Xi'an..the city that sucked our chi...(Courtney)

Beijing..where for art thou Beijing????

Yup, we've hit Xi'an, and let's just say the rose coloured glasses have been smashed. I kind of feel like I did when we first arrived in Wuxi. That sinking feeling of where the heck are we...and how do we get out!!

We arrived yesterday morning after another long train journey. Made longer by again not sleeping until about 5am...only to be woken at 6am by what sounded like a million Chinese toddlers. Train stations here are like nothing you can imagine. It is organised chaos to say the least. We left Beijing via the west station, which is just collosal. The size of this thing was amazing, yet for the thousands of people trying to enter the station, there was ONE door entrance. One door, you had to see the crowd. We were basically just carried along in what we have come to describe as a seething mass of humanity. And people here don't travel light on the train...especially when you consider that people move province on the train. THere are people ehre with their life belongings, which just adds to the chaos. I'm geniunely surprised each time that I don't see people herding animals. I'd hate to see what would happen if the station had to be evacuated...

The trains themselves are great, clean and efficient. The enivitable happens to the bathrooms about 5 minutes after leaving, but it's nothing you can't handle. We got off and made our way out of the station. We had decided to try and buy our next train tickets immediately, as we are only in Xi'an for 4 days, which isn't a lot of time in this country. It should be noted that at any given time more than 10 million people are travelling by train in China, so tickets can be as hard to obtain as the preverbial hens teeth. Up until now we've had good luck, but our luck was bound to run out at some point.

We found a little ticket booth with only 2 people queuing, of course this was too good to be true and we were soon guided by one of the security staff to the real ticket area. I don't know why we didn't photograph or video what we saw. Nothing can prepare you for the absolute nightmare that is queuing for train tickets at the station. There are about 25 windows in a huge room, people snack out onto the open square in front of the station. There are constant announcments at maximum volume, coupled with guards with megaphones. There are kids crying, people pushing and shoving, and each window has a microphone so they attendant can basically scream at you to be heard. So patiently we stood in a line that also had some westerners, and just hoped for the best. We only had one guy attempt to push in front, to which we both at the same time tapped him on the shoulder and gave a "Heh hem" cough and a raised eyebrow. I think he only moved when he realised Marcus' height!! Push in front of someone else thanks!! After what seemed like half a day passed (we still have our packs at this point) we make our way to the window. Only to find out that we should be at Window 3. Sigh...Down to window 3 we head. We stand in the "queue" for a couple of minutes before deciding it was all too hard and we would see if the hotel could help us.

This is where our story begins to deteriorate! On the way to find a taxi, we are approached by a driver wanting our business. THis guy really seemed legit, but you read so many stories of drivers saying a price then when you get to your destination (or the destination of their choice) suddenly you have to pay them 10 times. So we used his services to get a map, then headed to the taxi rank. Why there is a designated taxi area is beyond me, as it's basically a free for all. We did the right thing and lined up, only to basically be screwed. We finally got to the front, and just had group after group push in front of us. ANd there is no amount of rudeness that we can exude that can even come close to topping the rudeness of these people. We can't compare. We went to taxi after taxi, only to have people jump in them, be completely ignored by the taxi driver, have them drive past us, tell us they didn't know the street we wanted, you name it. I'm not kidding when I say we must have approachd over 20 taxis with no success. Most of them would just take one look at us and either drive on, nearly killing us in the process, or wave their hands in our faces saying "no no no". We were getting so so mad by this, as none of them would take us. We would go up to a window and ask in Chinese whilst pointing to the map where we wanted to go, and some other prick would jump in the back and they'd be off. All of the drivers pretended to not know the street we wanted (you can't believe our central or big the street is - they all bloody know it!) it was just so maddening. And I wont tell you some of the words we used throughout this process (there is a benefit of people not understanding you sometimes). Eventually I went to a police man. When in doubt, ask the police. It's his job to help, especially as he was patrolling the area. Sure enough, a cab was instantly called over, and we were off.

I can tell you, we both sat in the back of that cab fuming. We were exhausted from no sleep, no food, the heat...it was nuts.

We get to the hotel and they do not provide help with train tickets...so you guessed it...it was back to the train station for us!!!!! Jesus...we should have just toughed it out that morning, because there were literally no tickets left for the trains we wanted. We got tickets in the end, some hard sleeper ones on a train we didn't want...but at least we have tickets to our next destination. It was just absolute chaos..and has come to not be a one off in this city.

It's like Wuxi on steriods! I suppose the absolute filthy pollution doesn't help, nor does the teeming rain but lordy are we glad we are only staying until Thursday. Tomorrow we will attempt to get out to see the Terracotta Warriors and we want to check out the Muslim quarter too. But besides that we are fairly happy to have a couple of quite days lounging in the hotel room watching tv!!

ANd now my time is up in this oddball internet cafer so..until next time =)