China in your hand

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China is..

We arrived at Xi'an train station after a pretty horrific train journey sat in an overcrowded carriage on a hard seat for the whole night. We had arranged for our hostel to pick us up but when we emerged from the station there was no one to be found. We waited for a bit and then got in a taxi after several dismissive no's from drivers and made our way to the hostel where upon we were told the pick up guy was sick... Thanks for the notice guys! 
We were both tired but I forced myself to stay awake and headed into town to sort out our train tickets out of Xi'an whilst Rhian slept. This turned out to be the most uncomfortable thing I've had to do on the whole trip! I had queued for over an hour, memorising the lines for how to buy our tickets and when I nailed the first line I was confident of this being a doddle, but then she replied in Chinese and that was game over. I stumbled my way through 'wednesday' and 'two tickets' but in the end i just spun around pleading for someone who could speak English, but they all just repeated things the woman was saying. I was starting to panic now before two girls appeared from around the corner like saviours, and between us we managed to book two tickets to Chengdu on the right day!! I was so grateful to them but they disappeared before I could say thank you properly. I've never been so far outside my comfort zone, but I was strangely proud of myself for at least trying!? Anyway that was the hard stuff sorted so now we could enjoy our time in Xi'an!
We hired some dodgy Chinese bikes and circled around the entire city walls which was so much fun but we definitely felt it afterwards, cobbles and rickety bikes don't make for a comfortable backside!! 
We ate in the hostel mostly as it was pretty good food and cheap and to get cheaper you had to eat from street stalls which looked, how do I put this, interesting. We met some really nice english couples there, Mark and Catherine who we met at the Terracotta Warriors (more on that soon) and also got the Chengdu train with, and Issy and Nim, who we'd struck up conversation with one night over a few beers and Devil Wears Prada. Rhian was a bit starstruck as Nim had starred in a BBC adventure gameshow called Dropzone which was on a couple of years ago. It turns out Rhian had loved it and proceeded to interrogate Nim about all things Dropzone! I'm pretty sure he loved it :-)

We'd booked ourselves on a tour with the hostel to see the Warriors but had to contend with several 'situations'. First we were taken to a factory where they made the crappy replicas that were sold throughout the city (we were told about this after we'd paid, as you can imagine, it wasn't in the advert). The tour itself was a bit of a farce as we were only given 1hr40m to look around the 3 excavation pits and the museum instead of the 2-3 hours we felt we wanted. This was because a lady had to catch a train in the afternoon and had been guaranteed to be back in time (she also wasn't told about the factory). So we ended up being a little rushed around but we didn't miss anything, and believe me it was not to be missed. The Terracotta Warriors are a sight to behold. An immense formation of a general with his soldiers and cavalry, in rank and file, all defending the emperor's tomb, and all with different faces. They were originally built with wooden and bronze weapons but these have all either decayed or been removed. They also were all found with their faces and uniforms fully painted but the paint faded very quickly when exposed and they weren't able to protect it in time. A truly incredible sight and one I thought I'd only ever see in books and on television!! 
Another farce ensued when a preposterous Australian man lost his wife but didn't tell anyone until we arrived at a place for lunch, where he then let loose on the poor tour guide, Lu Lu, blaming her, and getting a little too insensitive for our liking. A truly horrid man. This kind of put a sour end to the trip but luckily the Warriors were impressive enough to blot out the events of the day and make it memorable for the right reasons! 
We left on the hard-earned train the next morning bound for Chengdu with Catherine and Mark, although they were in a different part of the train to us. We both spent half the time asleep on our bunkbeds just to kill the time if anything! The journey was nice enough, following a river through green, mountainous valleys, and passed without a hitch. We jumped in a taxi at the other end with the guys and checked in at Sim's hostel, soon to be realised by us as The Best Hostel In China. We went to the bar just to chill out for the evening and also managed to meet Nim and Issy there when they got in a couple of hours after us. 
On our first day we went to the Wenzhou Monastery tucked away amongst some touristy shops in the now familiar 'ancient Chinese building' style. The monastery itself was very serene and beautiful, several different halls for prayer and study all perfectly maintain and still fully used. It was a delight to walk around and we also bumped into a Dutch family who'd we'd been on the terracotta warriors tour with but not spoken to. We walked around and then had a bottomless cup of Jasmine tea in the adjoining teahouse with them and spend ages just chatting about each other's travel experiences! We liked Chengdu already and the hostel was a really great place to hang out, so we decided to extend our stay there to 5 nights, an unprecedented move thus far in China! :-) The hostel then went up a notch in our books when we went to book our train tickets out when we discovered they could book our tickets for stages after the next one, which we took full advantage of! it was such a relief to not have to worry about sorting them out for a while! 
That night whilst sat around with the guys we decided to go out and hit chengdu's bars. We met a guy called Sam in the hostel bar who said he'd heard  of a bar that gives westerners free drinks. Sold. So we all jumped in a taxi and headed for CC's where we proceeded to have an excellently random night, plied with free bottles of £100 whiskey and iced tea, showing the Chinese how it's done!

Us and the 4 guys had all booked places on the hostel-organised tour to Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Centre, or 'Panda Park' as we preferred it.. We'd both never seen a Giant Panda before so when we turned the corner and saw them all munching away on bamboo it was a pretty special moment. We could have stayed right there for hours, they are enchanting animals, incredibly photogenic and very lazy! But a tour being a tour we moved on to see the Red pandas they also had at the park which were cute etc but they're not giant pandas are they. We were led around the park and only got to see a couple more and there was some habitat building going on, with the pandas kept inside temporarily. A lot of us wanted to go back to the first enclosure but our wishes were not to be granted. But still, another amazing experience to tell the grandkids about!! :-)
Mark and Catherine were leaving the next day and didnt want to risk missing their flight by coming with us and Nim and Issy to Leshan to see the world's biggest Buddha statue! We had to get a bus for a couple of hours and when we got there we were ushered into a local bus which we assumed was headed to the Buddha site, which it was. The Leshan Giant Buddha is set in a huge park housing many other buddha and deity statues which we spent the rest of the day wandering around marvelling at the ancientness of it all. The Buddha itself is absolutely massive, built into the side of a cliff overlooking the river and is impressive to witness. We decided not to join the 4 hour queue to get to the bottom, to the feet, where people were praying and stayed at head-level! All in all a really nice day in some fresher air away from urban China!! 

Our next stop is Chongqing on the banks of the dominant Yangtze River..

Miss you all!

G&R
xx
 

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