Arrival in Xi'an - Blogabond

Arrived in Xi'an (zhe ann) Sunday night after a 29 hour train ride. We were late by two hours. We left the train station in Xi'an for the hostel hoping to find a taxi. Well, we found plenty of taxi cabs, however, none wanted to charge us by using the meter. They wanted from 50-80 Yuan for the ride. So instead, we started walking. We walked and walked and since we were fairly tired from our long train ride, we were not in the best of moods. So, after walking for a while and trying to figure out the scale on the map we had, we figured we better get a ride. So, we took a motorized rickshaw. With our bags and our size, we were pretty crowded. In fact, the driver took my big bag and put it on his lap.

So we are driving in this rickshaw when it dawns on us that this guy is playing Chicken with every car, bus, and motorized vehicle on the road. He goes the wrong way on the highway, pulls u-turns right in front of busses, and drives straight for cars expecting (knowing?) that they will honk but eventually move. If we had them, it would have been smart to change into a pair of Huggies before getting on this motorized suicide machine. He has to stop three times to ask other rickshaw drivers where our hostel is, one time pulling directly into the path of a police car. The police car honks and then drives by close enough to my side that I do not think I could have fit my thumb between his side door and the tire on our rickshaw. We get to the hostel in one piece but have found that our exhaustion has been replaced by an overdose of adrenaline. We are up for the next three hours and go to bed at 3:00 AM.

written by

akstoltzy on June 13, 2010 from Xi'an, China

from the travel blog: China

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