Good to see but good to go!

Asia » China
November 9th 2010

Published: November 16th 2010

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No Filth Please

Yes Mike - hurry up we've got a train to catch!!

Xian

Tuesday 2nd nov - depart Beijing, overnight train to Xi’an. Train leaves at 16:45. Got the tickets (proper ones now Maggie has got her head back into gear). Chill out in morning, meet Michael at 3 for some dinner and give him back his property. Set off at 4, tube to station, hop on train and away we go.

That was the plan...but I am quickly learning that nothing is that simple in china. (I am sure you are sensing there is a massive but coming)
We set off and arrived at the tube station to meet Mike. We buy 4 tickets as we will need to get off and back on but for some reason the guard women starts to kick off about something. Aint got a clue what she wanted or why, but the gist was she wanted 2 of the tickets back. This set us back 15 mins. Eventually meet Mike and get some nice food down us. A bit rushed but we set off at 4 as planned. Anyhow, the restaurant was quite a walk from the tube and when we finally boarded the underground it dawned on us that the station was at

dinner

the other side of the city - shit!! We was literally counting the minutes and it was gunna be tight. When we arrived we had 6 minutes to go. Legged it out of the underground and jumped in the 1st cab (some good advice from a kind passenger) Taxi finally got the message to hurry the fuck up and he stuck his foot down for a white knuckle ride to arrive at the station. 3 mins to go. Jumped out the taxi and had to run up loads of stairs and about 200 meters to the station. 1 min to go. Arrived at the front door to find loads of Chinese people trying to get in, bustling through we had to take off every bag to be scanned. 30 seconds to go. Running through the platform the worst feeling happened….we missed it...nooooooooooo.

Mares bless her was in tears at the prospect of being pretty much stranded (we had a sleeper carriage and a hostel booked on the other end) Anyway she sorted it out (as she normally does) we got some of our money back and a later train...the only catch is that we had to stand up…ALL NIGHT!!

Yorkshire tea - like tea used to be!!

would have been the perfect brew except we had to use cream from McD's...

Anyhow, as we sat in the station (as we had to wait 3 hrs for train) having a Yorkshire tea, Mary looked up and who did we see? Out of millions of people in this city we saw Maggie who had also missed her train…WTF!! Was good to see her again though and it somehow lightened the mood.

The train journey was a nightmare, we got shoved in a dingy carriage, right outside the toilet with loads of people and the thought of standing up for 11hrs was mashing my head up. Luckily we found the dining cart and managed to get a seat for the night.

Xian - it was good. The actual city was very busy and very polluted. The hostel we stayed in was really nice. Proper amazing Eggy Bread. The first night we just chilled and got over the ordeal of the previous day. The next day we went to see the Terracotta Warriors. An hour bus ride and we were there. They are amazing. The site is massive and it was a massive tomb for one of the emperors. The detail that was on them is fantastic.
After this we decided to leave