Well, I can now say I have been to the ancient and historic city of Xi'an. The first thing that struck me was the massive, old-city wall with a perimeter of 14km, parts of which still had a surrounding moat. It wasn't until the 3rd day that I hired a bicycle to ride the full length of the four walls: the cobblestone road on the wall being quite wide, albeit a bit bumpy. The highlight was meeting a couple of Chinese university students who thought my age to be 35-40: naturally, I took an instant liking to them (haha).
Through www.ctrip.com I again travelled 1st class, from Beijing, at an economy price (special at the time) and found nice accommodation (after reading many peoples' reviews). I opted for a serviced apartment where I had a kitchenette and the facility of a laundrette to wash my previous week's clothes. More importantly, the apartment was an easy walking distance to the old-city wall, the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower and the touristry Muslim Street where I bought some trinkets.
Xian Bell Tower
Xian Drum Tower
Xian Muslim Street
Top Hotel, BMW, 2 Merc, 2 Porsches, Land Rover
My first major trip was to see the Terracotta Warriors. I have to say I found it a little disappointing, as seeing it with the naked eye was no more spectacular as the many colourful photos I had seen in past years. There were three pavilions: the first, had no warriors - just some diggings and mounds; the second, had a few headless warriors and a couple of horses among the diggings; and, the last pavilion, had what most photos show: a couple of thousand warriors (in various states of "health"), 3-5 abreast in separate trenches. It was difficult to get good photos as there were far more visitors than terracotta warriors. The highlight of the visit, again, was meeting up with other tourists: a Spanish couple and two likeable Chinese university students who were very keen to stick with us.
Spanish Couple, Chinese Couple + Me
Terracotta Warriors
The last trip was to Mt. Huashan, known as 'The Number One Precipitous Mountain under Heaven' - one of the five sacred mountains in China. The day started at 7am under a cloudy sky and light rain. Things never improved from that point; in fact got far worse, following a series of frustrations:
- Having gone to the main bus terminal, where most trips start, I could not find the number 1 bus that would take me to the mountain. After asking many bus attendants, all of whom waived in a vague direction, one of them managed to understand 'Huashan' and pointed me to her bus (even though the bus did not carry a number).
- After some 2.5 hours the bus stopped in a small town in front of a restaurant, where everybody was ushered into the restaurant. An old man started pointing to a chart of a mountain, obviously explaining about the various trails and peaks we would encounter. Then, everybody started to walk out going in different directions! Where was I!? I could not see a mountain!; there was no bus outside; and people were starting to scatter in their own little groups.
- I looked around for any foreigners and noticed there was only one couple being spoken to, in French, by a cute Chinese lady. Aha, she must be a guide and surely can speak English! I approached her with my best "lost boy" look and she kindly explained that I need to catch a taxi to go to the mountain (as if I could speak Chinese to a taxi driver!) and that people had been advised to have something to eat first, as there would be no food on the mountain. Fortunately, she invited me to join them. To my surprise, when at the restaurant, she (Kerry) explained to me that the Frenchman (Pascal) was her husband and the girl was his cousin.
- When we got to the mountain there were several queues, with only Chinese writing. Even Kerry was confused as to where to go, running around asking whoever where we should line up. It turned out one queue was to get onto the mountain, the other was to buy tickets for the cable car which would get us to a point where the scenic climbs would start.
- We then casually strolled to the cable car queue in expectation of a quick ride up the mountain. Not so! The single-line queue must have had at least a thousand people waiting for cable cars that were taking six passengers at a time! But that was not the end of it - we then had to convert the original cable-car ticket to one that would allow us to catch the car! Kerry queued up for that while the rest of us joined the long queue. After some 20 minutes Kerry joined us with the converted tickets. We then shuffled for 3 hours before we got our ride! If I was by myself I would have joined the 3-hour queue only to later find I didn't have the right ticket! Thank God for Kerry. What made the wait a little bearable was that she stayed with me in the single-line, separated from her husband, where we basically swapped life stories. What a small world... she comes from Wuhan where I first started teaching English, and she attended the same university (WUST) where I had taught (albeit before I was there).
- Having arrived at where the trails started, we commenced climbing, not being sure which of the four peaks we should tackle first. It was so foggy that we could not see the steep mountains around us (supposedly what makes the mountain spectacular). After about an hour of semi-steep climbing on narrow trails with thousands of people going in both directions, Pascal announced that he wasn't going any further because he was afraid of heights and the danger it posed. He encouraged his wife and cousin to keep going, so he went back to the cable-car area while we carried on for another 2-3 hours.
- We finally made our way down and met up with Pascal, and guess what? There was an almighty long queue to get back down (this time only about a two-hour shuffle).
- Even after getting down we had to catch a minibus (according to Kerry) that would take us to a bus depot. As the three of them were going a different direction to me, Kerry put me onto a bus where the driver said it would take me very close to the train station (where I boarded the bus that morning).
- You've probably guessed: when the bus finally arrived at their depot at about 9:30pm it was nowhere near the train station. When I asked the driver where the train station was I got the usual vague Chinese waive of "over there", but when I made my way "over there" I was no wiser as to where I was. So I got into a taxi, but he couldn't make out the address on my hotel card. I finally pointed to the Bell Tower (near my hotel) on my map and he reluctantly took me close to there but refused to go beyond it (where my hotel was), for reasons that I obviously could not understand.
At the end of the day I was totally exhausted, physically and mentally, contemplating how disasterous it would have been without Kerry. My biggest regret of the trip was that I never got her email address to express my gratitude to her, her husband and cousin for the help and company, in a better way than the quick "thank you so much" as I was boarding the bus.
At the start of my holiday I expressed the view that "I've often regarded travelling as having to endure a certain amount of pain, in order to have an enjoyable holiday". After 10 days of travelling, my conclusion is that it is true: travelling solo I've encountered many potential problems and uncertainties, but I have derived great pleasure and satisfaction from having seen and experienced such historic places as The Great Wall, Forbidden City, Terracotta Warriors and the sacred Mt Huashan. To supplement that, the holiday was made much more enjoyable because of the people whom I met along the way: they will remain in my memory as much as the sights that I visited.
I flew back to Dalian the same way as when I left: seat 1A in first class (at economy price haha). As I have three weeks of holidays left, there is time for some more travelling..... I'll keep you posted.
Hope everyone is happy and well... Renzo
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