We arrived from Beijing via train, one of the mega fast 300km/hr jobs, so only took about 5 hours. Felt a little longer though thanks to the 5 episodes of 24 (ending series 3, side note, not such a great series…). We got in about 6 and got a cab to our next abode with an Aussie that we briefly met in Leo Hostel on our way out.
That night we decided to get our bearings a little and just have a wander into the main part of town, getting off at the station (Zhongloun Zhan) nearest the drum and bell towers (a must see in Xi’an, well, the drum performance anyway, more on that later) and had a wander down the busiest street in search of some food. Eventually we found a food court (Greedy Cat) and had ordered a two person meal from the picture menu. The noodle dish was severed in a granite bowel (stayed hot for ages), accompanied by a plate of, seeded bread, some kind of curry sauce, what we think were intestine on a stick (I actually quite liked it, Heather not so much!), and a tofu sheets we’d had once before in Beijing. Overall, Heather ate the bread and noodles, I had the other stuff 
Directly outside the restaurant we spotted a model shop, one that sold pretty much any type of remote controlled gadget (quad copter, cars etc) including Segways and Airwheels… As we were leaving the shop owner gave us a demo of the Airwheel (damn cool little device, one wheel with a small platform either side steered by leaning) and offered us a go! I tried, and failed miserably so he put the stabilisers on. Great to have a go at, bloody hard to do in flip flops!
We finished off the day by trying to plan our route around Vietnam but failed miserably thanks to the combination of rubbish internet and Chinese censorship! Eventually we gave up and went to bed!
Next day, fresh (sort of) we headed to the Xi’an city walls. We’d heard on quite a few websites and people chatting (ear wigging is great while travelling) about hiring bikes to ride around the city walls, so we thought we’d check it out. See some sights and have a workout at the same time!
With a little luck and working out we found the station to get off (Yongningmen) at for the south side of the wall (unlike other city’s they don’t have tourist attractions listed near the stations) wandered a few hundred meters along the wall, paid to gain entry to the wall (54RMB/pp), wandered up the steps and hired one of the many bikes (we opted for the tandem, 90RMB for 2hrs). We thought we’d try Heather steering this time but it was too much hassle and I controlled the direction with my weight from the back so we switched and carried on!
The wall was great to cycle round, a few bumps to keep you awake and it was scorching hot. But we really enjoyed it, and considering it was a Sunday with the sun out there were very little people around.
With the wall conquered in about 2hrs we decided to head back into the main shopping/tourist area to visit the Drum and Bell towers.
We found the bell towers entrance in the same tunnel as the underground entrance, with small signs directing you to either the drum or bell tower (the drum tower is a small walk outside past Starbucks). The admission office was on the way to the bell tower, we got the dual ticket to both towers for 50RMB/pp. Both towers house what you would expect, bell and drum relics, but visit at the right time and there is a small performance in each of the towers, one with bells one with drums (surprisingly). The drum performance was definitely more to our liking, and if there was only time for one I would recommend that! The Bell tower has a unique view being in the middle of a busy roundabout, people watching was fun!
After coming out of the Drum tower we were immediately dumped into the Muslim quarter which we’re intending to explore another day. We had a quick look down the street but decided it was way to big for us to conquer in a few minutes so grabbed a mysterious bottle of white stuff and headed back to our hotel… P.s. The white stuff turned out to be a lovely yogurt to Heathers delight!
N.B. Something to note if you are interested in astronomy is that there are usually a bunch of rather large telescopes around the base of the drum tower in the evening. They look fairly well setup and will basically point it towards whatever you ask them to. Probably worth a look, but I don’t know how much it costs!
Next day we had a combination of lazing around, changing hotels, and visiting the Muslim quarter again after having eaten (mistake). The new hotel we checked into was a bit hard to find but when we did we did we were welcomed and shown to our room. Now, we would have been ok if this was the only room left, also twinned with the fact that we came to realise in Beijing that unless they specifically state you get a western toilet, you may get a traditional squat too… We got the squat, but to make things better, it was about a metre away from the bed, behind a shower curtain, and directly below the shower head! I decided to at least ask whether they had rooms with a western toilet, after a small amount of giggling from the girls at reception we were led to another room which was a little better than the first (but also what we had seen when we booked the hotel…)… At no extra cost, result.
So, room 1… Check out the room feature of the shower over the toilet, next to the pillow situation:
And room 2… Check out the fully westernised room (and also what was pictured on the hotel’s site):
The following day we headed to the Big Wild Goose pagoda (number 610 bus, 0.5RMB), not that much of a spectacle (we didn’t pay to get in though), better at night, but also had a good explore in the food mall just next to it. Strangely the ceiling of the mall was one huge screen, and the place was filled with speakers! Going to try and see whether they show films here!
We ended up getting some food from one of the many simmer pot restaurants in the mall, three sauce simmer pot. Nice restaurant, and had a few people waiting outside so we decided to have a go. The food selected (main dish of chicken to be safe, and a few accompaniments, lotus root for us), it was cooked on the hot stove at your table. One thing to note, if you order noodles, it depends on the main dish you order as to whether they are cooked with, or after you’ve eaten the meat. In our case we asked where the noodles were before we started eating and it took 3 waiters to explain that the noodles were added to the broth along with some water after you’d eaten most of the main dish… Doh! Overall though a nice place, however we would recommend going with a few people as one main dish can easily be shared between 4/5 people! We had to leave a fair amount, but we did our best.
Our final full day and we headed to the main event for Xi’an, the Terracotta Warriors, bus numbers 316, 914, 915 and 306 (we paid 8RMB each on the 914 bus) all head there from the train station and is a fraction of the price of the tours offered by hostels/hotels. The journey takes about an hour and you’re told when you’re there so no need to stay awake!
So, after trudging through a few market stalls following the other lost tourists we ended up at a dead end of ticket offices, one for entrance tickets, one for the electric car and the others for audio tours. NB Like most attractions in China everything has it’s own ticket and therefore price (entrance 150RMBpp, electric car 50RMBpp, audio guide 40RMBpp) which makes it slightly expensive (something that really bugged me about China). We made do with the entrance tickets and an audio guide (we like walking)!
Right, what to say about the mighty warriors?! Hmmm…! Have to say, not entirely what we expected! We’re not exactly history buffs, but we weren’t exactly balled over by the warriors. This may have been because we visited pits 2 and 3 first, leaving pit 1 till the end, but we were definitely disappointed by the first two pits. Short of the glass cabinets holding samples of a variety of the statues there wasn’t really much to see and the audio guide didn’t help all too much! Originally, pits 2 and 3 seemed to be missing main features and that it was temporally shut, until we realised that was what it was. So all in all, pits 2 and 3, for us, bit of a waste of time to put it bluntly! I’ll have to lookup what I should have been looking at!
Pit 3:
Pit 2:
Pit 1, the biggest pit was slightly different. When you walked in it it opened up to a huge hanger type building with the pit down and in front of you. Whilst the amount of statues of the warriors restored filled less than a quarter of the hanger I must admit I was a little underwhelmed at the display. To say this particular pit had been found in 1976 and opened to the public a few years later, the amount of progress excavating between then and now seemed minimal. Considering the push of this being the 8th wonder of the world and the racks of cash being made everyday from tourism there wasn’t anyone working on restoration. This could have been bad timing on our behalf but even a dummy archeologist banging away at a few pebbles may have made it a little more real. Let’s face it, you come to see the massive array of statues, and also to wonder at their height, detail, and projected power. Viewing from the sides of the gallery, above the statues you had very little of this and I think this was for us, the main let down of it. We thought it would definitely be better to be able to at least be at ground level with the statues and have the option to see them from above.
Pit 1:
Sadly our conclusion of the statues, if you have an explicit urge to see them, do it, but for others there are definitely better things to see and do in Xi’an!
Back within the Xi’an city walls we headed for food once more, our last proper meal here. We’d walked round the Muslim quarter a few times before deciding to eat anything, inspecting what was on offer. I headed there with a set meal in my head, a popular beef bun, squid kebab, pigs trotter, quails eggs kebab, and a rice cake that we’d seen before. Obviously there was room to adjust that menu!
What we eventually had was this:
All very good! And all pretty much 5CNY, apart from the beef bun which was 15CNY and worth it! It was the most popular thing down the street with people taking pictures of the front of the restaurant.
Anyhow, we headed out of Xi’an on our way back to Shanghai, the land of Western!
Starting to like China a little…
