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Published: April 22nd 2017
We left the hotel at 930am for the three minute walk to the train station, finding the correct waiting room crowds of commuters are smaller than in the larger Chinese cities. We boarded the train just before 10am after walking straight to the front of the queue and passing through the entrance gate first, it was then a matter of finding our carriage on what is quite a long train, there were at least 16 double story carriages. We have purchased hard seat tickets costing Y73($16) for this seven hour section of our journey and the upright seats are in fact very hard and uncomfortable and the carriage is cramped and full of sick people. The boy opposite me is snorting & snuffling and not putting his hand over his mouth when he coughs he is also wiping snot on his jacket, we both live in fear we will catch whatever it is he’s got. We passed the time reading and playing hangman. Tony bought me a snazzy pen with different coloured lights.
At about 130pm, some guards came around to check our tickets, and the woman mumbled something to us. Of course, we didn’t understand her, so she wrote
down “soft seat Y34” – basically she was offering us an upgrade. We jumped at the opportunity and are now seated in the soft seat section, which is a significant improvement the seats are bigger and more comfortable, much more room and we have four seats to ourselves, certainly worth the extra $7. There is a better class of people here too, no one spitting or hacking. I expect the rest of the journey will be much faster and more pleasant now.
The countryside is much prettier now, lots of green fields and blue skies, too bad about the five nuclear power stations we have passed so far. Tony engaged in a lengthy conversation with a young Chinese man who lives in the USA while he eats a punit of cherry tomatoes he bought from a vendor. His English is good and he has been very helpful so far. Train journey still non-eventful but passing quickly even though we have been delayed about half an hour. Lee has offered to help us buy our train tickets which proved to be a god send as the Xi’an train station was a nightmare, as soon as we disembarked we were encircled
by touts, even though our accommodation is pre-booked, they still refused to leave us alone.
Lee was meeting his girlfriend and daughter, so we met up with them and set off to find the ticket window. It wasn’t the normal type of window where you can only buy tickets for that day or the next, we had to go to one much farther away which we would NEVER have found by ourselves, it was a small dinghy window that didn’t look like anything at all really. Lee helped us buy our tickets for the 17 hour journey to Chengdu, on a soft sleeper, which is the best class available, the tickets cost Y193 ($42) and we depart Thursday at 4pm. Lee than offered to share a mini cab with us to the hostel. We left Lee at the hostel, thanking him for his help then gave his one year old daughter a koala, she wouldn’t let it go.
The hostel is a real backpacker place an is full of westerners. We checked in, dumped our bags and then headed to the laundry to do our own washing. While the washing was going, we went to the hostel bar
for a much needed beer and meal, a part from the tomatoes neither of us has ad anything else to eat today and are starving. The bar was crowded and we heard Aussie voices amongst the Yanks. There is a Pekinese puppy here called XiaXia (shasha – or something like that) she is very cute but needs a good wash.
We ate pasta for tea which filled the gap as it was a decent serve. We then used the Internet for an hour and returned to the bar. Tony struck up a conversation with a big New Zealander, and soon we were all sitting in a large group consisting of Canadians, an Aussie and an Indian girl. There was a Chinese Canadian girl called Emily with lots of facial piercings who obviously has struck up a relationship with the New Zealander, Steve, as they both disappeared. We sat talking for about two hours before I went to bed, very tired, don’t know how sitting on a train for seven hours can wear you out but it does. I expected Tony to sit up drinking all night, but he followed me about ten minutes later.
Tony is sick, he
has had diarrhoea all night the poor thing. I left him to sleep while I write this, but I don’t think he will get much rest, as it is noisy here. Tony slept until 2pm, he is still not well but managed to struggle out of bed for a short walk. Xi’an is quite hot today; I broke into a sweat just walking down the street. Xi’an is different to any other Chinese city as it has a wall around it and we are staying inside the wall. We walked down one of the main streets, Tony is not brave enough to eat anything because of his tummy especially not cherry tomatoes, so we went to McDonalds. After a short walk, we returned to the hostel as my tummy is playing up now, we spent the rest of the day in bed. Got up at 7pm and had tea in the hostel, Tony had soup and I had fried rice, nothing too adventurous. Booked a tour out to see the Terracotta Warriors for tomorrow, cost Y150 ($33) for an all day trip.
We are feeling much better today but will need to be careful what we eat,
our tour bus arrives between 930-1000 am and we have to have our (free) included in the tour, breakfast first. Luckily they do English breakfasts here, so it was great to have bacon, eggs and toast. Shasha had a bath and haircut yesterday and it has given her a new lease on life, she’s running around chasing her tail and begging for bits of bacon. Got on our bus just before 10am with another Aussie couple, two Slovenians, a young English girl and an older English chap. Our guide is Chinese and speaks good English, explaining that we would be taken to a craft shop (of course), the warriors, a restaurant and the tomb of Qin Shihuang. It only took about half an hour to get to the craft shop, where they make the figurines that resemble the terracotta warriors, it was surprisingly interesting how they are made but of course it was a tourist trap, as it was also a furniture/rug/jade shop. Some of the furniture was exquisite, ornately carved and very tasteful and very expensive, Y17,000 (AUD 3777) for a small cupboard. Despite this, Tony and I were determined to buy our own warrior figurines and we bought
one each, I a soldier and Tony a general for about Y50 ($11) each. We expect we will see them cheaper at the actual tomb, but we didn’t want to take the risk of missing out. I would have liked to have bought a horse but a Y150 ($33) a bit expensive.
We were then taken to the actual Terracotta Warriors themselves, after a short film in a 360 degree cinema which explained the history of the warriors and why they were built, it seems they were only in Emperor Qin’s tomb untouched for a year before peasants broke in and broke them all. The film was really good; afterwards we went to Pit 1, which houses the majority of the soldiers. This was very impressive and one of our main reasons for coming to China. Pit 3 housed the officers, about 68 here, and Pit 2 is where major excavation is still ongoing, no actual warriors on display but plenty of pieces waiting to be restored. All of the army and horses were broken, so all those on display have been carefully restored. We spent about an hour and a half looking around before it was time to
leave, it was now very hot, and we were taken to a restaurant for noodles. Tony an I didn’t eat (still feeling wobbly) but everyone else did, they are a good bunch and great to talk too. After about an hour, we were then taken to Qin Shihuang’s tomb or what we thought was a tomb but it turned out to be a cheesy model which wasn’t worth a pinch of shit. Quite disappointing but the Chinese seem to be proud of it, you are not allowed to take photos but no one would waste their film on it. Tony in a panic because he could not find his wallet, he hopes he has left it on the bus. We only spent 15 minutes at the tomb, apparently, they cannot excavate the real tomb because of the mercury in the soil (I wonder how they know what it looks like then). Back at the bus Tony was reunited with his wallet and then discovered he had lost his watch. Luckily it was in his daypack it seems it fell in when he was frantically searched for his wallet.
We got back to the hostel about 4pm. There is a
kitten here now, it must have only turned up today, very pretty with markings like a fox. There was a “Chinese” standoff when she met Shasha which kept us amused for about half an hour.
We sat in the hostel courtyard for about two hours talking to the people who were on our tour. The Aussie couple, Matt and Kelly are leaving for Beijing tonight. It was a good couple of hours, we then had dinner, Ham and Mushroom Egg Rolls, exactly the same as an omelette but tasty. We were going to go for a walk tonight but will get up early tomorrow instead and do a few things then, our train to Chengdu leaves at 4pm so we have nearly a full day. Tony is downstairs involved in a political discussion with an Aussie and the English chap who was on our tour, I think he is having a good time.
We are going to walk on the wall around the old city this morning so after a hearty English breakfast we set off. It cost us Y5 ($1) with our student cards to access the wall and once up there we hired bikes for Y10
($2) for an hour, our aim was to ride the whole way around the city on the wall. As neither of us has been on a bike for over 20 years, it was a bit of a wobbly start but we were soon on our way. The wall was quite high and wide and best of all, deserted. We practically had the whole place to ourselves. It was great fun riding around the wall, apart from the odd pothole that made your teeth rattle. We took some photos and kept riding, some parts were slightly downhill and other parts had ramps down, which you could zoom down. We rode half the south wall, the whole of the east, and as we rounded the corner to start the north wall, we were disappointed to find a gate blocking our way and beyond that no wall at all. Unfortunately, we had to turn back, unable to cycle the whole way around. Still had a fantastic time though.
After the wall, we walked to the Drum Tower (accosted by a dirty five year old beggar on the way) an then found our way to the Muslim quarter, where they have vendors selling
all types of wares. Tony bought a packet of Saddam Hussein playing cards. Most of the stuff was the same in every stall, but it was still fascinating digging around. We found the Great Mosque but didn’t go in as we didn’t have enough time. We returned to the hostel (Tony telling another child beggar to Piss Off – should’ve seen it jump!) and just lazed around in the hostel courtyard playing with Shasha and talking to the two Slovenians who were on our Terracotta Warriors tour. We are collecting a lot of email addresses along the way and have exchanged with one of the Slovenians as we may yet end up in Slovenia.
We left for the station just before 3pm. The station was a never ending struggle between us, our backpacks and the pushy Chinese. We have learnt to just put our heads down and push, otherwise we will get trampled. We both enjoy hitting people with our backpacks as hard as we can. The train station was a joke we went up three flights of stairs then down three flights of stairs to get to the platform. This time we have a soft sleeper, but the
train is quite old. We were both sweating buckets by the time we found our compartment, and then had to throw our backpacks on the luggage rack, by the time we had finished we were exhausted. Getting on the train is always a nightmare but we learn a bit more every time. We are sharing a compartment with two Chinese ladies, one is very elderly and surprisingly knows a little English. The other must be her daughter as she fusses over the old woman. We gave the old woman a koala. Today we learned that these trains have dining cars. We went down and had a meal and very nice t was, scrambled eggs and tomato, chilli chicken and some green vegetables. The chicken dish had all sorts of bits in it, but the meat parts were nice LOL.
After the meal, we returned to our compartment, we still have 14 hours to Chengdu. Tony taking snaps out of the train window from time to time people live in dugouts along the way, obviously quite poor. Have to keep the window shut for the old lady, we both hope that she doesn’t die in the night, clutching the koala we gave her.
What is it about the Chinese? Why do they have to wake up at 5am and wake us up too? The old woman and her nurse/daughter were fart-arsing around. It difficult to sleep anyway on this old rattly train which stops every 20 minutes with a bone jarring shudder. My pillow feels like a sand bag so our quilts are now our pillows so perhaps its lucky it is so damn hot in our compartment. About 830am our train came to a halt and didn’t start moving again until 1015am, in the end the total journey time of was 18 hours, at least the old lady survived the trip.
By 1030am we were out of the station and heading to cab rank our accommodation is Sam’s Guesthouse but we do not have the address in Chinese to show to a cabbie luckily a tout who pushed a card into Tony’s hand which was for Sam’s and it was written in both English and Chinese. We then waited for a cab (the tout tried to get us to take a bus but we would have no idea where to get off). Once in the cab, we got stuck in an horrendous traffic jam, it took us 45 minutes to travel five kilometres (still only cost $4 though), perhaps it is the reason the tout tried to get us to take the bus. I have never seen anything like it, cars just coming from all directions stuck in a bottleneck. You can imagine how frustrated we were a with all the delays today.
We finally arrived at Sam’s at 1130am, when we went into the office; everyone was sitting in the dark – no power. Can’t believe it, our morning has started disastrously, we checked in and were led to our dark room, they say the power will be on at 6pm. Nothing to do with no power, but as we were feeling quite drained, had a short nap. I don’t recommend showering in the dark, we had some light thanks to Tony’s head torch, but we both needed a shower badly. We then went back to the office and booked a tour to the pandas for tomorrow morning. We also obtained information about flights to Tibet, luckily, we can break away from the tour groups and do it independently. We can obtain our permits within one day rather than the four described in guide books, which means less time here and more in Tibet. We had lunch at Pizza Hut then walked down to the main road, Chengdu is busy a city and has literally thousands of cyclists. We ordered dinner at the hotel restaurant and waited, waited and WAITED, finally we just headed to the supermarket where we bought ham, cheese, and rolls for tea instead.
Today we visited the city’s number one attraction the Giant Panda Research and Breeding Centre, the bus arrived at 730am and on arrival at the centre we had two hours to look around. The enclosures are all spotless with lots of vegetation for Pandas to hide behind. We saw many pandas of all ages including adults, sub-adults and cubs. Of course, the cubs were the best as they were very playful and cute, they rolled around, boxing each other and putting dishes on their heads. Apparently, you can have your photo taken with one but they didn’t seem to be doing it today, or maybe it had to be prearranged. It was great just to see them though and we took heaps of photos. They also had Red (Lesser) Pandas there too, with their beautiful faces and tails. We watched a short film about the breeding process and it was interesting to see that when pandas give birth the baby comes in about 30 seconds and shoots out at about 100 k p/h which causes absolute terror for first time mothers and they usually flee, no wonder they have such low birth rates.
After the tour which cost Y70 ($15) we returned to our hostel to find Sam has booked us on a flight to Lhasa tomorrow and organised our permits we are both looking forward to Tibet.
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