Arrived in Xi'an, and managed to find the right bus to take us near our hostel thanks to some guys in Pingyao. Unfortunately, after that it was down to a Lonely Planet map and me. I'm not bad at navigating, but it does take things like an accurate map, and correct street names to navigate well. As Lonely Planet maps seem to be or possess neither of these, it took a while to find Han Tan Inn, but it was worth it. The place was only 6 months old, and was more like a hotel than hostel. We dumped our stuff and heading out searching grub, but lack of authentic little cafes and restaurants meant that we ended up drinking coffee in KFC, and eating strange cakes from a street stall. Nothing is as it seems with cakey things, and if I saw a cream cake, I wouldn't be surprised if it had beans in the middle and wasn't sweet in the slightest. Our cakes were very odd, and best of a deep fried bad bunch. We were still tired out, so we got some kip for a couple of hours before venturing out again, which was a mistake, as it was a Sunday and the shops and streets were mobbed. Jo hit the hay early that night and I stayed up listening to a man sing English songs in the bar, but who obviously didn't speak English as the words were more sounds and he paused for affect in strange places.
Next morning we wandered around the Muslim Quarter, looking at all the stalls and searching for a bloody great mosque. All we managed to find was a shedload of fake watches which Jo managed to get in a row over with a woman on a stall because she was doing "bad business" all because she didn't want the bloody watch in the first place! Daft woman thought it was a bartering technique! We then walked miles along quiet stalls selling calligraphy bits, and along the city walls, past trees full of caged birds, and out towards a supposedly famous pagoda. The pagoda was a bit pants and in the middle of a big park you had to pay to get into, so we carried on in search of a "curio market" which sounded interesting (so long as it wasn't somewhere they killed cats). Turns out that it doesn't exist anymore, but a massive brand new Crowne Plaza hotel does in its place, so we wandered back, for some dinner.
Following morning we got up early and went to see the eponymous Terracotta Army with Lucy and Tim who we met in our hostel. The place is split into 3 "pits" but these are housed in aircraft hangars. They are huge, and all with different ranks of soldier or infantry, and with many still covered in the buildings which the emporer had build around them, so you can still see the sunken structure of these roofs, under which must still lay hundreds of untouched artefacts. What makes it so strange is that it was all uncovered so recently, in 1989, when a farmer dug a hole for a well. That was in the corner of pit 1, where the famous pictures of rank upon rank of soldiers are best preserved. A lot are heavily damaged where buildings collapsed on them over the years, but the archaeologists seem to be big puzzle fans from the work you can see going on. We headed back, went to the post office and offloaded the Chinese teaset I bought in a moment of either clarity or madness (which struck me dumb, as when I asked how much, she said a number well below what I was wanting to pay, but I had to barter a bit, so I knocked off a couple of quid and got some jasmine tea thrown in for free), and a load of other crap plus some guidebooks I'd been lugging around since December, then back to the Muslim Quarter for some early dinner before our next train that night to Shanghai!
Next morning we wandered around the Muslim Quarter, looking at all the stalls and searching for a bloody great mosque. All we managed to find was a shedload of fake watches which Jo managed to get in a row over with a woman on a stall because she was doing "bad business" all because she didn't want the bloody watch in the first place! Daft woman thought it was a bartering technique! We then walked miles along quiet stalls selling calligraphy bits, and along the city walls, past trees full of caged birds, and out towards a supposedly famous pagoda. The pagoda was a bit pants and in the middle of a big park you had to pay to get into, so we carried on in search of a "curio market" which sounded interesting (so long as it wasn't somewhere they killed cats). Turns out that it doesn't exist anymore, but a massive brand new Crowne Plaza hotel does in its place, so we wandered back, for some dinner.
Following morning we got up early and went to see the eponymous Terracotta Army with Lucy and Tim who we met in our hostel. The place is split into 3 "pits" but these are housed in aircraft hangars. They are huge, and all with different ranks of soldier or infantry, and with many still covered in the buildings which the emporer had build around them, so you can still see the sunken structure of these roofs, under which must still lay hundreds of untouched artefacts. What makes it so strange is that it was all uncovered so recently, in 1989, when a farmer dug a hole for a well. That was in the corner of pit 1, where the famous pictures of rank upon rank of soldiers are best preserved. A lot are heavily damaged where buildings collapsed on them over the years, but the archaeologists seem to be big puzzle fans from the work you can see going on. We headed back, went to the post office and offloaded the Chinese teaset I bought in a moment of either clarity or madness (which struck me dumb, as when I asked how much, she said a number well below what I was wanting to pay, but I had to barter a bit, so I knocked off a couple of quid and got some jasmine tea thrown in for free), and a load of other crap plus some guidebooks I'd been lugging around since December, then back to the Muslim Quarter for some early dinner before our next train that night to Shanghai!
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