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Published: October 2nd 2011
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21st september
Last night in Pingyao we decided to hit the "Sakura" bar and watched some singing (karoke?) by a couple of chinese girls who were pretty good and were grabbing the attention of some older men wandering by. After a few too many beers we decided to head back but then we dumped into Kristen, James and a german guy and ended up going back to the bar. When we finally left the bar around 1:45 everywhere was bordered and locked up, it was pitch black. while katie was a little (lot) drunk she was wandering down the street singing "harmony, harmony, where are you" we eventually found our guesthouse and banged on the door and mr deng the owner answered in his string vest and told us to "hush hush" which forced katie into a reapeative roll of saying "sorry mr deng, sorry mr deng"
next day we were both feeling rough so spent it wandering the town waiting for our night train.
also forgot to mention that when men were taking photos of Katie and women were calling me beautiful, michael stated "if you think shes hot, you should see the other girls back home" Thanks PC,
love you too
10 hours later...
Xi'an
arrived around 6am and made our way to the hostel. after not much sleep and facing a very busy train station we opted for a taxi which only cost 70p so cant complain. the han tang hostel was lovely with excellent staff and a lovely roof top terrace. However there was a huge rabbit (who looked just like snowflake/avalanche...Helen's pet when we were little) and it was being kept in a hamster cage attached to a tiny sort of kennel thing. not nice.
Xi'an it self was not amazing but ok to spend a few days in. on first day we explored the muslim quater which was cool and we ate at a very crazy resturant.
after a while searching for the oldest resturant in xi'an we were greeted by a lady who just said "fifth floor, fifth floor"
when we arrived on the 5th floor we were greeted by 20 chinese people wanting to get in the lift and in chinese style they all rushed on before anyone could get off but thankfully we managed to get through the crowd and enter the resturant.
we walked in to find
alot of noise and alot of chinese sitting around a huge tables. we proceed to head to a empty table at the back but we were ushered to the front and sat on a table with 6 chinese ppl. we sat looking around thinking wtf and waiting for some service/menu but thankfully a lady sitting next to us shouted at the waitresses for 5minutes until they brought a menu over. she was friendly as opposed to the waitresses who were not! we managed to order some spring rolls and some type of beef stew?? we were given two bowls with bread in and told to rip it up "small small" after about 10mins of ripping up the bread the waitress brought over some amazing spring rolls and whisked our bowls away. bowls did return later with beef, soup, noodles poured over the bread. the dish was quite nice. we then headed back for a early night after a fun/stressfull/interesting experience.
Next day we had booked onto a tour to see the Terracotta warriors through the hostel as we had heard godd things about the tour guide....we were not disappointed. The tour guide was called XiaXia (pronounced JaJa) and she
was "26...no 27 year old chinese woman and still single!" She was hilarious, and took a fancy to Michael, asking him lots of questions about the information she had given us. Unluckily for Michael he kept not knowing the answers, partly because JAJA spoke at a hundered miles an hour, and partly because she was sitting on his deaf side in the van on the way there. She told us that her English name was "Lady Ja Ja" She was great fun and gave us lots of good information about the warriors and the crazy emperor who had the army built to protect him in the afterlife. All the warriors were built by slaves who were killed after they had finished the job. It is thought that there were 8000 wariiors built one for each of the slaves that were killed. Each one has a different face and it seems that these are the faces of the workers. After going to the warriors we went to a restaurnat whih looked pretty dirty and horrible, but JAJA ordered our food and wehad one of our best meals in China so far, sharing lots of lovely dishes with otehrs on the tour,
we were stuffed afterwards and only had to pay 3pound each for the meal...result!
That evening we chilled out in the bar area at the hostel with a couple of people form the tour, including an Australian from Melbourne, who has offered to show us round when we get there and an Irish girl who had been living in New York, then Melbourne for past 5 years and was on her way home back to Ireland after her tour of China. We were joined by a danish guy who's English was amazing, just like all the Dutch people we have met who speak perfect English, much better than ours! And we met the first two English people so far, 2 lads from Surrey.
Next day we mooched around Xi'an and went to the drum tower...which was OK, but to be hinest looked like all the other temples in China!! WE met a lovely English girl who is on Clincal Doctorate course at Royal Holloway! Michale was realy pleased (not) when we found this out, as it meant that I started talking more psychology to someone! I should have mentioned that Kristin had also just finshed a psychology masters!!
Had a not very nice meal that night, basically it was lamb(?) covered in cumin...now I like cumin, but I feel 3 pots of cumin on a bit of meat is a little excessive!!
Next day we set off for our plane, we MAY have left a little late, this MAY have been my fault, but I feel that it is hard to determine cause and effect in this situation and that it is very important not to place blame as it only ends up causing arguments and undue distress! Anyway we were late for the shuttle bus which would take us to the airport and the lady who appeared to be organising the system (I use the word organising very loosely, after all we are in China) asked us what time we were flying. When I said 1pm, she said "no" and pointed at her watch to indiate that we were clearly far too late, what were we thinking?? Again I said yes 1pm, again she asid "No", this continued for a while and then she wadered off. A few minutes later she bundled us into a car with another Chinese man and a Chinese man driving(unmarked.....I was
a little nervous at this point, but desperate times and all that). WE were told that this car would take us to the airport in 40 minutes and would cost us 60 yuan (6 pound) which was only a little more expensive than shuttle bus and much quicker. We agreed and set off in the car. The driver was playing music videos of a clairnet player...it was a very long 40 minutes with this stupid clarinet player let me tell you. every song sounded the same, and the videos were hideous, at one point he was playing the clarinet to a pregnant woman's stiomach on a beach...ridiculous. Anyway we fogot about our worries as the clarinet player was so annoying, and we did arive at the airport in one piece. However we definitely won't be doing the same again, as it was a little nerve wracking really. Also the driver dropped us at the wrong terminal, despite us insiting he leave us at the otehr terminal, luckily they weren't far away from each other. So we wree at the airport ready to fly onto our next destination Chengdu...where we get to see the pandas!!!!!!
PS. Photos will follow, the
computer here has warnings about viruses and we don't want to risk it!!!
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Robert Kirby
non-member comment
Loving the blogs and pictures dudes keep them coming! We got your postcard from beijing, glad to read that you are having a good time, Can't believe you've been gone a month already! Take Care me xx