Xi´an

We arrived to Xi'an after a long (and for some a sleepless) night on the train. The chinese trains were actually a positive surprise. They were clean, beds were a bit softer than wood and thank god smoking was prohibited in the cabins. 6 beds in one cabin so not that much headroom.

We arrived to Xi'an around 7 am. We were quite tired but we still had to find our hostel before we could take a little morning nap. This proved to be more difficult than expected since we only had the address but we had no idea where it was on the map, because it was on a small street that didn't show on the bigger maps and nobody seemed to know the western alphabets. Finally we found a guy who could show us the address on our map. We took a taxi to our hostel, checked in and slept for couple of hours. Then it was time to explore the city and try to buy the train tickets to Chongqing which was the starting point of our Yangtze-river cruise. We didn't get them on the day we had planed but the day after that, so we had one extra day to spend in Xi'an. The overall look of the city was quite nice, at least the main streets. The old city center was surrounded by city walls and in the center of all this was the old clock tower. The first day we just walked around the city and the wall surrounding it. In the evening we went to see a "water show". A huge fountain are with changing lights and music. Najs. After ate in a fast food chain called "best food", whole grilled chicken was about 1,5 euros.

(City wall in Xi'an)(Water sports) (Pagoda desu)

For the next day we had booked a tour to see the Terra Cotta soldiers. We were very fortunate to be accompanied by a Bangladeshian university professor who was also very stylishly dressed. Our tour guide (named Bruce Lee) had probably the worst jokes you can imagine and the professor always thought he was talking the truth and asked even more stupid follow up questions. For example: "The people who lived in this village thousands of years ago hunted deer and dinosaurs on those mountains. :D" - "Hmmmm...But dinosaurs lived millions of years ago?" (with a heavy Indian accent) - REALLY??? After a visit to a museum of some ancient village inhabited by "Banpo people". Some interesting folks they were. Women were in charge and had their own huts. Every night all the men were lined up and the women picked their companion for the night, usually different one every night so marriage was not a know concept.

After this we had the most expensive lunch on our whole trip in China. And as we later found out it wasn't just the price that was fucked up.

We finally arrived to the Terra Cotta exhibition place. Our guide told us two things we should remember: "1. don't lose your ticket, 2. don't buy anything from the people trying to sell you junk". After we received our tickets and walked to the entrance gates we found out there was one rule too many for some of us (read Esa) and they had already lost their ticket.

(ASENTO!)

The Terra Cotta soldiers were quite impressive or at least the huge amount of them and the fact that they all looked different from each other. After strolling around the halls build above the Terra Cotta soldiers we headed to the last stop on our tour, a tomb mountain build for the same emperor which the Terra Cottas were guarding. We learned that it took something like 50 years and 100,000 men to build the man-made mountain tomb for the dead emperor. The mountain used to be about 150m tall and 2,5km times 1,5km wide on the bottom. We climbed to the top, came down and then it was time to return to Xi'an. Another on of the modern world miracles witnessed.

(The Tomb)

But the real surprise came in the evening when we realized that the Chinese poisoners had got the best of Master Kennet (worst 24hours of my life I can tell you). We thought we were in the clear with Esa but couple of hours later Esa also started vomiting in every 15 minutes or so. I was the only one who seemed to have escaped the disease...but only for two days as it stroke me the night we had to take the night train to Chongqing. Luckily Kennet and Esa had at least some what recovered. There is not much to tell about our two last days in Xi'an :D. But I can say that the night train to Chongqing was not a pleasant one. One squat toilet for about 100 people. Not very Najs when you need to trough up or take a shit in every 15 minutes. But I survived to fight another day.

-Samuli