28/09/2010

Weary warriors . . .

My eyes were playing up from the train air, so as it was 5amish we sat in mcdonalds til 7ish. We checked our bags in at the station and jumped on a bus to the terracotta warriors. We did the tombs backwards, which actually worked out for the best, as the first couple were just rubbled bits of the warriors in the digging sites. It wasn't what I expected but you basically walk into a building covering the digging sites and look over a barrier down into them. One of the sites was a museum which had reconstructed warriors and horses.

The first tomb (our last one), contained the. Thousands of undamaged standing warriors, any rubble you could see the archaeologists working to piece them back together. It was just strange. They we're so ugly. I just didn't understand the concept, I do but its like the pyramids, amazing but pointless!

We headed back and after a wee walk round xi-an boarded the overnight hard sleeper class train to Chengdu. This is where I discovered I can make my regular cuppa teas, no sugar in my flask by buying milk, oh what a discovery.

There is a massive thing with a Chinese style huge pot noodle that everyone here buys for just snacking on and for trains. They all of course contain meat. So I was asking this Indian group on the train, pointing to the pot and the Chinese symbols for vegetarian to see if I'm able to get one. A wee while later the woman had ordered me and Laura a tomato and egg noodle pot from the train, eee it was delicious. So I got it wrote in my book in Chinese for future train journeys. It's another bizarre thing here, that whenever you order they always assume you are ordering two of everything, we just don't get this. xx