog. ( im really selling Xi'an here arn't i!!).

anyway besides all that we wanted to take a walk around the city walls which go all around the main city and are about 20 meters tall and span about 4km by 4km. we were going to hire bikes to go all the way around it but we said we'll be fine walking, so we set off and thought nothing of it until we realised we had only walked a quarter! so we gave up and went back to the hotel.

when we got to the hotel ChanChan was waiting to feed us some dodgey looking spicy stuff which we realised was not normal meat. after chowing down on a couple of pieces we pursuaded her to tell us what the hell we were eating. it turned out chinese people have really weird tastes in food and have a fast food resteraunt that sell duck parts! and that she was feeding us duck throught and duck intestines! lovely!

day 2 we went out into the wild in search of the terracotta army! we got on a bus that very kindly dumped us in some village about 40km from Xi'an and before they drove off i think they said in broken english "you get next bus". just before they left we had chance to hold them up and make them put us on another bus that went directly there.

the terracotta army was absalutly amazing! there were thousands of them all stood in battle formations and the king made rolls for each of them, he had chefs, bowman, cavalers, swordsman. he built them becuase he thought they would protect him in the afterlife. it was brilliant to look at.

that was pretty much it from Xi'an, out of all the places in China Xi'an was the worst! still good but not as good as the others!