Your teeth are lovely!

Xi'an has proved to be a real highlight in the crown that is China.

We arrived here late on day one and had a rather uneventful night in which we headed straight to bed and slept! On day two we got on a day tour out to the WWF Rescue Centre, where we saw PANDAS!!!! After being heartbroken at the fact that we had to miss Chengdu breeding centre due to lack of time, Bec was extremely excited! Apart from the Pandas the rescue centre is also home to golden monkeys, black bears, takins (like Yaks), deers and one angry leopard! The centre is a conservation effort (of sorts), where animals that are sick or injured are brought to be given treatment before moving onto the breeding program. Some Panda's looked quite sick and unhappy in their dingy cages when we first arrived, but after seeing their feeding session and the fact that they had better air-conditioning than most places in China we didn't feel so bad anymore.

In the evening we went to a dumpling banquet where we ate more food than we have on the entire trip!!! We also took in the world famous Tang Dynasty Show, which has acts of traditional Chinese Music and Dancing. We had been promised 'good seats' only to be behind the man with the BIGGEST head we have ever seen... we promptly moved to a side area and sat on bench where the view was MUCH better! After the show we headed out to 'club salsa' where not only was J denied entry for wearing thongs (even though everyone else got in with them on) and was forced to return to the hostel and change shoes, once inside we were disgusted to find that as foreigners it cost 400 Yuan (roughly 60Bucks) to just sit down and 580 Yuan for a pot of beer!!!! Appalled, we left!

Day three we decided to have a bit of a sleep in (8am) and explore the city, before lunch we visited the Drum Tower, Bell Tower, Great Mosque and the Muslim Quarter Markets - where we met a woman whose (yellow, rotten) teeth were lovely and another who was not sure what to do with her chess set in the winter time. After lunch we rode around the 14kms of cobble stoned city walls on bicycles in a record time of 1 hour and 20 minutes! Needless to say our bottoms were quite numb at the end of it all. In the evening we went to the Big wild goose pagoda to watch the light and water show (for free!) A large scale fountain display done to music with different coloured lights. Perhaps the most amusing thing was the number of young Chinese children running in and out as the water shot up into the sky. We also had the pleasure of teaching English to a father and son (as well as some eavesdropping students); in return the son gave Bec his jade necklace and the father bought us both glow sticks! It truly restored Bec's waning faith in the Chinese after the previous night of being asked for 400yuan to sit down in a nightclub!

Day four, very tired we woke up early and headed via local bus to the Terracotta Warriors! The experience of finding the first of two buses was incredibly successful, the second however was a little more tedious. Being the very well prepared tourists we are, we had a plethora of Chinese words written down to help us in asking for directions. This was of little value when each time we asked a friendly local they pointed in a different direction to the last. With fingers flying in all directions we finally found the transit officers the most reliable and within 20 minutes of wandering around we found our second bus at pretty much the location we started at! ARGH! An hour and a half bus ride later we were at the Terracotta Warriors and it was all worth it as we watched groups upon groups of people being rushed through their 'tour' like cattle. Many pictures were taken and the ritually magnet was bought. All in all it was a great day!!!

Tomorrow we are heading to Beijing by plane (how posh are we!) We'll let you know how the adventures go.
Xiexie for reading, Bec and J.