Friday 8 March 2013

Days 82-83 Xi'an

The train journey was brilliant. We all slept well in 'hard sleeper'. The trains are just so much better then in SE Asia. Smooth. Not noisy.
Helen found us a fantastic hostel. Qixian (7 Sages) Youth Hostel. One of the world's 10 most spectacular hostels.








Located within the walls of the ancient city.




Outside of the walls, Xi'an is like a lot of other Chinese cities: busting at the seams; high rise buildings are going up everywhere.




Day one involved Shane and Lee getting the mobiles operational whilst Helen and the kids hung out and played at the hostel.
Day two, we made a trip out to the Terracotta Warriors. Fares were 7 yuan each in the buses located beside Xi'an train station.
Not as gob-smacking as the Wall, but still an amazing insight into the incredible depth of Chinese culture and history.
The emperor commenced work on the site when he came into power at the tender age of 13, and it wasn't complete when he died at 51. There were 700,000 folk involved with construction and no two warriors are the same...
(Have you seen this shot before?)
















We suffered with horrendous smog, mostly caused by a dust storm from Mongolia.








Now settled back into the hostel enjoying a beer and a staggered dinner, filling time until our 11pm night train. Rosie has been befriended by a bubbly 22 year old Chinese girl, Xi Ya Fang. They've both been enjoying each others company for a few hours. Xi gave Rosie a white stone rabbit as a gift.




Xi and her boyfriend were very kind in helping us carry our bags for the kilometre walk to the train station.
Shane, Helen, Rosie and Tom

Location:Ulan Bator,Mongolia

No comments:

Post a Comment