Xian was our next city stop for 3 days. We caught a 6 hour bullet train from Beijing to Xian, the train was very similar to the Japanese train inside with the same furnishings and leg room. However we had second class tickets this time instead of first, but it was comfortable enough journey but not much to look at through the window with all the smog. We seemed to travel past farm land and then suddenly through cities of skyscrapers and building works, then back to farms. The journey gave us a good impression of the vastness of China.

We arrived in the evening, but we had a bad experience in the first few hours which sadly put another damper on the country for us, while we were still fighting the feelings of rudeness and disgust. We got lost again at 10pm trying to find our hostel, first we felt uncomfortable crossing the road when we noticed a man staring and following us, he had just crossed a busy 4 lane road and proceeded to cross back across when he saw us! Then we reluctantly asked a tuk tuk driver to take us to our hostel, he held up 3 fingers when we asked how much. When we got to the hostel after a 3 minute journey and gave him 3 yen he became angry and physical towards Matt. He wanted 30 yen we only had 18 in small change so we gave him that. It was only a matter of a couple of pounds, however we weren't comfortable getting the high value notes that we keep hidden away out in front of him due to scams they pull with fake notes and the real possibility he would have grabbed the money from us. He angrily watched us walk into the hostel. The staff at the hostel did nothing, which made us think this was common practice. After researching the tuk tuks we found out they are known for scamming, the nick name of Xian we found out is the City of Thieves. Not the best first impression of a place.

So annoyingly we felt uncomfortable and reluctant to go out the next day, we walked down the street to the supermarket and we felt like everyone was watching us and ready to pounce! We booked a tour for the next day with our hostel. We realised this is the way tourists travel around here, with tour companies and nice hotels. We hardly saw any tourists on the subway, streets or in our hostels. So its no wonder they stared at us lonely, coachless weirdos!

We woke early to get our, late arriving, tour of 8 which turned into a group of 20. Slight miscommunication with the information on the leaflet. It didn't matter in the end we headed to the Terracotta Army and had a nice Chinese lunch out. We can see why people take a tour it was a lot more relaxing not having to make decisions or worry about things.

The Terracotta Army was the most expensive thing we did in China so not very many locals around, and we saw the most westerners we'd seen anywhere in China so far. The army was split into three lots, the statues were amazing to look at especially when you think it was created over 2000 years ago. Alot of the statues where destroyed by a revolutionary group many years ago and the real weapons stolen. The group we traveled with were an interesting bunch from all over the world, it was good to hear that some people were finding it hard just like us. It was still fascinating to see and learn about the army, Xian is the old capital of China its full of history, it was just ashame we had a bad experience at the start.

The next day we decided to man up a see a bit of the place. Xian is surrounded by a large wall similar to the Great Wall but a lot thicker. We walked around the top of the walk, with it decorated in lanterns and looking out onto the city. In a way we feel regretful that we allowed one bad experience stopping us from exploring a place. But you can only learn from these thing. Later this day we caught our overnight train to Chengdu.