China part 2 - days 6 - 11

Ok, post number two.

DAY 6: we arrived in xi'an on the morning of day 6 after a 14 hour train ride from Beijing. As mentioned before, the trip was fine. The only problem was that we arrived too early in the morning; we were up at 5am to get off the train at 6.

The hostel/hotel in xi'an was AWESOME. Free wifi, computers, comfy beds, great showers, a great location, a good restaurant and it's a cool heritagey building. We were are all pretty happy there. Xi'an itself seems pretty grey and dirty compared to Beijing, but I did like it; it's an interesting place. I guess after the olympics beijing really cleaned it's act up. Unfortunately every day in xi'an was quite smoggy so that probably also made things seem more drab. All my pictures are so grey. After checking into the hotel, we went as a group to the Muslim quarter, which is basically a market. It was interesting looking at all the stalls and weird foods. At one point we were at a stall with huge hunks of random meats; liver and kidneys and stuff. Jasmin went to take a picture and the woman running the stall flipped out, ripped off a piece of liver and through it at jasmin's head. It hit her good, but luckily she managed to mostly block it with her hand. If it were me, i would have thrown it right back at the lady's face. We the went out for lunch with jasmin, Joe and Kelly and had an interesting experience. After trying one place without much success, we bought noodles from a street vendor. They were sooo cheap and delicious and we were really enjoying them...... until Jasmin found a maggot. Ugh. That was it for me; no more noodles. But chris, Kelly and Joe didnt seem too bothered as it was "just the one" and "it was cooked"......

Xi'an has a raised city wall that goes 14k around the city. So after lunch we rented bikes and rode around it. Chris and I started on a tandem, which was super fun until it broke and we had to push it back 2k to the start to get a new one. So really we did 18k.

We had dinner at a famous dumplings place, where the dumplings are shaped like what is in them. For example, chicken ones were shaped like chicken wings, fish ones were shaped like fish, and so on. It was pricier, but really tasty. It was a pretty funny meal. We ordered green tea and there was one employee who's only job (it seemed) was to keep our tea full. The second anyone took a sip she was there refilling it. She was like Ms Doyle from Father Ted....

DAY 7: we took a public bus out of the city to the terracotta warriors. Traffic was so bad, but otherwise the bus was ok. The warriors themselves were pretty cool. It's remarkable that they only found them in 1974 and when they did, many were still in tact, standing in place. It's hard to believe that so many went undiscovered for so long. Also remarkable is that 7000 have been unearthed so far, and that only represents about 10% of what the total is believed to be. My only complaint is that you can't get too close. I would have liked to go right up to one, but you can only look at them from a distance or through glass.

We went back to the Muslim quarter for dinner. No flying liver this time, but still interesting. Lots of weird food.

DAY 8: boring day. Had to get the train to shanghai at 5:30pm so we spent most of the day killing time. We went to the 'big wild goose pagoda' for something to do. It was Chinese independence day, so everything was crazy busy. In front of the pagoda there was a fountain putting on a water show (for the holiday i guess) so there were soooooo many people around. We had an interesting time people watching though. Getting the train in the evening was nuts; with it being a national holiday. The holiday is oct 1, but most people have the week off, so there are a billion extra Chinese people kickin around. Traffic to the train station was insane, the train station was packed, and trying to get on the train required some serious force. Once on the train it was fine because we had assigned berths. I had to use the bathroom while waiting at the train station..... That was quite the experience. It was literally one big open room with holes in the ground. No stalls, only 1.5 foot high walls separating the holes. Oh well. All part of the experience I guess.

DAY 9: we finally arrived in shanghai after 17 hours (or so) on the train. It was not that bad. I slept for 8 or 9, so the time passed pretty quickly until the last few hours. When we finally arrived in shanghai we bummed around the hostel before going to the shanghai acrobats in the evening. They were really good. There was a variety of acts, but my favourite were the "ball of death" (where they put 5 people on motorcycles in a little steel ball). I was afraid the whole time that one of them was going to fall and it was going to end with them all being run over. Thankfully, it was fine. Afterwards we went to the bar for a drink. The plan was to go to a club, but we ended up getting too hammered to make it out anywhere. The night ended with Joe riding around in a wheel chair that he found.

DAY 10: team hungover decided to make the best of our only full day in shanghai. We were up earlish and went to the bund to walk around. The problem with shanghai, we found, was that it's smoggy and there are too many fucking people. Shanghai is the largest metropolis in the world.... There are 16 million people that live in the city of Shanghai alone (not including the suburbs). In comparison, NYC only has 8 million (or half of shanghai's population) in the city proper. Add to that the fact that it is the national holiday (and everyone is on vacation) AND the world expo is on in shanghai, and you have wayyyyyy to many people.

We tried to get some pics of the skyline, but it was too smoggy, so instead we took the "surreal" tourist tunnel over to the pudong financial district. The tunnel goes under the river...you get in a little tram thing and go though a series of cheesy flashing lights. Not a cool hangover activity. It was like a game of "try not to let the flashing lights make me throw up."

After some lunch at the busiest maccas in history, we spent the afternoon walking around the city. We tried to go to a museum, but it was too busy. There was a huge line up. Shanghai is just nuts. So many tall buildings everywhere. In the evening we went back to padong and went up to the top of the second tallest building in the world. The view of shanghai all lit up at night was great, but the highlight had to be how rude and pushy the chinese were. While waiting in a gated/fenced in queue to take the elevator up, people somehow found a way to blatantly cut in front of the line (they literally would cut in front of 50 people to save 2 minutes).. At one point, the elevator opened and people literally hopped the fence and rushed in. As Joe said, if you tried that in Ireland, it would be a one time thing because someone would kick the crap out of you so badly that you would end up in the hospital for a few days. Joe, who is 6'3 (which is a good foot taller than the average Chinese person) got sick of the pushing and budging and managed to scare the chinese off and get them to stop cutting. Priceless.

DAY 11: this day was annoying. We were scheduled to go to a water town near shanghai (xitang), for the day, but because of the holiday we could get tickets at the right time and didn't arrive until 4ish. And then the town was super busy. It's a cute place who's claim to fame is a scene in Mission impossible 3. In the evening I got drunk off really crappy Chinese wine and sang karaoke (Bryan Adams and the backstreet boys) to a much amused chinese crowd. Other comments: Chris and I have been loving the Chinese tv. They are big on a 'wipeout' type show (only more ghetto and the winner only gets about $300). What we like the most is the sound effects on all the game shows and the variety shows. When someone falls there is always a "ZOINK" or "BONGONGONG" sound. We watched a show yesterday where women were dressed as rabbits and had to choose doors, which either contained a carrot or a wolf. If it was the wolf, the wolf chased them down and tackled them, if it was the carrot,they got to keep it. I am not sure how the winner was determined, but it ended with them all dancing to Aaron Carter. Peace

Siobhan Sent from my iPad