Ex-Ian

Well, since they had to go and hold the world cup in South Africa, making the first England game at 2am here, it seems I have time to kill! So, time for an update. We're surrently in Xi'an (which we have finally managed to stop referring to as 'Ex-Ian'), after a few days in Beijing. I'm still getting used to China after India. There are many ways in which I like it better - there's certainly no contest about where I would rather live. It's clean, it's friendly, everything you could possibly want and more (scorpians on sticks anyone?) is readily available. However. I still miss many aspects of India, despite the dirt, the heat and hassle of doing anything. That said, we have seen some amazing sights here and are lookig forward to seeing many more.
We spent 5 days altogether in Beijing. First day we went straight to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City. Certainly far from Forbidden these days. Almost as entertaining as the city itself was watching the hordes of Chinese tourists posing for photos. My favourites are the many couples who dress in 'his and hers' versions of the same outfit. One cuople took it a step further with characatures of each other on their t-shirts. Brilliant entertainment! Another thing I love about China is the range of fast food restaurants available - we went to a fast food chain and I had duck breast with plum sauce and rice. Certianly not just Macdonalds and Burger King to choose from! Next day was Olympic day, when we passed up the opportunity to buy our very own gold medlas and settled for a walk around the stadium and surrounding area, which was very impressive.
Sunday saw us making our way to the Great Wall of China - trying to avoid the crowds as much as possible and making for a slightly more out of the way section where we hiked 12km of partially renovated and partially original state wall. I have to confess here (before Kev reads this and thinks I'm skating over the facts..) that i had a slight wobble at the beginning when it hit me how the wall goes quite considerably up as well as down. Clearly I knew this... but suddenly the reality hit me! However, after half an hour I got into my stride and (with the occasional break for ice cold water) was able to appreciate the scenery and complete impressiveness of the wall. The cuople of days were spent in the back streets of Beijing and doing a little shopping, before makin gour way to Xi'an 2 days ago. Since arriving, we have visited the Muslim quarter of the city (and spent a good hour too scared to order food anywhere), the Big Goose Pagoda and today, the Terracotta Warriors. There's certainly a lot of them! We are now the proud owners of our own set of 5 (we didn't really want them, but once the guy selling them went below a pound for the set we felt we coupldn't say no...). Which brings us to tonight, with a mere 3 and a half hour till kick off. Maybe time for a coffee to keep me awake!