Xi'an

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At least once a day in China, I feel like I'm going to die.

We arrived in Xi'an in the evening on the 19th. We got off to a rocky start - first we were duped into taking a "taxi" with these pretend taxi drivers. They basically use their own cars, charge a flat rate (no meters), and do the trips as fast as they can. We were taken across entire airport parking lot looking for the taxi vehicle to arrive at a family mini van, we then learned that they were going to put more people in the vehicle as well, making twice the money on one run... clever... However, Binnson was pretty sure we were about to be murdered. He kept watch on the back seat while I kept watch on the people in the front seat. It was definitely sketchy!! Binnson told me that it would make a good start to a horror movie, that put good storylines in my head for the 40 min drive from the airport to our hotel!!! I do not do well with the scary movie thing!! So, moral of the story: don't second guess your gut feelings. Cab drivers wait in their cars, not at the exit of the airport on foot.

After we got dropped off at our hotel.. correction - Motel, we checked in without any problems and headed to our room. I have a feeling these rooms could be rented by the hour. It's pretty nasty. We'll just leave it at that. We are laying on top of the towels instead of in the bed to sleep. Hahaha. Soooo, Xi'an was not looking like a place I wanted to come back to.

The next day was a lot of fun. After getting off to another bad start when I accidentally formatted my memory card in my camera and Binnson spending a long time trying to recover the pictures that we didn't have backed up, we were finally off. We went to the bell tower and the drum tower and to a little muslim street market place. The food is dirt cheap and pretty tasty. We ventured through the market not really looking to buy anything and ended up walking out with 5 shirts for Binns, a shirt for me, and two 80 litre North Face hiking backpacks. We got our backpacks for $20 Canadian each!!!!! I bought a 40L bag at MEC before we left to go backpacking for like $170... Ridic! The best part is they don't even seem like knock-offs - guess we will see how fast they disintegrate before we judge that. Next stop was the city wall. We rented a two seater bike and rode the wall perimeter. It was a lot of fun, the whole ride probably took us just over an hour and a half. After grabbing dinner, a friend of a friend of Binnson's relatives picked us up and wanted to show us the South Lake at night. Her and her husband picked us up and we went down to this beautiful lake and took some pictures. Jenny spoke English and gave us some good tips about where to go and what to check out while we are in Xi'an or the next time we come back.

Today, we started off looking for a bite to eat. We ended up at this grocery store/market place in the lunch rush hour. It was craziness. They have this section where all 8 million people in Xi'an are buying noodles and dumplings and random foods all at the same time. They could really use some sort of expansion. Following our usual tactics of "When in China, do as the Chinese do" we watched the guy ahead of us and tried our best to order some sort of noodle dish by doing the pointing method. It was really cool watching the dumplings being made and cooked and sold like 10 mins later. Afterward, we headed out to the Terracotta Soldiers. The excavation pits and the ruins were pretty interesting however the museum is NOT. Boring! I guess I don't like museums... haha. We are having a quick break from the heat and then heading out to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda to check out the water light show and then hang out down in that area for the night. We drove past yesterday and it looked gorgeous. Lots of lights and tons of people down there, it's also right by the university!

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Photos

City Wall entrance in Xi'an
All lit up at night!

Drum Tower
Binns practicing his moves

Run little dog!
He knows...

Comments

[Mom]

Grandma
Ok -may have to delete your opening line before I print this off for Grandma!! LOL

[Sandra Toner]

blog stories
I am really enjoying your stories about your travels.... I think its wise to always listen to your gut feeling.. especially when it comes to taking taxis or just knowing that something doesn't feel right etc.. But you are most likely not going to get murdered... LOL... People are just really really poor in these countries and do whatever it takes to make money and alot of times you are going to feel like you got ripped off or scammed. I had some stories when I backpacked through europe by myself and I feel stupid that I didn't listen to my "inner" voices.. or whatever you want to call them. Luckily nothing really bad happened but common sense must ALWAYS prevail ! You just keep enjoying the sights, sounds, foods, people and cultures as its more of a learning experience and something that you will cherish for the rest of your life !! ENJOY !!