May 16, 2009
Saturday
Authored by John
Saturday was one of the most ridiculous days of our trip. We woke up at 5:00 am to take the flight to Xi'an. JM and I were the last ones on the bus, arriving to find 22 other attendees ready to go to China's old capital. We took the bus to the airport, where we all handed over our passports. All except for one. Anup forgot his passport! He is usually in his own world and is unaware of his surroundings, but time it was a pretty big deal. He ended up going back to the hotel, getting the passport, and taking a later flight.
Our flight departed around 7:30 and we flew China Eastern. First of all, it was a very large airplane for a 1 hour, 45 minute flight. The seating went 2 4 2, and when we got on the flight, we were all excited and they had headphones for us. We flipped through channels and heard some songs that got us super pumped up and eager for the plane ride. 50-cent and Lil Wayne songs blasted through our ears as we were jammin hardcore on the plane. However, the PA system came on every 5 seconds to speak in like 4 different languages taking forever, and the songs were pretty lame for the rest of the flight. About halfway through, we experienced heavy turbulence. Along with most of the people in our group, I was pretty scared. It was more intense than I have ever felt on a plane and continued for about 15 minutes. well it seemed like forever... Also, we received "breakfast" on the plane. It consisted of a very bland rice-like porridge soup, some random vegetables and possibly a dark egg? (which I guess you put inside the concoction?) and some odd tasting yogurt. Despite its appearance and taste, I ate it. Overall, the service was great and the airline was acceptable.
We met with our tour leader, Gao, at the airport. She was very nice, but often had some troubles with the English language (ha, ironic as she is an English tour guide). As we took the first bus to the tomb site of the 4th Han emperor, she told us about Xi'an and how they used traditions to find the best locations for tomb sites, airports, and cities (on one side, a mountain.. on the other side, a river). She repeated herself over and over again. "Location is a-good-ah" or "We will now go to the willage" were two of her most memorable quotes. We get to this guy's tomb, and it is very big. We had to wear funny foot booties to keep the dust out of the burial site. Basically, he buried tons of things and people underground (small clay soldiers/horses/chariots and concubines/actual soldiers). They did this because in the afterlife, they believed they needed protection to maintain power and control. The women were also needed as well... haha
Then we went to downtown Xi'an. Anyone who doesn't know anything about Xi'an would not know about the fact that it has hundreds of skyscrapers (mostly residential in appearance) being constructed right now. There are cranes everywhere, but there is also poverty everywhere. The city is absolutely enormous – with almost 10 million people, it is roughly the size of New York. However, people don’t make as much money as they do in New York, the buildings are not as well kept, and there are many beggars and people trying to sell you kites. Also, there has been a lot of demolition around the city, but no excavation efforts are being made. Thus, you have all these piles of bricks and people sifting through the bricks as well. Our bus took us to the heart of the city, right up to our “Three Star” hotel.
Perhaps in China, 3 stars means 3/100. We are unsure. All we know is that though the lobby looked semi-decent, our rooms were a disaster. Two small beds, which were both hard as rocks, were the focal point of each room, and the bathrooms were disgusting. I took a shower and felt more dirty when I got out! It was funny, in school we learned about the “Aibeline Paradox” – where a group of friends goes across a desert to get to a restaurant, when in fact no one really wanted to go there in the first place. At this point, we felt like those people. One side of the hotel was decent, with a plaza and a Starbucks and McDonalds, while the other side was a shady alleyway. I don’t even want to talk about it anymore.
Our second destination of the day was the Buddhist Temple. It was very peaceful and tranquil. JM and I really enjoyed it, for it truly gave us a chance to relax. JM was super tired from the plane ride and the whole day, and I needed a break as well. The Buddha statues were huge and we saw several monks praying as well. We then took the bus to a stone calligraphy museum. It was more of a large tour. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that pretty much this entire time, Gao was talking. We literally tuned out after about 5 seconds (as did most of the group) because of her heavy accent and habit of repeating everything many times. Anyway, there were many stone tablets from hundreds of years ago with writing all over them. We walked around for a while at the end before we got back together for dinner.
Dinner was at, what we liked to call, the poor man’s hot pot. The hot-pot place next to our hotel is very good, with great sauces and broth and beef. This place was a little different. First, the sauces were a little weird. Barbeque tasted like something I have never had before, the beef was super fatty, and we don’t really know what kind of broth was in our hot pots. Anyway, we ate up and were done by about 8:00. JM went back to the hotel and passed out with the other lame-o’s () but I felt like, with one night in this foreign city, I had to check it out.
I will try to start off at the beginning. We started walking to the bar street, located just a few blocks from our hotel. But there is no open container law in China (people just don’t drink as much) and we went to a small convenience store and purchased bottles of about 24 oz of beer for 2.5 yuan. AKA I got 3 huge beers for about $1 USD. I was ecstatic. Then, we made it to the bar street, where there were about 20 or so bars – super touristy – which reminded some people of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. There were many different colored lights, and it was a comfortable atmosphere.
We ended up going from place to place to see where they had the cheapest beer. The cheapest we could find was 10 yuan, so a lot of the people in our group sat at this one bar. But about 5 of us walked back a few blocks and picked up several more beers from the locals for 2.5 yuan again. It was just too good of a deal to turn down. Anyway, we got back and everyone was having a good time, we had about 2 big tables and one of the Indian guys in our group got pretty drunk (he usually doesn’t drink much). The funniest part of the night was when he came to our table from the other table and we realized how funny he was acting. He sat down and said “I am unable to converse normally” in his Indian accent and we all lost it. I think I was laughing on the ground. Eventually we headed back, went shopping for a little while, and hilarity ensued.
I left with about 3 other people, and we were all hanging out at McDonalds after a small shopping stint. All of a sudden, a guy from our group came in and his shirt was torn and his arm was bleeding. We missed out on the first bar fight in China. But it wasn’t between two customers, it was between about 10 employees and this kid from our group. Supposedly, a guy stole a bottle of Jack Daniels (as I mentioned in Thursday’s blog). They caught him and he gave it back, but then he tried to run off. They grabbed his shirt, but he ripped it off, snatched it from them, and ran off. This would have been okay, but the guy who got in the fight was still in the bar. He said they surrounded him and were kicking him and yelling stuff. He also said he was lucky to have had his hands around his head. Basically, he got in a fight because someone else did something stupid. The cops came and I guess he somehow got out of going to jail. He didn’t do anything, but the language barrier is so hard to deal with in a foreign country. We are just lucky he didn’t have to go to jail or the hospital. To his credit, he said he hit some guy in the face when they were trying to kick his ass. I am almost glad I left with almost all the other guys in our group because the situation might have escalated even further.
The night ended with a few of us finding a great street for shopping. We stayed out an extra hour or 2 until they started closing down their shops, looking at all the things they were selling and buying a few things. Their starting prices were generally very good, meaning we had to do little to no bargaining, which was such a nice change. We got back at about 1, where poor JM had not fallen asleep yet. The bed was very hard, as I said, and the “air conditioner” was not working. Oh, and one last disgusting thing about the room, they had all these vibrating condoms and lube and other condoms between the two beds. Therefore, thinking about the implications of these items with the beds was truly disturbing. Needless to say, I slept with some clothes on and used no covers.
Posted by jfavorit at May 16, 2009 01:14 AM