Dragoman tour starts today! The train pulls into Xi-an on time. Moving parallel to the impressive Xi-an walls. I have to meet at our joining hotel at 10am. Problem- my Intrepid notes say one hotel and Dragoman say another. Al is a life saver and confirms the hotel for me. After much to-ing and fro-ing at the taxi rank trying to explain where I need to be I'm off to meet my new group.
The joining hotel is fancy! The taxi stops at gold revolving doors and I think to myself ‘Jesus Rachel. This hotel is too fancy. It's definitely not where you need to be. You're going to need to pay him and then get to the right place’. Turns out it is the right place. As I approach the check in desk I'm greeted by Jason, the local guide, and shortly after that Helen our guide/driver and Duncan our second guide/driver. It's 9:45am and the introductory meeting will start in 15 minutes. I go chuck my bags in my room and meet my room mate, Annlee. I'm immediately thinking of the pop idol YouTube video of Ken Lee.
My new tour group:
• Helen, tour leader, from York. Mid thirties.
• Duncan, tour leader, from New Zealand. Mid thirties.
• Jason, local guide. A little younger than me.
• Malcolm and Susan, North UK. mid/late fifties maybe. Have been on the tour since it started in Bangkok.
• Dunn and Zack, 18 and 21, from Utah but the family currently live in Japan. Joined the tour in Kunming.
• Hamish and Becs, late 20s, 30? From New Zealand. New on the tour.
• Annlee, mid thirties. New on the tour.
• Mick and Jan, late fifties. North UK. New on the tour.
• Linda, Denmark, late forties? New on the tour.
• Victoria, 21. LA. New on the tour- Linda’s niece.
• Michelle, 20. The Netherlands. New on the tour.
• Loes. (Sounds like Lucy without the Y) mid twenties.
On first impressions there seem to be no JohnMiller types, which I am so relieved about.
We give our insurance details and are told be back in the lobby at 1pm to go visit the terracotta warriors. Annlee, Loes, Victoria, Linda, Michelle and I all go to the shop for snacks. The girls are craving chocolate and I say that chocolate just doesn't taste the same in China, with the anti melt agents in it. Loes disappears and comes back with a bar of Dairy Milk from London, where she has flown in from. I nearly cry! In the shop I find the beef I love that the man had given me on the train! We all buy steamed buns and head back to the hotel.
Annlee is an archaeology professor. She teaches in California but spends her summers in Jordan excavating with students. She was married but her husband had died so she was taking trips that she wanted to do ASAP. Loes is a forensic scientist. You know how you watch CSI and think ‘oh that job looks cool’? Well Loes did that and then actually trained to be one! Michelle is a student who just spent a year studying in Hong Kong and wanted to travel China a little before returning home. Linda is a nurse in a neurology ward. Victoria has just finished studying in California and had intended on doing the trip with Linda the year before but they had delayed...I think Linda could be interesting company, and I mean interesting in the JohnMiller sense.
1pm arrives and we meet in the lobby and I get my first glance of Xara- the truck that we will be travelling in from Xian to Beijing. I think an estate agent would call it practical. She's bright orange on the bottom half and white on the top half. I climb on board and there are pairs of seats on both sides, a table on each side with four chairs facing it, a big orange cooler on the right and nets hanging over head. I don't know what I was expecting but Annlee and I agree that it's not what we had expected, if that makes sense.
We set off for the terracotta warriors and got our first dose of Dragoman experience. Everyone was staring at the truck. People pointing and taking photos. The people who had been on the truck before said that it happens everywhere.
When we arrived at the Warriors and met our tour guide Zach asked that we do the pits in reverse order so that when we make it to pit 1 we’ll be gradually more impressed. I'm glad he suggested it. I couldn't understand a single word out tour guide in the sight she said. Apparently she had worked as an English speaking guide for 4 years! Pit 3 was quite small in size, pit 2 even though it was larger seemed to have less on show and pit 1 was exactly like the photos. I wasn't blown away by them if I'm honest. I thought I'd have felt similar to Petra or Taj Mahal but I really didn't. That seemed to be the general consensus with the group. They weren't disappointing but they weren't extraordinary.
Traffic back to the city was slow and we went to a dumpling restaurant for dinner. The restaurant was in a large complex which had a fountain show every night. Jason ordered for all of us. I'm glad he did because when I asked the waitress where the toilet was she had no idea what I was talking about, so ordering food would have been a very long process.
The fountain show was very average, but there were hoards of people there for a Wednesday evening.
Annlee, Becs, Hamish and I went for a few drinks after the show. We got in a tuc tuc that looked like a box on a trailer. Not quite the open ones from India. Becs and Hamish had been living in the UK for the past two years travelling around with Becs’ work. She's a vet. Hamish by trade is a surveyor but spent the past two years doing odd jobs around the country. Annlee had been in Xian for a few nights already and had heard of a bar that had painted terracotta warriors in it. The bar was along the outside of the wall and was advertised as an Irish bar, it wasn't, it was a good bar though. The statues inside were painted in different styles; Picasso, Warhol, Lichtenstein, a band played and people drank from beer towers. Next bar was a micro brewery further along the road. The beers weren't cheap but I was nice to be served a pint instead of a bottle. There's a weird habit in China, beers aren't necessarily served cold. Groups of people will buy beers in bulk and have them all out on the table, sometimes opened, and they're so messy. Beer bottles get chucked under the tables creating so much mess. Bars wouldn't stand for it at home I don't think. The last bar we went to offered us 12 beers and a fruit platter for 200¥, we agreed and 12 bottles came onto the table. We tried to explain that we wanted four at a time and the others to wait in the fridge. Becs was hopeful and used the word ‘staggered’, that didn't work. We got there eventually. Beers finished we got in a taxi and headed home for bed.