A brief post about Xi'an and Guilin

This post is going to be a bit shorter than the last one, not because I think I'm rambling too much (which I probably am), but because I don't think the past two days were as supremely exciting as the days before it. Nonetheless, I'm still doing well.

Yesterday I ended up not feeling too good. (I think it was some of the food on Muslim Street). I bucked it up and went with the tour anyways. We started out going to the Terra Cotta Soldiers, which were amazing and grand on such a large scale. To think that more than a thousand years before anyone even knew about America and while Rome was just establishing itself, a society had the organization to build such a huge tomb. Saying this without pictures doesn't do it justice, so I'll wait until I can add them to fully describe it.

Afterwards we headed to the Xi'an City Wall. It would've been fun to bike around the City Wall (they were available and cheap), but we didn't have enough time and it was pretty warm out. Afterwards we went to the Muslim Market again, this time to stop at the Grand Mosque. I would've enjoyed it if I wasn't in great need of a chance to lie down and rest for a while. We took a look at it then headed back to the hotel. After a short break I felt quite a bit better. That night we had an 18 course dumpling meal and saw a Tang Dynasty variety show, which was an interesting and at times Vegas-like look at China 1200 years ago.

The next day I felt great. After breakfast we headed to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which I really enjoyed. It was dedicated to Xuanzang, a monk who during the Tang Dynasty went to India, recovering and translating many important Buddhist texts. I bought a little Happy Buddha necklace there. After that we went to the Shaanxi Provincial Museum. It was interesting, but we saw a lot of similar stuff at the Yisheng museum. From there we headed to the airport, where we found our plane was delayed until 5:00. Thankfully the airplane company gave us a hotel room for the short time and some hush money (so we wouldn't complain).

We landed in Guilin at about 7:45. It's warm and humid here and a lot less busy than the other cities we've been to, which is a welcome change of pace. My mom and I had a couple of beers at the bar before calling it a night.

Tomorrow we do quite a bit of touring: a river cruise and a cave visit. From what I've heard of Guilin and what I've seen so far, it's going to be amazing.