House Guests...

So I find myself without internet access in school again. So I have to work on my blogs via WORD and hopefully I can waste an hour or so until I have to go do lessons. So after sweating a gallon or two from all the humidity that is the rainy season they have finally decided to turn the air conditioner on. I can’t understand how the other teachers can stay in here, literally melting. But as they have finally realized that sweating in not fun they have blared the AC which just so happens to be hitting the back of my neck making me feel cold… I feel like someone is in a corner laughing at me.

Krystal’s sisters, Kayoko and Kumiko are here until today. They arrived in Kyoto only this past Saturday and now they’re on their way home to Hawaii. We tried to be as entertaining as possible in the short time they were. It just kind of sucked that they came in the middle of the rainy season and being outside is not best place to be. They weren’t really interested in seeing any historical sites or temples or shrines. All they were interested in was shopping. I wasn’t all that excited to go shopping for two full days.

Most of Saturday was spent been lazy. After about 2 hours after we got up we decided to make a real effort to clean the place before Kayoko and Kumiko came. Just as we were about to finish they came rang the intercom just downstairs. Kums had been to our place last year but this was Kayo’s first time. I guess that was what made Krystal a little crazy in the cleaning up. But like all the other guests we had at our place, Kayo said our apartment was “cute.” I guess I have to put myself in their shoes coming from Hawaii, everything must look so small and compact. I mean the refrigerator is small, the couch is small, the table is small, and every other home appliance you can think of is also small. After about 30 minutes claiming everything was small they changed their chant to “Let’s go shopping!” SO GOOD!

The first night we went to Diamond City, the big indoor mall in Kyoto. Of course they went into every store and when in a store they looked at everything. It was a really long experience waiting for them to finish. Even Krystal was getting tired and a little impatient. But finally it did come to an end and the next big thing was finding a place to eat dinner. Originally we were going to go to one of the really good restaurants in the mall but because we ended just around 7 it was super packed. After much debate we decided to go to the Pirate yakiniku place. But then we were on a small time restraint because we were going to go to Karaoke that night. We booked a room at 9:30 and were planning on staying for 3 hours. But anything less than that wouldn’t be enough since we had Kums and Kayo there, 2 registered sing-a-holics. We sang to out hearts desires and even extended our three our reservation an extra 30 minutes. It was pretty crazy. After Karaoke we decided to call it a night but not before we got some kebabs.

Sunday was of course more shopping but I didn’t really mind. With the annual Gion Festival coming around soon I wanted to look for a jimbei to wear, the shorts and short sleeve version of the yukata. I walked all over keeping an eye out but they didn’t seem to have my size. They did have my size in a Saube, long pants version of the jimbei but I know its going to be hot. There’s no way I can wear long pants during the festival. An I idea I was thinking of was buying the Saube and then just hemming the pants so they are shorter? You know just sew some loose hems so when I finish with the festival I can take out the stitching and use them in the winter.

So anyway Monday was a somewhat relax day for the girls since they decided to stay in all day. They did go outside but only to get some Japanese McDonald’s and check out another hyaku yen shop. Of course we had work but we met up with them afterwards and had a super dinner at KatsuKura. I don’t think I can get enough of that place. Afterwards we headed to the Wonder Tower. It seems we already have a routine for people that come to visit us in Kyoto. Well anyway the Wonder Tower was pretty fun. They won a huge Hello Kitty Alarm Clock which I heard they had trouble fitting it into their luggage. We also got to do some Purikura which was actually kind of fun. The girls seemed to enjoy it also.

They left today at 3 o’clock or so, but the surprise was when I got home the place was CLEAN! I couldn’t believe it. I was preparing to get some done before Krystal came home but it was all done. THANK YOU KUMS AND KAYO, YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU HELPED BY CLEANING UP. Its also a good thing because it seems that I have caught a small bug of some kind. I’m having some mad sinus headaches. I just hope everything is all gone before we go to Disneyland this week. THAT’S RIGHT DISNEYLAND, a Whoo hoo!!

Under Pressure...

I guess I’ve been using the three China posts as justification to stay away from blogging. I’ll do my best to fill in what’s been happening.

So, I finally finished my elementary school visits. That means no more elementary schools in Japan anymore. At first I was a little bummed but now that I have wasted almost a whole week in Junior High, I see why some people like the down time. First of all I’m not in charge for planning lessons, I don’t have to be the main teacher, and at the most I’ll teach three classes a day. It has been my first week in Junior High and so far I have taught a total of 5 lessons this week and I had enough time to finish, “China the Movie.”

It’s been pretty stressful recently. It seems like millions of things happened since we got back from China. I just assumed that it would be smooth sailing but I was wrong. Anyway the first thing was my Dad and William’s visit to Japan. My Dad wants to come again because he really wanted to see Japan but got side tracked by my Mom and sister. They were here for about two weeks but only got to go to Kyoto and Osaka. Well we had to work and there was a trip to Korea in the middle of it so I guess I can understand why we didn’t get to see all of Japan. Anyway he’s coming again and this time we’ll really take him around. We’re thinking of going south to Shimonoseki and going all the way up to Tokyo, maybe further. But then William was planning a summer trip to Japan and Korea. It would have been cool taking everyone around but at the last minute William couldn’t get the last week off to come to Japan. And it just so happened that that last week was when we would be out of Kyoto. We planned to move out of our apartment right when we would go traveling so we wouldn’t have to pay another month’s pay for staying longer. Trying to communicate with William in California and my Dad in Hawaii was a little hard. We’re also trying to get some JR Rail Passes so we can all take the bullet train, but technically we’re not eligible to use the passes since we still have a working visa in Japan and the pass is only for foreign visitors. But hopefully, when we got to validate the pass they don’t look too carefully at our passports so we can get away with using the bullet train. So that was that…

Then there’s the whole Disneyland thing. WE’RE GOING TO DISNEYLAND!! In China, Lisa, Krystal, and I decided that we would go to Disneyland with the last few paid leaves we have left. So after coming back to Kyoto we went to the travel agency and booked three reservations at a Disneyland hotel and purchased a three day passport. Everything was going smoothly when something really unexpected happened. The successor of head seat in Krystal’s religion had passed away. We got an unexpected call from Hawaii saying that Himegami-Sama had passed away. We were one week away from going to Disneyland and this tragedy happens. Anyway Krystal finds out that the funeral service will be on the Thursday we were planning on going to Disneyland. Krystal says she can’t got to Disneyland so it seems like we need to cancel the whole reservation. But the thing is that we were so close to the departure date the we were certain that there was going to be some kind of cancellation fee or something. And we needed to tell Lisa that the Disneyland trip was canceled. But then we remembered that Lisa had bought plane tickets instead of the bullet train tickets. She had probably bought them already and it would much harder to get a reimbursement just days before the departure date. STRESSED!

The next morning at school I was frantically trying to get in touch with Lisa to tell what happened and what we were going to do. After a 30 minute conversation with Lisa about what we should do she decided that she wanted to go even if she was going to go by herself. Then I tried franticly to call Krystal and tell her that we needed to change the dates of the trip if possible. So we went back to the travel agency and tried to get everything settled, again, and some how keep the cancellation fees to a minimum. After about an hour, we had finally fixed everything and although we were going to be there one day shorter the plan was roughly the same. You would think that it ends there…

Right after going to the travel agency we meant out to dinner to eat our stress away. It turned out that because we only changed the dates of the trip we had the chance that we wouldn’t pay a cancellation fee or at least a much smaller fee. But as we were eating dinner it occurred to us that the new reservations we made were wrong! Because we told her that we didn’t want to change anything in our reservation except the dates we were in Disneyland she kept everything else the same. Originally we had made reservations for 4 days but because of the new date change we could only make it a 3 day weekend. As we walked out the travel agency we were amazed that the cost was relatively the same and applauded our last minute efforts only to figure out that it should have been a few hundred dollars cheaper for knocking off one more day. To make matters worst, when we left the travel agency they were just about to close and if we were to change something we would have to come back on Saturday. This was looking really bad because if the reservation went through we would have to make ANOTHER cancellation and that would be another set of cancellation fees. We were pretty stressed. Not to mention Krystal was already feeling stressed out over the recently deceased religion head. Does the madness ends? Not yet…

So if you haven’t heard our contract in Kyoto is slowly coming to an end. That means that have all of sudden become a hot spot for visitors, mainly Krystal’s siblings. Anyway originally we had everyone accounted for a scheduled for the specific weekend they would be in Kyoto. But because of the unfortunate passing of Himegami Sama, everything became mixed up. So originally the two boys Kenneth, Knewton, and #4 Kandace were supposed to come on July 7th. But due to the funeral everyone that was planning on coming to Japan later came earlier. So now #4 Kandace and #6 Karen are coming in June while the two boys will come later in July. To make matters a little more hectic Kenneth is doing a medical school exchange here in Japan and wanted to come and visit us in Kyoto. But the thing is that he also has 4 of his med school friends and they also want to visit Kyoto. And because Krystal and Kenneth can’t say “NO” they all seem to be staying over at our place. So that second week in July, we’ll be packed with 6 people in our tiny apartment. I just hope that all goes well and everything works out for the better.

Did I tell you that we were a little stressed out? Well Krystal left to attend the funeral yesterday and that means I have four days all to myself. There are still a lot of things we need to do like pack, clean, and start clearing some of the stuff out of our apartment. Luckily the rainy season just started giving me a reason to stay home and get the chores done.

Shanghai, there we went!

We arrived in Shanghai at about 12:00 midnight. Luckily for us, Lisa booked us a hotel that was very near to the airport so we could just crash for the night and make our way into the city in the morning. The hotel was a lot cleaner looking than any of the other hotel we had stayed at so we were some what relieved. Then Lisa found some bugs and cursed the whole country of China.

We had planned to get up early and head into the actual city but we ended up sleeping in a little and missed the breakfast buffet they were advertising downstairs. Well as long as we got into the city then we for sure thought that we would be ok. I mean we did survive Beijing and Xi’an.

We got a taxi and got directions to our last hotel in China. It turns out that there are 2 airports in Shanghai and we landed in the international one that happens to be about an hour outside the main city. I guess it was ok since the cab guy knew exactly where he was going to go. Anyway the ride into town was very peaceful and uneventful. But we did notice that the air was a little cooler and clearer than the China we had seen so far. As we went over a bridge we saw the city and it looked like New York when TV shows do a fly over going away from the Statue of Liberty. Sky Scrappers, towers, and huge buildings covered the sky line. We were finally in civilization! We passed parks, malls, stores, and governmental buildings and it felt like home.

Then there was our hotel, I mean hostel. Lisa had booked us a hostel that was no more than 2 years old. It was very new and very pleasing to the eye. The color scheme was well planned and every wall had mirrors and/or glass. The hallway where we walked to our rooms looked very clean and uniform. The rooms were also very luxurious with two double beds put together, an all glass bathroom, TV, and air conditioning. It even had a refrigerator and a microwave. Going back to the all glass the bathroom. Like I said it was all glass. You could see people taking a shit, taking a shower, or anything else you would be doing in a bathroom. The shower wall was facing the bed so if you pulled the blinds up it was kind of like your very own peep show. Kind of cool I guess. The door was even a giant plate of glass with a handle. If someone were to take a shit that person could watch TV because all the walls were glass and you could easily see into the bedroom. Pretty crazy huh?

There were a few things we had planned to do while in Shanghai. One was to go shopping, find a tailor, see the Famous Bund waterfront, and eat good foods. We pretty much got to all of them except finding the tailor. Anyway the first night we went to The Bund. It’s kind of like the boardwalk in California where they stores and shops and you can enjoy a peaceful walk along the water. That didn’t happen. The Bund in Shanghai was PACKED! There were so much people that certain walkways were only made to go one way. We were trying to find a famous road that had stores on both sides for about a mile that intersected this waterfront walk. It’s kind of like walking down Waikiki on Kalakaua Ave. We eventually just followed the crowd and we were on our way. They had a lot of shops and stuff but nothing really worth buying. The stores I felt like were not geared towards tourists or residents of Shanghai. But then again I guess we were a little jaded seeing Beijing and Xi’an.


This is a picture of Shanghai's Pudong area with the Famous Pearl TV Tower.


We had a good stroll all the way to the end and decided that we wanted to go to the famous Shanghai TV Tower located on the opposite side of The Bund. You could get to the new man made peninsula by bridge or catch a tram that went under the river. We chose the tram. And in the tram “station” there were having some exhibits and exhibitions so we decided to check those out too. One was the story of some prehistoric fish that lives in the area and the protection of it. We basically walked around looking at aquariums with goldfish in them. We were not impressed at all, but hey it was China. Then there was a Chinese Sex history exhibition that looked promising but it was just a bunch of ceramic, porcelain, bronze, wood, and pictures of phallic objects. Sometimes they were really graphic and other times it just looked like a “stick.” It was pretty interesting though, they even had a donkey saddle with a “piece” sticking up in which they made adulterous women “ride” when they were caught. At least it was a lot more interesting than the fish tanks of goldfish. We had some time to check out this sound exhibit but since it was getting late we decided that we go to the Pearl TV Tower first and some shots of the city at night. Big Mistake…


This is a shot of the French Cosession and Nan Jing Road area from the very top of the TV Tower.

It turns out that the reason China’s tourist attractions are so crowded because the Chinese have the same Golden Week holiday as we do. So all these people were Chinese tourists! That meant the tower was PACKED!! The Pearl Tower had 3 observation decks and you needed to buy a ticket to go to each deck. But if you bought all three at the same time you would save some money. They take you to the highest deck first and you make your way down on your pace. But the thing is that you need to catch three different elevators to get to the very top. And each elevator was a crazy ass wait. When we finally got to the top the view, it wasn’t all that great and all the time we had spent getting up there was just a reminder on how it would be going back down. I guess it wasn’t all that bad because we had a Japanese couple behind us and they were complaining about the Chinese people pushing and how ridiculous the lion was. This was exactly what we were bitching about too! We decided to make friends while we waited in line after line. Another thing that was entertaining us was a little girl behind the Japanese couple that was trying her best to “cut” in line. Every little opening she got she tried to squeeze through. So naturally the guy in front would be frustrated. What’s worse is that she was holding her mother’s hand and every time she tried to go forward she was trying to bring her mother too. And did the mother say anything? NOPE! She was practically encouraging the little brat to keep moving forward. And Lisa did a very good job in keeping the girl behind us… with her behind. Anyway you can imagine how going down was like….

After we got back down the tower we went to see the last exhibit about sound but it turns out to be a big dark room with a giant dining table with headphones. They close the door behind you can you just listen to all the scary sounds. But the freaky thing was that it was pitch dark and your eyes never get adjusted to the dark. They had like a door creaking, footsteps, glass breaking, and even some women/ghost whispering in your ear, and the finale was a bunch of kids giggling that I’m sure sounded normal but because of the setting they sound very demonic. Lisa and Krystal got scared so they took the head phones off and just sat in the dark. I guess it was supposed to be scary because one of the kids started to cry and the worker guy opened the door and took him out. It totally ruined the whole effect of the “haunted room.”

Oh I forgot to talk about the Tram ride. So anyway we caught a tram that took us from one side of the Bund to the other. So basically it’s a tunnel that you go through and to make it an attraction they made the ram go really slow and out lights inside the tunnel. It was kind of like a light show. But the funniest part was the English voice over guy that would explain to you what you were supposed to feel. Imagine someone trying to explain to you that a painting is supposed to make you feel cool so they used words like refreshing, water, ice, snow, winter, breeze, and any other words that may put an image in your mind about that’s how you were supposed to feel while looking at the painting. This tunnel was just like that. We go through something twinklely and it says “Twinkling Stars”. Next was “Time Tunnel, Acidic Magma, Water Culture, Meteor Showers, and so on. I can’t remember exactly what they said but it was pretty much like how I said before. Anyway that was the first night.

The second day we found a place that was kind of like the flea market but enclosed liked that shopping area we went to in Beijing. And of course you were able to haggle. The type of merchandise was similar to the stuff in Beijing but this was more of the knock off stuff. Anyway, anywhere you walked there were people asking if you wanted a bag, watch, or DVDs. The weird thing was that I was willing to buy DVDs but hadn’t heard them until like the 20th person asked. I guess I just started tuning out when they said, “Do you need bag?” But anyway I wanted more DVDs so I said yes to this one guy and he led me to his shop. It turns out that his main item was shirts but out from under a counter he pulls out baskets and baskets of DVDs. And he had me and Lisa go through almost his whole stack before we stopped him and haggled for a price. Together Lisa and I bought 32 DVDs. It was awesome! I only took about 11 but Lisa went crazy and bought 21! The rest of time was spent looking for omiyage and clothes for Lisa and Krystal.

For dinner we took the advise of the Lonely Planet book and went to nice place called 1221. It was an ordeal trying to get there because the book doesn’t really tell you directions. So we had the front desk people at the hostel call for us and write the directions in Chinese for the cab driver. Something was wrong with the directions because after giving it to the cab driver he would not stop talking. Even after repeated attempts at “NO CHINESE” this guy thought I had to be Chinese. Then at one point he gave up and turned in the back seat to look at Lisa and Krystal. Lisa responded with a nervous “No Chinese” as well and the dude finally got the hint and stopped asking us questions.

Anyway the restaurant we went to was pretty awesome. The food there was so good and rivaled the awesome place we went to in Beijing. We had roast duck, fried rice, and all the Chinese family style dinner fixin’s. One of the cool things was the guy that came around serving tea did so out of a pot that had a spout that was like 3 feet long! It was crazy! He had this pose where he just let the hot water flow from across the table. Dessert was very impressive as well. Krystal ordered watermelon where the rines were already cut off and seeded. And Lisa ordered a pineapple sherbet that came in a half frozen pineapple. It was pretty good and I though that it was better than Dole Whip. Krystal disagrees.


This is the restaurant that was reccoemnded by the Lonely Planet. It was well worth all the trouble of getting there.

After dinner we were about to hail a cab when we saw a massage place. We haven’t gotten a real massage in China yet so this was going to be it. Because we had just eaten, we decided just to get the foot treatment and it was great. I could have easily fallen asleep but the thought that some lady was touching my feet keep me from going under. After the hour it felt like I was walking on cloud shoes. The foot massage was well worth the wait. We even thought about staying longer to get the full body treatment but they had already stopped for the day so we said we would come back the next day. And we did.

The last day in Shanghai and China was a chill day. It seemed that all the good weather we were having just about run out because it was humid and overcast. We wanted to check out this French Concession place with old architecture but it turns out that we walked around the same area the first night in Shanghai. We even got a chance to check out the Shanghai museum. There was a lot of stuff to see there and was a good detour out of the humidity. They had a special art exhibit from some guy that I can’t remember as well as an exhibition of precious stones collection from the guy that started Apple. The museum was pretty cool and we spent most of the whole afternoon there. After the museum, Lisa wanted to do more shopping so we headed over to the marketplace again for some last minute shopping. We were going to go to another Chinese restaurant but decided to go to Pizza Hut instead. We’ve been seeing it all over China and wanted to find out if it tasted the same or not. And it does.


This is the Shanghai Museum with the crazy architecture. Actually a lot of buildings in Shanghai had werid arichtecture.

After the Pizza Hut dinner we headed back to the massage place to get the full body treatment. What a relaxing experience that was. I think I even heard Lisa or Krystal snore during the massage. Now I know what a massage is supposed to feel like so no more generic ones. We all left on a “down” feeling because the China trip was coming to an end. Lisa actually slept with us the last night in our room to make sure we got up on time. The next morning Krystal and I had to leave the hostel at 6 to get to the airport by 7 to catch our plane by 9. We said our goodbyes to a half awake Lisa and headed back to Japan.

And that was China.

It felt so good coming back home to Japan. The air was cleaner, people seemed cleaner, and I felt cleaner. We see the Kansai International airport so much that it felt more like home than the Honolulu International airport. It felt good to be back home. Now just a few more weeks than maybe Tokyo Disneyland? Then a few weeks after that, our last flight home.

Stop 2, Xi'an

Ok the Beijing post was getting too big, so I’m going to break this trip up. So just before we left for Xi’an we had a little trouble with our train tickets. We were originally supposed to go to Xi’an via an overnight train but something happened to our tickets and we were transportation-less. Luckily for us there was a travel agent in the hotel in Beijing that booked us three tickets by plane to Xi’an. That way we could get to Xi’an in about 2 hours compared to 14 hours and we could avoid the biggest “concern” for us about the train.

When we told everyone that we were going to China, they all talked about how jealous they were. “They,” being the other JETs in Kyoto. Then when we would go over our itinerary they would always look at us funny when we told them about the overnight train. It turns out that some people have been on the train before and the train is pretty… nasty. For one thing the rooms were only available for 4 people. That means that there would be a good chance that we would not be alone in our room. Who knows what kind of person could have been bunking with us? Just the thought alone was kind of creepy. And there was an issue about the bathrooms. It turns out that the bathrooms are all pubic and unisex. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that you have to use these special boots that are laid out for you so that when you “go” you don’t get your feet wet. Supposedly the water splashes around a lot and due to this, many people “miss”. And not just the men but the women too. Oh and there is only one pair of boots. And after being in Beijing for 4 days I’m almost certain that it’s more sanitary to go barefoot than use the boots. Anyway we avoided that whole situation and had one more pleasant morning in Beijing and we were off.

Xi’an: First impressions, hot and dirty. While in Beijing the weather was a comfortable 22ish degrees C, about 75 F. But in Xi’an it got as high as 35 degrees C, that’s up in the upper 80’s maybe even 90 F! It was HOT! The shuttle bus from the airport to the main part of town was pretty smooth. I was getting a little worried because everywhere I looked I could only see small one story houses or shops that looked pretty run down. It looked like something out of a sci-fi post apocalyptic city, with dust clouds rolling everywhere, children in rags running around, and that one guy who’s wearing a wife beater and jeans with a cowboy hat. I saw no gas station, no Starbucks, no McDonald’s, and no KFC. I didn’t even see a convenient store. The only shops around were engine shops. It looks like they sold every single engine ever invented. You could get washing machine engine, car engines, moped engines, lawn mower engines, and more. It was really weird.　　But we were outside the main city and making our way directly to the center of Xi’an. After a good 45 minutes we started to see some evidence that there might be an actual city here. We started to breathe more relaxed when we did see the McDonald’s, KFC, and etc.

As soon as we got off the shuttle, we went in search of the hostel we were gonna stay at. In the middle of the city there’s a huge pavilion called the Bell Tower. It’s literally the center of the city as there are streets that got to the north, south, west, and east from the Bell Tower. And fortunately for us the hostel was right next to the Bell Tower. When we got to the hostel we, or I had to sneak around since Lisa only made reservation for 2 people since 3 people would mean we would have to get another room. So I had to sneak around and I noticed that the place was extremely nasty. There were a lot of rubbish, spilled drinks, and corners that smelled of urine. As this was all over the floor, all over the walls there were posters saying how good this hostel was. Pictures of previous guests during certain festivals and such were pasted everywhere. It was hardly believable that this hostel was rated really high. But then again we did have our “Asian Masks” on so we looked like any other Chinese threesome walking around Xi’an. So no tourist treatment…

I thought the lobby was bad, the rooms were worse. The floor, although carpeted, was full of stains and looked like it’s never been cleaned before. And it felt like there was so much foot traffic that the carpet was matted down. The beds were semi decent and so was the toilet. The shower didn’t have any kind of raise or slope so when you took a shower the water would just pool up in the bathroom. If you took a long shower, no doubt the water would have gotten into the hallway. We were only gonna stay one night so we just had to just suck it up. I was also the “illegal” guest so we couldn’t complain. Nevertheless we needed to be thankful for a working shower, toilet, and a place where we could keep our bags.


This was our hostel in Xi'an. Looks OK from the outside but it was pretty bad on the inside. So bad that we didn't even take any pictures.

It turns out the Bell Tower was still open after we settled down so we took a look. It’s just a huge pavilion where they rung a bell for times for prayer and etc. We had come at a good time because there was a show that demonstrated the use of the different bells and other musical instruments. It was pretty cool, but then as a finale they played “Jingle Bells” and that ruined the ambience.


Here"s the famous Xi'an Bell Tower.

After the Bell Tower, we decided to go to a near by shopping mall but it turned out that it was a regular mall and after coming from a marketplace where you can haggle, a regular mall didn’t really cut it for us. So instead we took a stroll around the area. We realized that we were more tired than we thought we were so we decided to make it a KFC night and head back to the hotel to chill. The best thing about the hotel room was that it had a really good air conditioner. If not for that I don’t think we would have made it. We watched a little TV while chomping on our KFC (It tastes the same). After dinner we decided to play a friendly game of Rummy. Rummy seemed to be THE game of the trip. Anytime we had a few minutes to kill it was always Rummy.

The next day was our one day quest to get to the Terra-cotta statues of Xi’an. We were gonna get a tour at the hostel but in the guide book it told us to stay away from them since they take to all these other tombs and stay longer at tourist traps rather than the historical places．The best thing was to either find some kind of private chauffeur or catch a cab. The cab was going to be about 100 Yuan one way, which seemed kind of high. So went to look for a travel agent to book us just a driver. The best way to do that was go to a higher end hotel with all the luxuries in the lobbies and just walk in. We actually found one and she made friends with Lisa and got us a driver. This driver was going to take us there and then bring us back after 2 hours at the site.

The drive there was just a little over an hour and fairly uneventful. I fell asleep in the back seat almost the whole way. The thing that worried me was that I had the window down and I guess my mouth was open as I took the nap. I was chewing gum and when I woke up I started chewing it again and it seemed crunchy. Not a bug crunchy but sand crunchy. The air was still pretty hazy and nasty. And we were going into the country side where they found the Terra-cotta statues. So I said bye to the blueberry Extra gum.

When we got to the actual site the place was super crowded. There was so many people as well as cars, tour buses, and vendors all trying to get into the site. It’s a good thing we were on foot so we could weave in and out of traffic and make our way to the entrance. Eventually we got there and of course the RUDE Chinese people don’t understand the concept of “lining up.” This is pretty sad because anytime there’s a little bit of organization the people who disregard the concept of “lining up” spoil everything. After giving a really hard elbow to the girl behind me I made my way into the site grounds.

We headed straight towards the main site where they had the army of Terra-cotta Statues in battle formation all facing the East. It was pretty amazing when you first enter. Its kind of cool how they set it up with the entrance being at the east side so when you walk in an army of warriors are staring straight at you. We spent a good hour there just taking everything in and taking a lot of pictures. If you ignored the pushing, shoving, rude people walking right into your shot, and kids fooling around, the place was very haunting. I don’t know what it was but something inside there was… I don’t know. I wish I had visited the Terra-cottas like Bill Clinton. There was a section where they had pictures of famous people that came to visit the statues and one of them was the Clinton Family. I guess it was during his first term because they looked really happy. Anyway they were standing IN the tomb. They took an aerial shot of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea standing amongst the Terra-cotta Statues. I guess it’s good to be the President.


The Eighth W0nder of the World, The Terra-Cotta Statues. This is the first thing you see when you come into the main area.


I thought this was one of those "creepy haunting" pictures.

We still had some time so we went to a museum type place that had famous bronze chariot figures. We had to kind of zoom through there since we were running out of time and everyone stunk of crazy B.O. By this time we were all fed up with the pushing and the shoving so we were glad to get out. The walk back to our driver was peaceful since we knew exactly where to go and avoided all the big crowds. We were all on high after finding out that the Terra-cotta statues were the 8th Wonder of the World. Later I found out that the list only really goes up to 7 and that there are different lists for the Wonders. For example there are 7 Wonders for the Ancient World and 7 Wonders for the Medieval World, etc.

After we got back to the city we still had time before we took a flight out of Xi’an for Shanghai, so we went and checked out the Big Goose Pavilion. It was one of the main sights in Xi’an, which was a big pagoda for Buddhism. The landscaping was very nice but it looked like the other thousands of old Chinese pavilions we’ve seen so we took a break under shade until our bus shuttle back to the airport.


The Big Goose Pavillion at its finest.

One of the few groups shots we took on our trip in China.

Then we had another stressful situation at the airport. Lisa had gotten us e-tickets online of the flight from Xi’an to Shanghai. We get to the airport and look for the atm-ish e-ticket machines but there are none in sight. We ask one of the check-in people and she directed us to the Shanghai Air counter. The man could speak English so we were pretty safe and he went to look for our tickets. It turned out that they don’t have a machine but they do have a lady that checks her computer and makes sure that we indeed paid online. Expect that she wasn’t there. She had already left for the day. WTF!? The man is frantically making phone calls and even had a different lady for a different airline helping as well. But he does eventually confirm the purchase and gives us a ticket. After that it was smooth sailing to the Shanghai, which seems likes its going to be another post.