Xi’an
Uneventful flight to Xi’an … especially considering the horror stories we’d heard about domestic travel in China. After this experience, I can say that flying in China is a lot better than flying on European budget airlines, whether EasyJet, AerLingus or especially RyanAir.
None of you will be reading this until after we have arrived in Australia … assuming that I can be bothered to load it all onto the blog … and assuming that you can be bother to read any of it so long after the events have occurred.
Mostly we can get access to the internet … generally free but slow and only by ethernet cable … so no more responding to emails while lying in bed. Which internet is free, the toilet paper is rationed as if it were gold leaf paper … anyone travelling in China is advised to carry spare rolls. The hotel stock would be inadequate in normal circumstances … but is totally inadequate in a country where you will have days when multiple urgent visits are required on one day.
Xi'an was great ... and the IBIS was really good ... apart from the brekkie which was purely Chinese ... and therefore more like lunch or evening meal than brekkie. But at $28 per night ... ... in fact, identical to all IBIS in Europe ... the hotel was great.
After the luxury of the Hilton in Beijing (on airmiles), we're staying in the IBIS (part of that huge French chain Accor) in Xi'an ... where everything in 100% IBIS (as if we were still in Europe), but the price is $28 per night … including airconditioning ... free cable wifi ... and very clean The breakfast is only $3 but boiled cabbage and rice is far too Asian for us at that hour of the morning … but would be wonderful in the evening when done Sichuan style.
Activities:
went to see the Terracotta Army ... I’d been there before in 2006 but it’s still astounding. To think that 3,000 years ago, an Emperor had an entire army (current estimate is 8-10,000 soldiers) created in terracotta and chariots (100’s) created in bronze, not to mention supporting workers, cooks etc. All because he believed that he would need the same infrastructure in the afterlife as he had while living. Then the burial grounds were sealed … and remained undiscovered until 1974.
and of couse, the Terracotta Army ... staggering craftmanship ... imagine creating 8-10,000 terracotta versions of soldiers (infantry, officers, generals, etc), chariots, horses ... and then burying them all underground in a mausoleum ... all because the Emperor thought that he'd need his same army in teh afterlife as on Earth. they were created 3,000 years ago ... and only rediscovered in 1974 when someone was drilling for water.
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
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| De China in June 2011 |
Restaurants are always fun when nothing is intelligible. Last night, we made do with the dictionary ... and my faltering pronounciation of those words that I thought I knew. Amusingly, the girl took my dictionary from me ... and spent the rest of the evening writing down English food/service related words for her own use ... and then thanked me profusely.
As usual, we had 3 big courses plus rice ... plus 3 bottles of 500ml beer ... for the princely sum of 108 yuan ... or about $15 in your money. On the way home, i picked up my usual 1.5 litre bottle of water, another 500ml beer, and a chocolate bar ... all for less than $1 in the local milk bar.
Meals in Xi'an itself were fantastic ... great spicy food ... and typically £10-15 for 4 courses and 3 x 500ml bottles of beer. Definitely eating out all of the time ... apart from brekkie cos we want our coffee and nto much else ... funny but Allbran is never on teh menus :-) There were several Starbucks ... quite good ... and a Tall Cappucino for £3-4.
Oh, but Xi'an airport took the biscuit for gouging of captive customers ... there were lots and lots of coffee shops ... odd in itself over here ... but they all charged $9 for a cup of coffee ... and almost $14 for special grind. Needless to say, all of the coffee shops were totally empty ... that's way more than we'd pay in Switzerland ... let alone for a non-coffee drinking Chinaman would pay.
The mayhem can be wearing ... the chaotic traffic ... the noise ... the pollution ... the impenetrable signs. On the other hand, the people are so friendly ... and nobody has tried to pickpocket us or the like.
Cycled the entire wall of the Xi’an ... it's big and wide like the Great Wall ... and is one of the very few intact the entire way around. It takes about 90 minutes of steady pedaling to do a lap, and it’s quite hard on the behind because it’s all stone paving which varies from ok to painful. A wonderful experience.
Developed a nasty painful rash on my ankles, and then higher up, especially after 5-6 hours of walking. Maybe it’s the heat, but I’ve done that much walking in heat many times before. Perhaps it’s party psychological and partly it being at 2,200 metres in a very dry part of China.
Two restaurants stood out … the First Noodle Company … and King Town No 1 (Sichuan) … both very Chinese and on the same street … and not too far from our hotel.
We had an amusing interaction in 1st Noodle. In our patchy Chinese we discussed world peace and the Tibetan issue … no, not really. But we did exchange some words. Finally, the waitress asked where we were staying, and we said at a hotel near the wall. She asked “duoshaogian?” (how much?) … to which I replied “er bai kuai yi tian” (200 yuan per night … about $30). She was horrified. So while $30 was incredibly cheap to us, it was incredibly expensive to her.
Xining
Another uneventful flight … between a clean modern Xi’an airport and a clean modern Xining airport.
Xining is much smaller and quieter ... although still quite animated with its modest 2m population (Xi'an was about 7m and Beijing of course is up toward 20m). We have 2 Tibetan monks in the rooms next to us ... Karen wanted to ask them why they were not staying in a monastery somewhere.
Food here is a bigger challenge ... no English ... no Pinyin ... no pictures of what the dishes might be.
And scooters here are motorised ... 99% of the ones in Xi'an especially were electric ... i was very impressed ... they'd even converted rickshaws and tuktuks to run on battery ... there were bikes parked everywhere plugged in. The scary bit is not hearing them ... especially as cars and scooters, especially scooters, use the footpath all the time ... in either direction ... but mostly they honk furiously to get pedestrians out of the way. Oh, and even the police ignore the "green man" lights ...
Amusing are the manic “green men” on some of the lights … they read our minds.
But in Xining they seem a bit more orderly on the road ... although we almost had a head-on coming in from the airport ... because a guy drove up the "down side" of the ramp.
Next day, we will be heading off with our guide Gonkho and driver Gompo to visit the Tibetan Amdo region. But Karen was already excited because we had 2 Tibetan monks in the room next to us in Xining.
The hotel is the opposite to IBIS and more like Moscow state hotels ... very big rooms, but completely empty, and looking seriously the worse for wear ... you don't really want to walk on the carpet in your bare feet. Oh, and somewhat grumpy reception staff.
An example occurred when we asked reception, with aid of a Chinese-English speaker, if we could get some laundry done:
Friend: “My friends here would like to get some laundry done. Is that possible?”
Receptionist: “No”
Friend: “Really, is there a problem?”
Receptionist: “This hotel does not have a laundry service”
Friend: “But my friends say that the information book in their room lists a laundry service”
Receptionist: “We do not have a laundry service”
Also an amusing rule from the same information book … at the San Yu Hotel in Xining:
Rule 7: Illegal activities such as superstition promotion, sotting, fighting, gambling, drug-taking, prostitution, rascaldom and spreading of reactive ideas, porn videos, photos and audios are forbidden in our hotel. After a few nights really struggling to get decent food in Xining, we finally got some tips from an American who runs a coffee shop called the GlassHouse. To find a Sichuan restaurant, don’t look for the normal Chinese characters for Sichuan, instead look for the old characters from some dynasty yonks ago. He got one of his staff to write down the characters … and we went prowling. Soon we had some fantastic food again … just like in Xi’an. Incidentally, the Glasshouse has coffee as good as Lugano, and has cinnamon buns better than anywhere we’ve experienced in Australia, UK or the US. Near the Glasshouse was another good find … a place called Bill’s Place … which serves really good fajitas, burgers, pizzas and beer … in case you need some comfort food. These two places are obviously considerably more expensive than the Chinese restaurants but still 10-15% less than Switzerland.
The best eating places were a Sichuan restaurant on SiYu road opposite the big old Wall/Gate … and a Halal place called 13 Flavours.
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