The Big Trip...

hey everyone

What a busy week! We had a free day in Xi'an which was lovely as I could finally sleep in and not be expected to be downstairs, washed and fed at 7:30am for once! After a lazy morning, me, Megs, Sam and Steve set out for the Wild Goose Pagoda which is set in a huge park and is absolutely beautiful. After walking around there for a few hours we went to teh Xi'an Museam which was a complete waste of time because it was all old artefacts which interests me as much as watching paint dry. We also spent some tiem walking along the city wall (it is amazingly preserved and runs in a complete square around the inner city of Xi'an). All in all, it was a busy day which ended off with a lovely banquet dinner and a chinese opera show. The show was lovely..no opera singing, but lots of dancing and playing chinese musical instruments (mum and dad - i finally know what those ornament things you have in teh house actually sound like!), however was ruined slightly by the 4 drunk middle age people sitting at teh table in front of us, fanning themselves, talking loudly and fainting all over the place. Wonderful.

The following day was highlight of the trip. We got up ealry to drive one hour to see the magnificant terracotta warriers. There are over 2000 warriers already uncovered and they are unsure how many more are hidden deep within the grounds. They were first discovered by a farmer who was digging a well and came across teh top of one of teh warriers head. Apparantly they were made thousands of years ago by an emporer who wanted his army to be rememebered beacuse they were so great. Anyway..we had a great day and learnt a lot about the history of China thought these sculptures.

After the warriers we went to visit a school for mentally disabled children. The reason we went here is because Intrepid (my tour company) gives a lot of money to help this foundation through our tour costs. We sat and watched a show that the children put on for us and learnt a lot about the opportunities for mentally handicaped children in China. After visiting the school we went straighht to teh airport and flew to Yichang which is where we were to board the ship to take us around the 3 Gorges.

We arrived at the boat by 9pm (after the interesting flight of being ina 30 seat plane) and I went straight to bed as I was exhausted. The boat was a bit dingy and one night was definitely enough on it. The following day we lef the big ship for a small boat to go around teh 3 gorges. These were absolutely beautiful although the only bad thing was that there was a chinese tour guide who insited of speaking into a megaphone for the entire 4 hours in chinese!!!!! We all wanted to kill her by the end! We left the boat in teh afternoon and checked into a hotel in one of the communities around the 3 gorges area for one night.

The following day we were up at 8 to boat teh hydrofoil boat to take us back to Yichang. From here we went to have a look at teh dam project that is going on at the moment. They are building a huge dam to deal to with all teh floods that kill hundreds of people each year around the Yangtse river area. tehy are also having to relocate hundreds of thousands of people because they are raising teh water level so high to fuel a new power plant. The whole project is extimated to be cost around 40 billion US dollars.

After this we caught a 20 hour (yes, thats right..20 hours!) train to Beijing. This train was much nicer than our other sleeper traina s there were only 4 beds in a room and they evern had doors! luxury! no..it was absolutely fine, and we just sat and ate snacks all night and tehn got a good 8 hours sleep for once! The highlight was when 4 chinese students came and sat in our cabin with us (they were fascinated with Sam's long blond hair) and we (along with the help of our tour guide Richard) were able to converse with them.

We arrived into beijing at 2pm the follwong day and had free time until the next day.