Continued from Xi’an Day 1.

We got to sleep in today!!! It felt amazing! What’s not amazing is the whole night of stomach cramps I had. Seriously, Chinese food is not agreeing with me…sigh. Hopefully, it’ll get better soon….

It wasn’t until noon when we made it out the door. Stupid stomach cramps…

Heading to the train station, then we’ll catch a bus from there. They have electric rickshaws here in Xi’an. A little more expensive than taxis, but taxis are sometimes tough to find.

At the train station, and there’s a parking lot here where many of the buses line up.

Found the bus we are looking for. This will take us to the terracotta warriors, what Xi’an is most famous for. This one is run by the government and goes straight to the terracotta warriors. There are also plenty of other buses that seem like government buses with very eager touts who will also give you rides to the terracotta warriors. I’ve read that those buses will take you to go “souvenir shopping” on the way there. Good thing we did our research and didn’t fall for it.

Funny looking vehicle.

Got a late start today, but that’s ok, not too much to do here in Xi’an.

A little more than an hour from Xi’an to the terracotta warriors. This is seriously one of the world’s ugliest city. It’s so sad, because for thousands of years Xi’an was the capitol of China. Today, it’s one sprawled out chunk of grey dusty concrete with no soul and no culture. Thousands of years of history and culture erased by blocks of apartment buildings.

No joke, the entire city looks just like this. Terrible.

Almost there!

Here!

The gauntlet of souvenir shops that we had to walk past.

Then the ocean of parking lot that we had to walk past.

The very poorly labeled ticket office. We almost couldn’t find it.

Then the miles of concrete that we had to walk past. It’s kind of hot, in the high 80s or low 90s today.

Still walking with no shade.

This is what we think of Xi’an.

No, not quite there yet.

Still walking. There are nothing here but souvenir shops, all selling the same things.

Nope, not there yet. This is just a ticket check. We’ve gone through two already.

Finally. Seriously, that was the longest fucking walk ever from ticket booth to actually something of value. I looked on Google maps, and it’s almost a whole fucking mile of walking in the hot sun with no shade on concrete through vendor after vendor selling crap. You can tell, I really hated this walk. RL, on the other hand, didn’t mind it as much.

KL points.

From the moment we got off the bus, it has taken us 30 minutes of walking to reach the first building of the terracotta warrior museum. WTF!! Since the ticket booth was so ill labeled(I only found it by asking in Mandarin), we could have easily walked 30 minutes to the first ticket check gate only to find out that we would need to walk 30 minutes the other direction in order to buy the entrance tickets. I would have been livid if that had happened.

A miniature model of the area. The mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang(the emperor who the terracotta warriors were built for) is in that pyramid. The grey cluster of buildings to the top right is where the terracotta warriors are located at.

Into the first pit of terracotta warriors. I want to say that I am impressed…but, I am kind of not. Is that sacrilegious to say?

Still needed to have the obligatory photo. Why are we standing next to a pillar? Well, there are tons and tons of large Chinese tour groups here occupying all the space, so we had to stand all the way to the side.

There you go, location of the well.

The terracotta warriors were found broken and had to be restored. These are in various states of restoration.

We’ve reached the end of pit 1.

This is pit 3. This excavation site is pretty small.

Supposedly, all these sites are still working sites and excavation is still ongoing.

Pit 2.

The warriors used to be full of color, but when exposed to air after over 2000 years, most of the colored faded quickly.

This one is a high ranking officer…he was fatter than the middle and low ranking officers.

They also displayed some photos of the terracotta warriors before they were exposed to the air for too long and lost their colors.

And that’s that. Before showing up here, RL and I had estimated how long it would take us to go through the terracotta warrior exhibits. She said 30min, I said 1 hour. It took us about 45 minutes…not long at all.

So, terracotta warriors, interesting but not impressive. Glad we went to see it, but would never come back again.

None of these artificially manicured gardens can dampen the fact that I had to walk a whole fucking long mile on hot concrete in order to see the terracotta warriors. Wouldn’t have minded it as much if it wasn’t just a whole mile of soulless shops I don’t give a shit about. AAAHHHH!!!!!

RL cares about the shops. She got a corn flavored ice cream. It tasted strangely of…corn.

After the mile long walk of bore, we got back on the bus and started heading back to Xi’an.

Oops, what happened here…

We got back to Xi’an. Slept most of the way, there’s nothing interesting to see outside of our window anyway. When we got off the bus, we tried to get taxis to take us back to our hotel. We got refused by several taxis and rickshaws. Seriously? They wouldn’t take our money. The taxis here have some of the worst attitudes that we’ve ever encountered. Fuck you! We are starving after not eating all day, it’s 4pm now.

We got so pissed that we decided to just walk to our hotel. We are tired, hungry, and hot.

Not a BMW X5. It’s a Chinese made car that’s a very blatant copy of the BMW X5.

The walk home ended up being too far, so we ended up in an electric rickshaw that was finally willing to take us the rest of the way back. Got to our hotel, and immediately went out in search of food.

We found a restaurant we wanted to try so we headed in that direction. Well, the whole entire city block where the restaurant was located was demolished…so I guess not that place. We kept on walking, still hungry, still tired, still hot, still hating this shitty ass city. Seriously, even as I am writing about this a day later, I can still feel the anger rising. I fucking hate this shitty city. RL hates it too.

We had to walk so far through a bunch of apparel stores that we had to step into a Dico’s to get a drink and snack. Also, I realized that Dico’s is in fact not KFC, but KFC’s Chinese competitor. They just both have very similar menus.

We are mad, and we walked far in order to find food. Seriously, there’s no where to eat in this city. Just miles of concrete and miles of apparel shops, and miles of nothingness concrete. Walking in this city is the equivalent of reading the yellow pages. Seems to have much content, but 99.9999% of utter sameness and uselessness.

I hope there is a food court inside this mall.

Found food! RL’s been craving sushi, so we found this sushi place inside the mall. From the moment we got off the bus, we started looking for a place to eat. It’s now 5pm. Even though we were starving, it took us over 1 hour of walking and searching in order to find a place that we wanted to eat at that was not fast food.

Xi’an, you suck shit. I now deem you my least favorite city that I’ve ever visited.

I ordered, or what I thought I ordered, to be an orange soda. It ended up being Coke with orange peel…Sigh. I guess this will do…

As expected, being so far from the ocean, the sushi is just mediocre. But, still, it’s nice to have sushi after going for so long without.

As long as it doesn’t poison me tonight, I’ll be ok. This meal was actually cheaper than our last mediocre meal a couple days ago in Lhasa. Surprise surprise.

Since this is our only meal for the day, why not.

Green tea ice cream, tasted amazing! The Haagen Dazs green tea flavor for Asia tastes better than the American one. It’s less sweet and has more flavor here.

Got into this rickshaw to go home.

For the last few blocks, he decided to go the wrong way, for no good reason.

And gets in a pinch with several buses.

And also relentlessly honks at all the people going the right direction who are in his way…We asked him to let us off earlier, but he insisted on driving us all the way to the front of our hotel going the wrong way. Sigh.

Xi’an Day 3

In search of breakfast. There’s not much on our agenda today…other than watch more Game of Thrones!!!

We are in China, and the only thing that appeals to us to eat in this city is at a Dico’s. Chinese food has been kind of disappointing. There are not many food resources and guides for English speakers in China. Our hotel front desk has also been completely useless on suggesting places for us to eat.

At least I got to try their soy milk drink here. And also my dark meat chicken sandwich.

Got into a taxi to go to the train station, It feels like the back of a squad car in here.

We are here at the train station to try to change our tickets for tomorrow. We had unknowingly bought train tickets for a slower train instead of a faster train while in Lhasa. We didn’t find out of our mistake until after buying the tickets. Fortunately, it’s free to exchange tickets here in China.

Reminds me of India, all the people with tons of luggage sitting around the train stations.

Well, the fastest of the fast trains was sold out. But, we did get our second choice, so not too bad.

After getting refused by no less than 1 taxi and 2 rickshaws, we walked farther away from the station and got into a rickshaw. Another lady rickshaw driver.

We spent the rest of the morning and afternoon watching GoT. This city is not worth visiting, it sucks.

In search of dinner. When we went to the train station this morning, we saw a couple of malls not too far from our hotel. Maybe they have food courts.

We walked into the mall, and asked where we could get a bite to eat. They said to to go to 9th floor.

Except the elevator only went to 8th floor.

Had to walk up stairs for the last floor.

Look at all that greyness. This city is so dusty that they have water trucks wetting down the streets to keep the dust down, serious.

Xi’an is the city equivalent of the San Francisco BART, which I hate with a passion. Xi’an makes young guys impotent and young girls with severely lopsided boobs.

Well, we found food and it isn’t what we are looking for. There was a single restaurant on the 9th floor, and it was a giant banquet type restaurant filled with what seemed like convention goers…Nope.

KL points. Out on the street over to the next mall in search of food.

We smell food in here.

Look!!!

Not quite like the US Papa Johns.

We ended up at this rotating sushi restaurant. Apparently, didn’t get enough of our sushi fill from yesterday.

Another day of mediocre sushi. But, as long as I don’t get deathly ill tonight, I’ll let it slide. Again, cheaper than our mediocre last meal in Lhasa. We ate for about $30 here.

Ohhh!

Green tea blizzard with Oreo. I wish they had this in America. I would weight 400 pounds if they did.

Wanted to see Godzilla, but they did not have it here.

On our shitty typical Xi’an walk back to our hotel, we walked by this place. Apparently, no euphemism is needed for fat people shops in China. Now, for the saddest fact of all. I looked in, and all the “fat” clothes were only about XL American sizes. Sigh, why is America so fat.

Happy to leave Xi’an tomorrow. Fuck this place! I hate this city, but otherwise I am in a pretty good mood.

Also worth mentioning. Less than 4 weeks after we were in Bangkok, Thailand falls to an unexpected military coup. Glad we were able to dodge that bullet! Would have sucked and probably scary to be stuck in Thailand while the coup was happening.

To be continued at Beijing Day 1.