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Published: March 3rd 2008
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Nicky; Hello!! It has been a busy few days for us so you will have to bare with us as we fill you in. After our day at the terracotta warriors we decided to explore a bit more or Xian. As usual the best way to do this is to hit the streets and start walking so we headed to the Little Goose Pagoda (there is also a Big Goose Pagoda but i will come there later) It was very beautiful but very expensive to get in so we had a quick look then headed to the Shaanxi museum to learn a bit more about the area we had been staying in. It is so interesting to try and get your head around the huge history in China. There were replica villages and skulls from a million and a half years ago!!! We spent a few hours wandering around here before heading to the Big Goose Pagoda. As the name suggests it is bigger than the other one - genius! - and has massive steps and a square leading up to it. We decided to get a late lunch / early dinner in the square as we were trying to waste
a few hours (firstly our train to Shanghai didnt leave until 1.30am) and we wanted to wait around to see a fountain and music show they hold every night at the front of the pagoda. So we headed into this restaurant and realised, obviously, that no-one spoke any english and there wasnt an english menu. So ever resourceful wedecided to point at the pictures that were dotted around teh restaurant at food we thought looked good!! It was highly amusing but I am delighted to say that we managed to order dumplings and 2 noodle dishes and they were delicious. Unfortunately the lunch didnt waste as much time as we thought but we wandered around for a while, looked at a few of the stalls and the fair that was in the square and watched people flying kites. Kites are huge in China, there were people flying them all over Tianamen sq in Bejing and loads in Xian. Some of them are really ornate and made to look like eagles and butterflies. Anyway eventually - about half an hour late! - the music/fountain show started and after a few false starts it was really impressive. There were hundreds of people around the edges of the steps trying to catch a good view and get pictures.
After the show we headed back to our hostel to wait out the time till our train left, we finally got going about 2am, we were shattered and fell asleep almost straight away.
Neil:
Xian is a great city, the best ive been to in China. Its full of history, sights, food and its clean and tidy. We also went around the Muslim quarter which was great - full of the best street food weve come across - including "ricepudding on a stick" as Nicky put it.
As usual we had our transport problems!! It started when we left the big goose pagoda at aroung 930pm - dark. We thought we would be brave and get the bus back to the hostel as it was a good 6 miles away. Armed with the knowledge that bus number 30 would take us there, we jumped on the bus and paid our fare. After about 10 minutes I got a feeling something wasnt right. It turned out we got the right bus in the wrong direction. We made it to the very last stop on the bus route where the drivertold us to get off his bus (i think he said that). Pitch black in what looked like the bumhole of China, we eventually found a number 30 that looked to be going in the right direction. 1 1/2 hours later we arrived back at our hostel. Our transport problems continued, however!!
We got on our train from Xian to Shanghai! No rushing around, we got there with plenty of time to spare. We read in the guidebook that it takes about 8hours to get to Shanghai so we were due to arrive at around 9.30am. Perfect! Just to confirm I attempted to ask the hostesses on the train - who laughed her head off every time i spoke to her?!? I asked the arrival time and she didn't understand because she giggled the words "one thirty two". This was the current time! Never mind I thought and off we went to sleep. Our alarm woke us up at 730am and we started to prepare for alighting the train. When I looked out of the window, thinks didn't look right - it was all farm land! Mmmm. We then arrived in a station we recognised which happened to be half way to Shanghai!! It turned out that we were to arrive at 1.32am. Its a wierd feeling to expect a 8 hour jouney and having a 24 hour journey.
Booking trains and getting by in China can be really hard at times - almost nobody speaks english and because of the different characters - its hard to try to speak from a phrase book. A great adventure though!!
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Understanding the language.....
Me thinks you should have studied those take away menu's back home in a little more detail!!!!!