My last day in Guilin had come, how I wished to have stayed longer. I would have booked a hotel in Yangshuo, taken the boat down the Li River and enjoyed the famous beer fish-dish (beer fish-dish, hah, funny word). I would have stayed overnight at the rice fields to see the sunrise and sunset… aaah, coulda woulda shoulda. I had a wonderful stay and I left Guilin with a smile on my face... Until I got to the airport at least.
Due to terrible weather conditions, the flight to Xi’an was delayed. My anger vanished on the spot when the power at the airport actually went out. Flashes of light and sonic booms from the thunder made me believe that the sky was about to collapse. To not be in the air at that moment was a huge comfort.
To make up for the long wait, we got a free meal at the airport: noodles and cookies. Nice.
At 4:30 AM, the plane landed in Xi’an. I took a taxi to the railway station, and from there, I was walking around like a zombie, trying to find a cheap hotel to crash. Alas my white skin prevented me finding somewhere I could spent the night (hotels didn’t have licence to guest foreigners), so I went back to the railway station, paid to leave my bag there and walked across the street to the closest place I could buy coffee, which happened to be a McDonald’s restaurant. So there I was, dead tired, high on caffeine and blogging my but off to not fall asleep at the table.
The reason for my visit to Xi’an was the Terracotta Warriors.
Wikipedia says:
“The Terracotta Army (Chinese: 兵马俑; literally: "Soldier-and-horse funerary statues") is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.”
Sounds like fun, let’s go!
On the bus towards the famous warriors, I fell asleep, drooling all over the place.
I met Alice and Alex, two China-first timers from England. I took them under my wing and I showed off with my Chinese skills. My Mandarin didn’t seem to impress the Chinese people you see; they hardly understood what I was saying at all. But I taught the Englishmen how to say, “I don’t want it”, which they found helpful indeed.
Anyways, back to the gangster warriors.
A little bit disappointing, because it was packed with people, and you could only watch the statues from a far. So the photographs I took were nothing to brag about, but it was a cool experience all the same. And if I hadn’t gone there, I would never have met Alice and Alex, whom later invited me to their hostel for dinner and then showed me this amazing Muslim street, full of food and exciting items.
Thanks guys for being a part of my adventure.
Alien on a stick...
