Xi’an, China, Asia

Well I was right. They were all Chinese in my dorm, and I didn’t get much sleep again. Some guys came in around 11:30pm, put the light on without caring that I was asleep, and then left the door open for a ridiculous amount of time so all the mosquitoes in the world could come in. When they finally turned the lights out, they decided it was the perfect time to call their best friend and have a chat for an hour. It’s just unbelievable to me that anyone can think that is okay, but they do. When the first guy got up and made a racket at 7am, I figured I might as well get up too before I get pissed off and kill someone.

I did some laundry, had some breakfast, and headed out by about 10:30am to see the next thing on my list, the Terra Cotta Warriors! Thanks to this, I regained a little bit of hope for the rest of my trip in China. The army was amazing! It wasn’t laid out as well as it could have been, with the bus from town dropping you off in the middle of a parking lot, but not the parking lot for the museum. It took a few minutes of wandering around like a real tourist before figuring out where to go. I paid the 110 yuan ($18) to get in, and walked for another ten minutes just to find the entrance.

I went to the exhibition hall first and got a bit of the back story before seeing the real thing. I took Howard Hillman’s (the author of my top 100 list) advice and visited Pit 3 first. It was the least impressive by size and what they managed to find in there. I then went into Pit 2 and was pleasantly surprised with just how big this hall was. It was about the size of four basketball courts all together with quite a few statues of men and horses in it. I definitely saved the best for last and finally went into Pit 1. It was MASSIVE! It was really impressive to see how many warriors they managed to put back together and stand in rows like they were heading into battle.

I stayed in Pit 3 for probably an hour just walking around trying not to get too irritated by the seven million people that were in there and pushing their way to the front of the railing to take a picture. I don’t like crowds of people at the best of times, but for so many inconsiderate people in one place, and none of them speak the same language as me, it was a trying time. I survived, and luckily so did the rest of the people in the hall, so it was all good.

I headed out and got back to the random parking lot I was dropped off at. There was a bus pulling away as I walked up, and the guy yelled out the window “Xi’an”, and the door swung open. I ran up and jumped on the moving bus and found a seat. I just hoped he was going to the same part of Xi’an that I wanted to go, and when he collected the 7 yuan ($1.10) from me, I had a good feeling. It was the same amount I was charged to go to the warriors, so it made sense it would be the same going back. I was very happy when we pulled up to the Xi’an train station we had left from this morning. It was just a ten minute walk back to my hostel from there.

By this time it was about 5:30pm and there wasn’t much I wanted to see in the city at this time. I stayed at the hostel, had some pot-noodles for dinner (for 3 yuan, $0.50), and met a few other travelers in the restaurant. I’m pretty tired now though so I’m going to call it a night and hope to get some sleep tonight. I have a feeling it’s going to be more of the same though.