Xi’an, China, Asia

I didn’t get a great night’s sleep on the train last night. They turned the lights out at 10pm, but a bunch of people stayed awake until about 1am chatting quite loudly, right at the foot of my bed. One guy sat on my foot twice, but I guess that’s to be expected on a bottom bunk. The train was scheduled to arrive in Xi’an at 7am and again, it was right on time. I hopped off and made my way outside and couldn’t find a person from my hostel with my name on a sheet of paper. It’s not the most organized way of doing things anyway, it’s not as if they all stand in the same place waiting for you. They are all scattered all over the place, so you have to hope that they come find me; the only westerner for miles usually.

This time I was lucky enough to find a German couple who are staying at the same hostel. Marc and Monika were looking for the same person I was, and luckily Monika spotted my name on a sheet of paper running by us. I went and found her and the four of us crammed into a taxi and headed to the hostel. We got to 7 Sages Hostel literally three minutes later, so I’m not sure why we couldn’t have just walked. It doesn’t matter, they paid for the taxi, so it’s all good.

Of course, getting in a 7:15am, the dorm I had booked wasn’t ready, so I hung out all morning in the restaurant, had some breakfast and used their wifi. I was sitting outside in the courtyard for a bit talking to Dad on Skype when not one, but two birds crapped on my computer at the same time. They must have planned it. One was right on the touchpad, the other was right on the “[” key. Not cool birds.

I decided that my next stop will be Shanghai for a night, and then I’ll head down to Hangzhou, so I went over to the train station and got my ticket for Saturday. I got pretty pissed off after waiting in the queue for about 15 minutes, I was the next in line, and a 20-year old Chinese kid just jumped in front of me and put his money through the window. The girl behind the glass didn’t care who was next so she just helped him, which took a good five minutes. I was steaming, but he didn’t speak English so there was nothing I could say about what he did. I’d heard this would happen in China, but it’s the first time it happened to me, and it was just another strike against the Chinese people in my book.

I walked through the city for a few hours and saw the Revolutionary Park, and the Bell Tower. The park is under all kinds of refurbishments, so it wasn’t as picturesque as it should have been. The Bell Tower is right in the middle of the city, kind of like the Arc de Triomphe. You have to go under the street to get to it, but they wanted a stupid amount of money to go in it, so I passed. I later found out that you can’t really see anything anyway, so I’m glad I didn’t waste my money.

I came back to the hostel and just chilled for the night. I’m really tired so trying to get to bed early, but I don’t know how that’s going to go. I’m in a six bed dorm, and I haven’t met any of my roommates yet, so if they’re all Chinese, I might be screwed…