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Published: August 15th 2007
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Xian
Terracotta warriors The good news is, we survived "Hard Seat", the bad news is, it was with little or no sleep and very sore bum and leg muscles! Hard seat would be fine for a short journey, but trying to sleep on a very hard non-adjustable seat with all lights on and people running around the place wasn't much fun. Mind you the Chinese on the train didn't seem too bothered, they slept well, heads on tables, oblivious to the discomfort. Mathias survived it fine too- I guess I'll have to toughen up a small bit for this budget lark!
Our plan here was to spend 3 or 4 days in Xi'an-more than enough to see the sights, but we actually ended up staying a week. We had hoped the smog might just be a Beijing thing, Xi'an is only a little town by Chinese standards-over 3 million inhabitants compared with Beijing's 14 million. But again it was grey grey and more grey. We need to see some sun! We'd have better tans after a weekend in Killarney...
Anyway we were picked up at the train station by a helpful chap from "Bob's Friendly Guesthouse"-our home for the next week. The
Xian
City Wall good news is that prices certainly come down outside of Beijing-only 10euro for a double room with dodgy aircon and a bathroom. Chinese ensuite bathrooms are a breed unto themselves though. You don't actually get a bathtub, or even a shower cubicle, instead the whole room is your shower!. There's a shower head (usually with warm water available at certain times only) and a plug hole in the ground. I won't complain too much though as we had the unparalleled luxury of western style toilets. There was free internet, table tennis and chess games (Mathias taught me how to play chess in Mongolia and I have yet to beat him once-fecker!), and the place had a mini restaurant. Not too bad we thought...
Our impressions of the guesthouse..well for starters there were about 3 times more employees than guests even though it was high season. Then we realised the facilities offered by not be all they were cracked up to be. The internet tended to break down at the most inopportune moments or else it was monopolised by a young boy intent on playing computer games. Alright we thought, we'll order some breakfast here before we take a wander
Xian
Terracotta Army around the city. We ordered the brekkie, sat in the communal room, waited 20 minutes only for the guy in reception to come along and tell us there would be no breakfast today, but he assured us that we could get whatever we wanted at any time tomorrow. Hmmph, we're not the best people without our morning coffee but we said fair enough and headed into the city for a bit of a wander.
The first thing we noticed about Xi'an was the friendliness of the people. Granted we had just come from the distinctly unsmiling Beijing, but literally every person we met during our week here was friendly, helpful and obliging. Also, no one tried to rip us off-woohoo!! So we started to relax a bit and realised that the bad experiences we had in Beijing weren't representative. One thing you need to get used to in China is the fact that people stare-A lot! We imagined that they would be pretty used to westerners but some people turn their heads to stare at you. Mathias in particular is very popular with the Chinese, maybe I just blend in a little more 😉. Little kids stare up at him and wave at him shouting hello. In fact in Xi'an we were almost constantly greeted with a cheery "hello" on every street we walked down. It all felt very welcoming. The city centre is still surrounded by its ancient city wall, which was very impressive, especailly when lit up at night, most of the pagodas and towers of interest to tourists are located inside the wall, as is the Muslim Quarter.
Our first day in Xi'an was also our first encounter with the Muslim Chinese, the Hui. Xi'an has its own Muslim quarter with lots of lovely small restaurants offering noodles, lamb, breads (everything but por basically!) and strangely enough the area had a disarmingly large proportion of ladies undergarment shops.. Again here the people were lovely.
Returning to our guesthouse that night, I have to say I just wasn't all that impressed. Although the staff were quite helpful, the room wasn't great and the aircon was beyond crap. Also the place was like a ghost town, no atmosphere at all. Plus it turned out that my bed was infested with bed bugs, I woke up the next morning with the evilest of itchy insect bites all down my right side, which swelled up to alarming proportions since I couldn't stop scratching them. Apparently insects prefer girls, something to do with our hormones-so Mathias escaped unscathed ;-)
That morning we thought we would try our luck again with the breakfast to start us off on another day of exploring the city. Mathias went down before me, managed to get a coffee, ordered brekkie for both of us and sat himself down in the empty communal room. 20 minutes later I arrive and no sign of breakfast. We return to reception where the guy has to take our order for a second time. God knows, maybe bananas with toast is diffcult to remember, so we sit down for another 20 minutes. Finally we get sick of waiting and go back to reception where nothing has stirred since we left it. We tell him to forget it, and go to a much better neighbouring restaurant where we get a delicious noodle soup for just 80cents each. I think we spent most of the rest of the time giving out about the guesthouse's inability to make toast (careful to do our bitching in German in case they understood us)
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