Well I'm currently 9 days behind on here and the organised tour has actually finished!! I'm currently sat in the finishing hotel and will be heading of to Lantau Island very shortly...

Anyway, back to Xi'an.

With one day left in the old capital before another mammoth train journey (this one to Yichang) we went to see the world famous Terracotta Warriors. We were both shocked at the size of the excavation sites and the sheer number of warriors in each of the three pits.

All of the warriors come out of the pit in a state of disrepair and it takes the archaelogists working on the site about 6 months to put a warrior back together again! No wonder they are still working on a site that opened in the 1970's.

After a few hours we headed back into Xi'an for a hot pot lunch, when we arrived we were seated at tables which had gas burners in the centre of them and a pot of soup which was split in to two segments (one half spicy, one half not) was brought out and heated at our table. At the same time as the pot was brought to our table we also received about 12 plates of various foods including, lamb, chicken, beef, sweet potato, mushrooms, eggs, etc...

Once we had received all of our dishes and the pot had started to bubble our waiters started to put the meat and vegetables from the plates in to the pot, most in to the non spicy half and just a couple of items in the spicy soup. I tried a bit of everything and it was an interesting way of eating, although I didnt like the fact that I lost everything that I put in the pot and the spicy was bloody spicy!!

Towards the end of our meal we got some extra noodles for the pot, these were flying noodles and one of the cooks came out and gave us a demonstration (see Sandys video) before putting them in our pot.

After dinner Sandy headed off to try some 'funny' tea at an authentic chinese tea house, whilst I headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit before heading off to the Giant Goose Pagoda in the evening. The Giant Goose Pagoda hosts a light and water show every night which was fairly entertaining to see, especially as it only costs the 20 pence bus fare to the temple to see it! We didnt stay until the end though, the courtyard in front of the temple was quite crowded and I gave up my fairly good view point so that a young chinese girl and her parent could watch instead.

As nice as the Chinese people are to us westerners you get the feeling that they are not as nice to each other and as we left we could see a couple of chinese men trying to push in front of the family we had given up our viewings spaces for.