"XIAN Travels with Joo" a Xi'an Travel Page by l_joo

The Railway Station
We took this photo at the Xian Railway Station. The air pollution of that day was quite high as you can see from this photo, the background building already half covered by haze. We don’t have any super anti-haze mask with us otherwise I will show it to you the mask of Xian. Standing beside me is of course my little cute girlfriend Sing. You also can see we wore ugly looking fashion with bad cheap quality materials, that’s the way of budget tourists. This is not my idea, I read from experts’ website where if a tourist wear good quality materials, he/she will easily targeted by street ruffians. So, what do you think? Are we cheap enough? Negative side of this was that once in a while we will encounter snooty hotel attendants looking with weird facial expression at the way we dress, but this is just a small matter? Cheap l_joo of VT loves this kind of low-cost way of travel, so as Sing.

Visit the Terracotta Warriors museum
If you want to visit this museum, walk to the direction at right of this photo, about 50 meters away you can see the bus station but not that easy. Let me tell you how to get pass these peoples chasing you to avert you taking the official big 306 bus. They will tell you 1001 stories to take their version of mini 306 buses, very interesting. The situation is roughly like this, they duplicate a smaller version of 306 to ‘steal’ passengers, once you get on their bus, you must wait hours for them to bring you to souvenir shops to buy jades, pearls, ginsengs, etc. So make sure you can run fast otherwise they will steal you right away. I was lucky not being stolen by them because I searched into a website where victims themselves given out this secret tips.

Museum’s interior
So if you want to shoot rolls of good quality photos, make sure you bring your super zoom lenses. They built a long fence around to protect these precious otherwise visitors will bring spray-paint for signature on each of them. The distance is about 20 ft away, so that nobody can get near it but only take photos. I brought with me only a compact camera, that's why I don't have a good photo for you.

Location
This museum is nearly 20 minutes away from Xian city centre in a harsh environment looks almost as desert. There was another place also claimed by the tour guide to be Chin Emperor’s original tomb. That place according to them is much larger and if anybody dare to dig open the tomb, the whole Xian will die. That of course is their version fact.

Extra chit chat tips
While I was showering in our hotel’s bathroom, a young man around age 22 also join in. He said recently he has been appointed as an assistant sales person in a corporation of Xian. He’s hometown was Zhengzhou, the place where Shaolin monks came from. Asked whether he is the only son, he replied not. His viewpoint is single son will lead to over pampered, therefore should have more. He told me he is the eldest of total four siblings.

Our first ever Xian food and hotel
We were so hungry and still have to search for hotel to stay. Most hotel in Xian are reserved only for Chinese, I’m not Chinese, I was rejected by them because they said only Chinese can stay at these hotel. According to them, ‘aliens’ where they used to identify foreigners, must go to hotel with special tag and label specially built for aliens. Being identified as aliens. Consequently we have to search around for specific hotel. Right after hotel, 3 of us already so hungry and is about to swallow anything possible, at the same time we saw a restaurant with a big tag written ‘yang rou pau mo’.

Chinese pronunciation
See Aun (See your aunty)