Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

It feels like weeks ago but I’m sure it was only days ago that we left Beijing. We had a few options for routes to get to Xian but due to train availability we settled on stopping only in Pingyao.

Pingyao was high on our list of places to see on the way so we were pleased to make our way there with relative ease. Pingyao has some interesting history for being an early financial powerhouse similar to modern day Shanghai or Hong Kong. The first cheques ever used were in Pingyao.

We arrived in Pingyao in the rain (of course). We were immediately approached by a young man with a handout from our hostel and some other Lonely Planet type material. I was skeptical after seeing the crumpled papers with the Lonely Planet logo so we refused to take him up on his offer for a free shuttle service to our hostel. We started walking and he kept riding along beside us assuring us that he was legit. We had a great conversation with him as we walked out in the rain and he drove next to us for about 10 minutes. We all were having a good laugh at the situation so finally Brynn and I got in and he took us the remaining distance to the hostel – for free.

We checked in and got settled and decided to walk around our little area since it had stopped raining and we wanted to get the lay of the land. We saw lots of the city that night. I usually have a good sense of direction and rarely get too lost but that night I must have lost track and taken a few extra lefts instead of a right turn. Everything was fine and we felt reasonably safe knowing that we couldn’t get too far away as the old city is walled in. Brynn was telling me about the local kids being scared to go out after dark because Pingyao is apparently haunted and although I’m not really superstitious I did start to take notice of more sounds and saw more cats and dogs wandering in the shadows after I knew about the ghost stories.

After a quick stop in Pingyao it was on to Xian on the train from Hades that Brynn described earlier. Xian in general was unimpressive to me as a city but has some great tourist attractions nearby to make up for it. I found the city itself to be very busy and plugged with cars, bikes, and people all competing for the next available open space regardless of which direction it will lead. There were very few traffic signals and a timid traveller may have trouble navigating. I will admit I find the chaos amusing but only to a point.

The Terracotta warriors were not to be missed. We got a good tip from a fellow traveller that it was easy to make our own way out to the complex and could save a lot of money doing it on our own rather than with the organized tour. He also gave us a pro tip about admission prices being lower for students and that we could use any picture ID to get the discount – he had used a girl friend’s library card because he has long hair. We used our driver’s licenses and saved half the admission. This trick has worked for us at more attractions since. Don’t hate the player – hate the game. As tourists we get charged for every patch of grass we want to sniff and every building we wander through. A few bucks here and there make a big difference on our travel budget.

At first I expected the warriors to be displayed outdoors or at least in a way that you could get up close to them but that was before we did any real research into it. When I heard that they were inside a specially built hangar and you could only view them from the perimeter I thought it was going to be a bust. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Terracotta army is just as impressive inside the hangar as I expected them to be outside of one. I paid for an audio tour of the complex but was almost bored to tears listening to it. There was plenty of written information available and any guidebook worth its salt will have enough information to satisfy the average visitor.

We were planning to visit a panda reserve but missed out on that because we arrived in the middle of a renovation period for the park. Instead we decided to go out to Famen Temple and get a good look at 3 of Buddha’s finger bones. Again we sidestepped the package tour in order to save a bunch of money. Famen Temple is a couple of hours outside Xian city proper so the package price was fairly steep.

We were shocked to find more than just a simple temple with a couple of finger bones. It turned out to be a massive exhibition ground of all things Buddhist with plenty of oversized statues and buildings and monuments all leading up to a massive new temple in the shape of praying hands. They certainly spared no expense and judging by the ticket prices they are trying to pay down the loans in a hurry. The was no mention of this in our guidebook published in 2006 and I suspect it was developed and completed very recently. I enjoyed it because there was lots of information to read and plenty of things to inspect. The original temple and museum were off to the side with the finger bones still in the old temple for viewing. I was a little sad that it was dwarfed by the new temple grounds.

Our bus ride back from the temple was made memorable because we sat in the front row. I usually like to sit near the back but a kind man and his wife made it clear that we should sit in the front with them. The bus was nearly full and very hot by the time our driver decided to come on the bus to let us leave behind schedule. He did not turn on the air conditioner until much later in the trip when a brave lady came staggering in the heat to the front of the bus to tell him to turn it on. The driver hadn’t noticed I suppose because he had a nice breeze coming in his window while his cigarette smoke was blowing to the back of the bus. He was very impatient and must have been paid based on how often he used his horn. Unluckily the horn sounded from somewhere below our seats. I stayed calm and even had a short nap with my iPod screaming into my ears overtop of the sound of the horn. Brynn couldn’t sleep I guess and she got to see some near misses and the aftermath of a nasty collision on the highway. She was more frazzled than I was when we finally got back to town and off the bus.