Day 28: Xi'an (西安)

More Hostel Problems
I forgot to mention that when we woke up yesterday our shower flooded our room again even though it had been "fixed".  When we returned at like 1am and the power was still out, they offered to change our rooms, but not having any lights in the room it would have been impossible and the room they wanted to switch us to didn't have internet either, so we just stayed there.


Free tickets to the museum
Didn't really sleep due to the lack of A/C so it was easy to wake up early in order to get to the Shanxi history museum (陝西歷史博物館) which presents all known Chinese history up until 907 AD when Xi'an (西安) was the capital city (長安).  The museum was to open at 8:30 and the first 4000 tickets are free.  So we got there right at 8:30, but so did a ton of Chinese tourists.  We waited in line, but it was barely moving and we were far away.  Charlotte went up front to see what the deal was and she came back with 2 tickets.  I asked how she got them and she said the line was for the free tickets, but the cost of the museum, plus a special exhibition hall only cost $3, so she thought it was worth it not to wait on line for an hour.

No trains
After the museum we went to a travel agent and asked about trains to one of our next two cities Xining (西寧) or Lanzhou (蘭州), but they said there were no more.  As we later found out each booking service is only given a certain amount of tickets and if they are out, it doesn't mean the train is booked.  Once again the only way to know for sure is going to the train station.

More flooding, but a solution
We went back to the hostel around noon and found it still had no power and found now the public bathroom was flooding into our room.  We were checking out, but felt we needed to complain anyway.  The first woman came up and we started telling her all the problems, then Charlotte got tired and asked to bring in the English speaking worker.  We were pretty upset, probably from heat and lack of sleep, but we told her we didn't blame the hostel for the lack of power, or even the plumbing problems, but didn't like the fact that they never even offered us anything like water, tea or a  beer while the power was out and we had to go spend our money at the local bars to keep cool because they didn't offer anything.  In addition, the fact that wifi is only available in the lobby when the ad clearly stated internet in the room really annoyed us.  At this point they became very apologetic and offered to figure out the train situation for us and offered us money back for the night with no power.  Later they even gave back the first nights money too!  They were able to go to the train station and find soft sleeper beds for us leaving at 5am the next morning!  We then told them that we would be happy to stay that night (if they got power back) and pay for it since they gave us 2 nights free and really went out of their way for us.


Worst market ever.
Our Lonely Planet tour guide book suggested that Wednesday was the most popular day for a local market, so we went to check it out, we were very disappointed

From 77 Days in China

I would hate to see the market on a slow day

Backup
Having some computer problems (the reason for the delay in updates) we decided to check out some electronics stores to see if we could get a cheap hard drive so we could backup our pictures.  Spent a little time bargaining then was able to get a 250 GB portable hard drive for a decent price, so now all our pictures are safe.  Also at this store a seller told us to always check the hard drive's serial number on manufacturer's website to make sure it is authentic.  A lot of these portable hard drives might look brand new and even come in a box, but they are actually taken from used laptops and re-conditioned by adding a new case with brand name on it.  We did check our hard drive's serial number on WD website before buying it.

Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔)
We then went to check out the Wild Goose Pagoda which was built in 652 AD.  One of the pagoda's many functions was to hold sutras and figurines of the Buddha that were brought to China from India by the Buddhist translator and traveler Xuanzang (三藏).

From 77 Days in China

Wild Goose Pagoda

From 77 Days in China

From 77 Days in China

Power is still out...time to check out the city
Went back to the hostel, but the power was still out at 6pm, so we decided to go check out the "South Gate" which is the area around the south gate of the city walls.  The area everyone talks about turned out to be a foreigner street that you find in many Asian cities, like Khao San Road in Bangkok, so we left then found another market street was closing and ended up at a coffee shop to use the internet and wait.  We have 3 official hang outs when we have no place to stay and want a cool, clean place to stay, coffee shops if we need the internet (coffee is Starbucks prices though so we try and stay away), KFC or Dico's the Chinese version of KFC.  Then we got a call saying the power was back on in the hostel.

From 77 Days in China

A market (書院巷) selling art supplies

From 77 Days in China

Chillin in the coffee shop

Power is back?  Wait, maybe not
By the time we got there it was off again!  I now felt bad for the hostel as well as other customers, so we said we would be back and went to another coffee shop.  Once we returned the power was finally back on and they set us up with a room to stay in until 3am when they would help us find a cab to the train station, they also only charged us half a nights rent, so for 3 nights we only paid for half a night.  Afterwards I felt bad about getting angry with them, but everything turned out for the best!