Belated round-up, Xi'an/Shanghai

So all mon beautifuls, I'm so sorry I've been SO FREAKING SILENT - that's what happens when all this crazy stuff starts to happen and you don't even have time to SLEEP, and then afterwards less is happening but you are still catching up on SLEEP......... but the heat here (a mere 30 degrees but a sultry 65% MINIMUM humidity) has made me go frantic.....

We will begin.

So I last left you in Xi'an, after 12 hours on a hard seat train, uncomfortable seats and horrible chocolate bars but Rob and I made it through (that's TEAMWORK!) and hopped in Xi'an, booked on a tour to see the ol' warriors the next day, and, well basically we conked out. Then went to find food. Not good. But a good trip to the warriors (even if it was preceded by what amounted to shopping opportunities under the guise of showing us the OFFICIAL Terracotta merchandising kilns, and the silk-making process). The warriors themselves were definitely a sight to be seen, there are THOUSANDS of them! Many of them broken though, and some of then very oddly made. There was a really skinny one that looked like one of those grey aliens disguised.

We spent the evening with one of our Trans-Mongolian buddies, Francis, and the next day wandering around before leap[ing on our train (thankfully a hard SLEEPER this time) to Shanghai, to meet the lovely Len. After a 20 hour train journey (a mere pip!!) and a struggle across town, we found the young scallywag, and joyous scenes commenced:







After which we calmed down and went for a wander round Shanghai. Calmed down. HAAHHAHAHA!














And then we kind of crashed out, to recoup our energy for the next day of adventure.

The next day involved going to the Shanghai Museum (hint: when they say it's shaped like a vessel, they don't mean a ship, it will help you find the museum much faster). Outside the museum was a fountain. Len, still a scallywag, pretended he couldn't work the camera and I got a jet of water in the boob.



















As you can imagine all this fun was very tiring so we went home, and met an AMERICAN called JOHN, and, well, basically he's our favourite person in China because he (a) he took us on a tourist tunnel trip that was like taking acid, and (b) he showed us to a bar that had something called "freeflow Barcardi" between 10 and 11, and, drinking aficionados, this means you can order AS MUCH AS YOU WANT and they DO NOT CHARGE! Fools! Little do they know the staying power of our types. I ain't even kidding, I think we downed a bottle between us, with Coke, which led to me running along the street demanding prices of beers from bar staff, and yelling (I can't even spell it) "Ty Gueila!" (too expensive) and then Rob and I racing back to the Mexican bar (Mojitos for under 2 quid), and asking people for their Mexican hats (it worked but then i lost it for a round of Mojitos from a man at the bar)

See here:












Me dancing on the bar - the barmaid AND the DJ (Chris from Manchester) told me to!



My view (including the fogginess)












We sort of lost each other and John and I wandered down to the Bund to watch the sunrise - sadly the boys had my camera so I couldn't take any pictures but it was very beautiful. The company was passable - from what I recall. Getting up the next morning was interesting. We went for dumplings, there were no veggie dumplings so I got noodles with what appeared to be testicle-shaped tofu in (thanks len) and we got sat in the managers office. Not kidding:









(Post noodle fatigue)



We went up a really tall building and stood in some REALLY posh restaurants looking at the view, until we felt too uncomfortable to stya any more.

I don't really remember much else about the day, until we went to 100RMB (7GBP) all you can drink. We tried to play drinking games but we had no cards. So we just drank, and eventually we all agreed to go to John's school and chat to his students - according to him many of them hadn't seen a REAL white man before he turned up, and we were getting fed up of big cities, so obviously we were pretty stoked to go to a small town that we'd never heard of, and meet some bright Chinese kids - and so began one of the very best weeks of my traveling experiences (tbh, perhaps even my life).... but more of that in my next blog.

Some more narrative pictures to keep you happy:

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