Beijing Zoo and the Terracotta Warriors (China part 3)

Tuesday, January 7th
Today we woke up late (around 9:30) and ate some breakfast. When we finished packing. We checked out and hit the road. We went straight to the train station to pick up our tickets and then to the zoo. We saw pandas, polar bears, monkeys, Tapirs and much more. One of the monkeys tried to attack me... NOT just once but twice, it was super crazy.

When we finished with the zoo we ate some yummy peppered beef, fried rice and chow mein for dinner. We drank a delicious drink you can only find in Beijing (at least that was what we were told) It tasted like fizzy tang!

We made our way back toward the train station where we walked around for a little while before we officially went in. We got there two hours early so we sat around for a little while before we headed to our gate. When we got there we were surprised that they had already started loading.We found our car and bunk numbers. We are staying with a mother her daughter,and a random chinese man.

We got settled in for the night, ate our birthday cake flavored oreos and drank some weird milk. The nice Chinese man taught us what we needed to know and then we passed out.

Wednesday, January 8th
Nick and I both slept okay.. I was very restricted because I was wearing all of my layers of clothes. We arrived to Xian a few minutes early, when we stopped we headed straight to McDonalds for breakfast. We ate and stayed there for an hour or so and watched the buses come and go. We looked at our directions to figure out which bus we needed to take. When we finished we walked down and jumped on what we THOUGHT was the right bus, however a few stops down Nick and I looked at each other with concerned looks. Concern # 1) There weren't any foreigners on our bus. Concern #2) No one could tell us if we were going to the Terracotta warrior museum.Concern # 3) It just flat out looked like we were going the wrong way.

We were both extremely frustrated because no one could speak English so we jumped off the bus ran across the street and then grabbed another bus back to the train station to start over. When we jumped on the bus we discovered that they did not have change for our money and so we dug through pockets and we were still short.We ended up just putting in what we had and jumped off the bus. We walked around the train station looking for different buses. We found a large parking lot and started wondering around. We saw some nice coach buses and as we got closer the side of them read from train stations to Terracotta warrior museum. Before jumping on I tried to ask how much it was. They wouldn't answer and kept pushing me on which made me extremely nervous. I got upset and blocked the door to the bus until they told me. Finally we jumped on and rode it all the way to the museum. The whole way the bus made frequent stops trying to convince people to jump on. At some point the people who were standing were told to crouch down, when we went through a random check point it made since why. They probably cannot have people standing on the bus. When we Finally arrived to the Warrior museum we had a while to walk to get our tickets then to actually get in to the museum itself. The whole walk we were dodging people and nicely turning them down.

The Warriors were extremely cool. It was worth the trouble trying to get there. Some history about the warriors, they were discovered by some local farmers who were digging a well. When they found some pottery, they notified someone important and they found the warriors. The government took over and they are still uncovering many of the artifacts today. They are filled with warriors, their weapons, horses, carriages, and armor. All made out of clay (Except for the weapons) and some were destroyed because of thieves and fires. It was really hard for me to believe all this stuff was buried because of some important person wanted it to be so when he died (that's what they believe) I think the king made these clay warriors to make people believe he had a large army when infact he didn't.

When we finished we ate at a Dico (Chinese fast food restaurant chain) it was pretty tasty!! As we walked out I bought these adorable handmade items from a very old Chinese lady. They are super cute! As we tried to barter with her a crowd gathered around. Finally we caved, but it was a fantastic find.

We easily jumped on the bus and went back to the stations. We had time to spare so we went shopping and found a Haagan Dazs Ice cream restaurant where we had a giant chocolate ball with ice cream on the inside. They poured hot chocolate syrup on top of the ball and caused it to melt so you could see the ice cream on the inside. It was so delicious. We had to ask for more vanilla ice cream to balance out the chocolatey goodness.

   

 

It was such a tasty dessert, dare I say one of the best I have every had at a restaurant! When we finished we went back to the train station boarded our train, Beijing bound.

Thursday, January 9th
We arrived safely and dieing to take showers and change clothes (we had been wearing the same clothes for 3 days) but we still had to wait till we landed in Seoul late Thursday night.

We did some last minute shopping, saw Chairman Mao's dead frozen body, and then we stopped to eat our last Chinese meal, a must have. Beijing Duck!

 

It tasted pretty good but at this point Nick was running a fever and not feeling well at all. He managed to eat something and then we headed back to our Hostel to pick up our bags and warm up.

We made it to Seoul safely and showered and passed out.

Our Trip to China was definitely interesting to say the least. It is very eye opening to see the differences between all of the Asian countries. China was our least favorite, however we are glad we had the opportunity to visit.