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Not able to add photos at the minute grrrr!! Wé've got so many!!
13th May
Laura - Arrived in Xian at 10am after a hard sleeper train ride that we both agreed was the most disgusting train in the world (and actually is the worst train in China, we were later told by a well informed Chinese guy). It was so dirty and it smelled of toilets as soon as we got on - a smell which got quite unbearable during the 18 hour journey. The smell actually kept me awake, it was that bad! Anyway, we were in a 6 bed open compartment with 2 girls from Israel, (plus a couple of chinese people who couldn't speak english) who were really nice and we spent most of the journey playing cards with them. So that kept our minds off the smell for some of the time!
We walked to the nearest hotel with the girls and a Polish guy who was also on our train and got some much needed showers (after waiting unamused for half an hour for some guy to unblock our toilet - the pleasant condition we found it in). Then we headed into
the town centre on a public bus (our first experience of these). It was really funny because the part we sat in had a really low roof and paul had to stoop down for the whole journey! We took photos of the bell tower and drum tower but didn't really see the point in climbing them as the only views to be seen are of the rather uninteresting main roads. Instead we took a walk around a market in the Muslim Quarter, which was brilliant. I bought a cheap 'jade'' bracelet and Mao's Little Red Book after some brilliant haggling.
We walked around some side streets that were crazy and really interesting - birds hanging from trees in cages etc. (talking of crazy animal sights, I've also seen a cat here that is always tied to a tree outside our hotel next to a bucket of water! So so cruel). We looked around the Mosque, which has very pretty gardens and outer buildings. We weren't allowed to go into the actual prayer room but we looked inside and it was massive with hundreds of prayer mats on the floor.
In the evening we got the bus again into
the town centre and met an Irish guy on it, called Tom, who was looking for somewhere to watch the FA cup final. We invited him along with us because we were actually on our way to meet Caitriona and Brian to do just that! We watched the game in a HI hostel, (and probably pissed off some Americans who were actually paying guests and wanted to watch a DVD) and got very drunk on the very cheap beer. Paul was very hyperactive because he'd just seen on the internet that Grimsby won against Lincoln. I think he scared a few people in the internet bar because he was cheering so loudly!
We drunkenly decided that we NEEDED McDonalds food and so stumbled over there after the game and annoyed the staff by asking if we could have the food for free (becasue they were closing soon so surely the food was going to be thrown out anyway right? - wrong). Then we met some random French guy outside who starting having a go at us because we were not eating Chinese food. We decided it would be funny to play up to this and rather maturely responded with
any french we could remember from school, such as "'Jádore le MacDo..... Je regarde le MacDo... J écoute le MacDo... Le weekend ou va tu? Je vais le MacDo"". He was not amused!
The five of us then piled into a taxi (we really didn't give the driver much choice on this) and collapsed into bed back at the hotel. It was a really good night.
14th May
We crawled out of bed at midday feeling like death and then got a bus to town. We walked to the south gate of the City Walls and hired a bicycle made for 2 to bike the 13km of wall. It was really funny, i couldn't stop laughing at first. Paul was steering (i wasn't allowed to 'drive') and i couldn't see ahead at all over his tall body. He kept steering us into potholes and I was scared we were going to fall off! We sang "Daisy daisy give me your answer do...." much to the amusement of some confused chinese people. It was great fun and a really cool way to see the walls and outer city. Unfortunately the chain snapped and fell off the bike
about one and a half km from the end, but a Chinese family who had followed us around for most of the way alerted the bike staff and they came to meet us with a new bike. We were very pleased that they didn't try and charge us for it. We got oil all over our hands trying to fix it, but we saw the funny side!
After that we got a bus to the Big Goose Pagoda (it has nothing to do with geese unfortunately), which is set in a really nice park. There were families everwhere and it had a really nice atmosphere. We didn't go up the pagoda. We had much more fun watching an amazing fountain display in the park. They had classical music blaring out of some speakers and the water spurted out in time to the music. It was really cool. And we got quite wet because we were standing in the middle of it, but this was welcome as it was boiling hot today! A Chinese woman came up to us and asked us if we could get in a photo with her and her grand-daughter, with me holding her. It was very bizarre. They absolutely loved it and came to show us the photo after they got it printed out. They were so happy with it, i think it made their day! Very odd and embarrassing.
After that we went and ate in a food court at the top of a shopping mall. One of the staff insisted on coming round with us to translate and explain everything (she even explained what brocoli was!). She was lovely and she was very fascinated by our phrase book and had a giggle showing it to her colleagues. Very funny. We stuffed our faces with dumplings, noodles and spicy skewered veg, all for around a pound each!
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Big Bro & Dodgy Knees
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Bikes
Glad to here you had a nice bike ride. Hope you were both wearing hats- I'm jumping on the band wagon now- listen to your elders. We also went on a bike ride today - Kayleigh fell off now hence the name! Glad to here you had a good day - sounds like a day Katie's perfect day-football, a mcDonalds and by any chance did you top it off with NESTLE Kit Kat Chunky?!