I saw The Goose...

... and it opened up my eyes... The Goose is demanding, without understanding.

After managing to hail a cab in beijing at 5 in the morning, without being ripped off, we got in the plane to Xian. Turns out, the take off was just as bumpy as the descent 5 days ago. Is it always this windy in Beijing?

Landed in Xian and got on an airport shuttle bus to take us to downtown Xian. The trip was roughly 60 minutes, complete with a "guide" who spoke chinese constantly (we think withouth breathing...) for 10 minutes. It cost a shocking 25 swedish kronor each! Funny thing is, we have completely changed our mindset and actually thought this was a lot of money. Sophie even thought about bargaining for an ice cream that cost 2.5 swedish kronor. She wanted to pay only 2 kronor. She later realized how little money it actually was... oh, and the ice cream was like a swedish cornetto.

That brings us to another point... its insanely hot here. I dont think we were quite prepared for it. Makes you wonder exactly how much hotter Chengdu and Shanghai will be. We'll see in a couple of weeks time. The air here has a heavy stench of, well, car fumes. Its not as hard to breathe her as in Beijing though, because the city is generally cleaner. Xian actually seems like a really cool place, with really nice architecture, and it is very very clean and neat. Not as chaotic and dirty as large parts of Beijing. The hostel we are staying at is also very nice, and has a really good location in the middle of the city, inside the city walls.

However, one thing that is as chaotic, if not more, than Beijing is the traffic. We had to cross an intersection/roundabout, 5 lanes each way, with absolutetly not traffic lights. To give you an idea, the cars drove in maybe 8 lanes, and all tried to get into 5 lanes, mix this with bicycles and pedestrians... and we had to cross in front of the cars, trying to avoid them. We survived that too, and took the bus to the great wild goose pagoda.

The tired domesticated human Sophie in front of the big wild goose pagoda


Its a pagoda, 65 meters high, and the view from it was quite nice. It was like being at the eiffel tower (only a couple of hundred meters further down), with streets running from it in all 4 directions.

The view from the 6th floor (of 8) of the big wild goose pagoda

Tip of the day from Mamma Sophie and Pappa Joakim:
If you are going to China, there is no need to have US dollars as a reserve currency to change for Yuan. First of all, there are atms at least at one location in the city (always at bank of china) and at the airports, and, second, if you want to exchange dollars and is not staying at a fancy hotel you have to go to the bank and wait for roughly an hour before its your turn. And you dont get a better exchange rate either. So we dont see any upside to it. However, there are people lurking inside the bank, who will come up to you and ask you in front of police officers, if you want to exchange on the black market instead. If you say yes (which we did not), here is how it works:
The guy goes with you to the cashier, and since he has a better place in line you get there earlier than you otherwise would have. He then takes your money, and exchanges it for a better rate, gives you more money than you would otherwise have gotten, and probably gets some foreign currency in exchange. All the while the cops are looking no more than 5 meters away. Hmm... ?

Confession of the day:
Sophie apologizes to the people of china for mocking their craftmanship regarding the Converse shoes. Turns out the Converse sticker IS on the inside... so she will buy a pair in Shanghai. Again, she is sorry... dont kill her, she has friends... and she has to take care of Harriet.

Tomorrow we will go to the Terracotta warriors, and the day after that we will visit a mountain called Hua Shan. Its summit is at about 2600 meters, but we wont go all the way. We will probably only go to the lowest peak, by cable car.

Look, its sophies Converse boots... oh no, wait, the encrusted socks are back (in a shade of black)!

We also had a clip from Chinese tv to show you, but we cant figure out how to post it so, none of that.

No naked flame

/J o S