Greetings from X'ian, where the Internet connection is s l o wwwwwwwwww; and i still can't view my blog which is frustrating.
X'ian is the ancient capital of China and where the first emperors were based. It's a nice enough city although my appreciation was somewhat muted at 5.45 this morning while we were pulling into the station in the pissing rain. Muted due to ... 
Our train was a hard sleeper with three bunks on each side, it was open plan, kinda like a loft apartment without the trendiness, no door so the noise tended to follow. We had three compartments, and for some reason my compartment turned into party compartment, that's where all the cool kids where hanging out. Me the English boy and four Aussies. Everything was sane until we found the dining car and got the box of beer, then things went a bit nutty.
After walking what felt like 3 miles we got to our bus for a short hop to our hotel which is in the centre of town. We had to meet again in one hour for an orientation tour and some breakfast, myself and Ewan the English guy had well enough of the caffuffing and gaffuffing and split and got breakfast, the others were all too not-hungover and excitable for that time of the morning. Then I just headed back to my hotel room and slept.
Post nap i am now feeling much better and went for a little walk to see the sights. This is an interesting walled city with a muslim quarter and a large mosque. It's also a very large tourist centre because of the Terracota Soilders outside the city. It's just a pity that the weather is so bad. It doesn't make a good impression of the city when it is just so damp and dreary all the time.
Oh and i also made a new friend, her name is Nini and she is a Friendly. She is going to come travelling with me for the rest of my journey. Apparently she's very innocent and likes gymnastics.
Today is a free day so I can more or less do what I want. We only have CCTV 9 China's only English language news channel. I saw a very interesting documentary yesterday about the war of liberation against the Yankee aggressor in Korea, it was fun. Well it was more about the music of the time, those lyrics would be enough to have me defect to North Korea.
Tomorrow we are going to see the terracotta warriors, that should be interesting. My dad brought me to see them when they were in Dublin all those years ago, but it's probably best not to mention that around here, apparently we managed to break a few.
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