Xian, China

My second China trip for the year cum farewell trip for my travel buddy Sachini. This trip is so far the most challenging one we have ever done. With Sachini, Vijani, and Gaya, we completed 3000km land journey in China.

19 Oct
My journey started on 19 Oct alone as Sachini, Gaya and Vijani are already in China since 16 Oct to travel Beijing. I took night flight to Kuala Lumpur and stay one night at LCCT Tune hotel.

20 Oct
I took AirAsia flight from KL to Tianjin which departed at 8.30am. Dan Brown's Digital Fortress became my companion along the 6 hour journey. There is direct bus at the arrival hall of Tianjin Binhai Airport to Tianjin train station for RMB10. The bullet train which connects Tianjin and Beijing ran every half an hour to Beijing South Railway Station (北京南站). I reached Beijing around 5pm then took another bus to Beijing West Station (北京西站) to meet Sachini, Gaya and Vijani to take night train to Xian.

Tianjin - Beijing High Speed Train

The bad news came, they only managed to buy hard-seat (硬座车) train ticket to Xian. I was still innocently thinking that at most we have to sit while sleeping for the whole night. When we boarded the train only we know, there are lots of standing passengers in the berth who bring lots of big and small sacks which made the whole train so packed. We hardly slept for the night. It's an experience though, I never took such train in my life before. Finally we reached Xian around 9.30am the next morning.Learning from experience, we directly bought our next train ticket to Lanzhou (兰州）there and we managed to get the hard-sleeper (硬卧车） this time.

21 Oct
We stay at Hantang Inn hostel in Xian, the hostel is nice and clean, location is very good, 10 minutes walk to the Bell and Drum tower as well as the Moslem Quarter. The staffs are friendly, they give free pickup at train station as well as welcome drink and tea.

After bath and a bit of rest, we decided to go out to find some food and explored Xian. We walked to the Moslem Quarter to eat 饱馍, a special food there. It's kind of small-cut bread dipped in soup, it tasted ok but a bit too oily. There are a stretch of big and small shops selling souvenirs. We closed the day by visiting Drum Tower and Bell Tower. There is nothing much interesting in the two towers though.

饱馍

22 Oct
We started the day early to go to Terracotta Warrior (兵马俑）. There are 3 buses running between Xian Train Station and Terracotta Warriors, which are 306, 914 and 915. However, the boarding point of those 3 buses is not the same as other buses and some cheap tour agents put their booths near the alighting point of other public buses and put number 306 on the table. Don't fall to this trap. Go directly to the gate of the train station, you will find the 306/914/915 there and you can go to Terracotta Warriors at RMB7/person.

The journey took about 2 hours, the bus will stop at 花清池, a hotspring that was said to be built for the famous Lady Yang (杨贵妃）. We didn't go there because we are too late already. We reached the Terracotta Warrior around noon.

The Terracotta Warrior museum is huge and it is not completely opened yet. Some parts of them are still buried underground and the experts are still researching on it. It is simply amazing that 2000 years ago, people are able to build such a huge structure already.

Pit 1 - the Biggest One

The Gate

There is free bus from the Terracotta Warriors museum to Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇）'s mausoleum. There is nothing much to see in the mausoleum except for the performance. We are lucky enough to have the performance start just when we reached.

Qin Shi Huang's Tomb

The performance

We reached back Xian around 5pm, had dinner and prepared to leave for train station to catch the train to Lanzhou at 10.26pm. Hard-sleeper seat is good enough, we got the middle and upper deck. There is no standing passengers around. We could really see different class of people are taking hard-sleeper train, most of them are businessmen, lecturers, and more educated people. I did chat with some of them, they are friendly and gave us some useful information for the trip.