Hi everybody and greetings from Xi'an...and what a great city it is....it's home to The Army of Terracotta Warriors which is just awesome but more of that later on....

I arrived here on Thursday morning and managed to use my Youth Hostel Card for the first time (Yes I do still qualify!!!). There was a girl at the station from the hostel so I scored myself a room for RMB 40 and a free taxi ride which was great!!! The hostel was great fun in a converted Ming palace kinda thing, right by the city walls, so not miles from anything like in Beijing!!

It is a great place to wander around and have had lots of fun here.. I went on the hostel's "tour" to the Terracotta Army and various other sites around Xi'an for the day.. It was only RMB 40 (about GBP 3.50) plus entrance fees. This much reduced price however is a result of being carted to a factory that makes knock of replicas of the soldiers and a silk factory!!! You can get a life size replica soldier for your garden for the bargain price of GBP 1100 this includes postage and insurance (being that these things weigh about 150 - 200KG that's not a bad price! I declined to get my credit card out!! The actual Terracotta Army site is a sprawling mass of touts and food stalls as you enter and are harassed on your way in by touts offering more replica soldiers for stupid prices and thrusting all sorts of tat in your face!! Once inside though it is just awesome...the geezer who discovered the soldiers was there when we were and we sort of said hello - from peasant farmer searching for water during a drought to national hero in the haul of one bucket out of a well!!! Needless to say he is set up for life now!!!! The soldiers are really awesome. There are approximately 6000 of them in one hall alone and they are all life size ranging from 5'8" to 6'2" tall and arranged in battle formation facing East. They were originally highly decorated and painted but after 2200 years it has kinda faded although one or two still show signs of paint...there are still thousands of soldiers in pieces that are being painstakingly restored during the evenings by teams of archaeologists and they believe this is just the tip of the iceberg and there may be more than 100,000 in the surrounding area. The amazing thing is that they are all individual and modeled on actual soldiers of the time ranging from archers through to the Generals, horses and chariots. It is too impressive to take in! They form part of the tomb of the Emperor, who united China for the first time (by beating the crap out of anyone who got in his way!) They were made to protect him in the "after life" and surround his tomb. It is incredible to think that they lay undiscovered for 2200 years and that they were only found in 1974....makes you wonder what's in your own back yard really...Anyway it was an amazing site and if our tour guide Thomas hadn't been herding us round like sheep it would have been even better...Thomas then hauled us off for a really crap lunch in some tat restaurant and on to the Hot Springs near Xi'an and the tomb of some other random local bod but frankly after the Terracotta Army it was a bit tricky to get enthused about much else...plus it was about 38 degrees...Anyone who's ever in China, you should definitely make this a stop!!! Awesome!!!

After the tour it was back to the hostel...escape Thomas and head for the bar and cold beer at RMB 5 a large bottle (40p) The whole tour party ventured into the bar and met up with some others for the Friday night Beer and Dumpling Party!!! Basically the hostel makes shed loads of dumpling filling and dough and you "roll your own" and eat as much as you can....it was a really good night and needless to say I got my hands dirty and made about 200 dumplings for the others. As they had meat in them and me being a veggie, the hostel gave me a free meal other than dumplings for making so many and keeping the production line going which did come to a resounding halt as soon as the first cooked dumplings made an appearance in the bar!! Bless...the evening then proceeded into major drunken merriment until we were finally asked if weren't tired around 1 a.m.????

Have had a good ol' stroll around the city and visited the drum tower and bell tower and the magical Muslim quarter which is a covered street area lined with really cute shops selling all sorts of Chinese memorabilia and a cracking food market where you can stuff your face on a cross between Islamic and Chinese food for absolutely nothing....a great little area of town. I have also visited the Forest of Stone Tablets in Xi'an. This is the World's heaviest collection of books that are carved on massive tablets of stone and on display...some of them have English translations including a cure for stomach ache!!

We also discovered an awesome pizza place and me, two Scouse scallies called Mark and Chris and a mad Irish bird called Niamh spent the evening in there gorging the best pizza ever and capitalizing on happy hour!!! Mmmmmm 11" veggie pizza with extra olives and cheap beer! Sadly no room for the choccie brownies and ice cream but a welcome relief to Chinese noodles and dumplings!!!

Anyway, time to bail to Guangzhou, in southern China....before heading to Vietnam on 20th July.....!!!!

Hope you're all really well....

Loadsa love

Lisa / Lillie

xxxx