Throngs of surging people and chaos.

When we arrived at the X'ian rail station, it was nothing we had ever imagined. Throngs of surging people and chaos. 'Whoever pushed the hardest' was the order of the day. We shoved with our big backpacks through and they help us deflect others who would have made our trip ten times longer. When we got in, there were masses of lines, including the one 200 deep for our train. You see, in Chinese rail stations, they wait till the last minute (sometimes seconds) before letting the long line of people through to the platform when the train arrives. Maybe it's a control thing, but once they do, everyone pushes forward, with all their bags, boxes, sacks of whatever and cages and make the long, serpentine route to the platform. Ours had to go up and down stairs over the tracks, past reeking public restrooms, up and down another flight, and depending on what car you were in, all the way down the platform as well. We made it as the train pulled in. Found our cabin and the fact that we weren't sleeping in the same compartment as the ticket agents promised, but the gracious people as we always found the Chinese to be offered to trade spots. We ended up in the same cabin a very pleasant English man and a Chinese woman from a non-profit organization for orphan children in China and based in England.

The journey was about 14 hours but parts of it were a dilly. Through the rain, we could see the magnificent Yellow River winding through the mountains as the train followed it and its tributaries for most of the day. Then there was the ascent. Over the course of 100km it seemed, the train kept rising higher and and higher and veered around precipices at sometimes uncomfortably close range to the drop below. It has been said Chengdu is a new city (relatively of course) in Chinese history simply because of its difficult geography.

As darkness fell, we settled in with our dehydrated noodle soup, one spicy, one everything, and fell asleep in the 4-person compartment early as we would be woken up at 4:30-5am and the train would arrive at 5:30.

It did almost exactly on time and that's when an amazing day began. We decided to take a long walk with our stuff from the train station to the guesthouse. It turned out to be exhilirating watching Chengdu wake up to the day, but it also turned out to be a long walk! A little tired, we had the choice of either resting the day or seeing the city we had heard so much about. We chose the masochistic option and rented bikes, setting out for our first taste of Sichuan food and it didn't disappoint: it was a massive (but managable) fire of dryness and spice that filled every corner of your mouth. We meant to go to the golden goat park across the street and walked for hours within a beautiful park, including a wonderfully restored homage tracing the history of Chinese poetry, complete with works by Lao Tze. But it turned out to be the wrong park! We finally left and cycled to the right one and it contained beautiful Buddhist shrines and a garden.

Then it was off the Bamboo Riverview Park but on the way Andy haphazardly jumped a curb and busted his tire. He still wasn't sure if it just needed air to refill it or a whole patch job, so Sarah agreed to stay on a street corner while he found out. Someone had said there was a place down the street. After looking for a while, Andy found a Medical Supply Center. Sounds strange but they did have wheelchairs, decatheters and IV stands in the window with big wheels that at least indicated an air pump. He inquired and was right. The owner obliged him, filled it up, then the tire went back down just as quickly. Disappointing, but at least Andy knew it was a patch job. The owner motioned North, then East around the corner, with gestures that indicated there was a place that could actually fix it. After a grueling mile of walking and asking, he did find an older gentlemen with an air pump, but couldn't communicate to him that he just needed a patch and not just air. The lost subtleties resulted in the man following Andy down the street with an air pump in hand. Luckily, Andy saw what looked like the place with a couple of guys working outside on bikes and cycles. They said they could fix it immediately for 30 cents, US. Well, this was certainly different from the four days and $20 US for a flat in Denmark. They proceeded to start, but then the old man with the air pump that was standing there started to intefere again, thinking Andy was getting a repair he might not need! Rather than wasting time explaining everything, Andy motioned to the repair guy to FORGET the old man and PLEASE keep working and asked the old man if he could find him a restroom or a hose to wash his hands. Sarah was keeping an eye on the other bike and had no idea what was going on.

When Andy and the old man came back, the repair guy said it was fixed. Andy was elated. Such a better system than the rigidness and apparent laziness of the Scandinavian system. Could this represent a microcosm of the new economic world order to come? But upon closer look, everyone noticed the tire was still flat. The repair didn't hold. Hmm, maybe this wasn't quite the new world order -- shoddy workmanship. But the repair guy asked for a few more minutes. Afterwards, Andy came back. The tire was fixed and yes, it held for the rest of the day.

We saw the beautiful Bamboo Park, had famous Chengdu hot pot in the market corner and cycled our way back to the guesthouse only to find it had turned into a full-fledged party. Tons of Chinese were drinking, talking, laughing and eating in the street. We weren't even sure we were in the right place! But, we decided to join them and end an unbleivable day in one of China's most intriguing cities.

China Redeux

Arrived in Qingdao very smoothly. Although they seem to keep examining Andy's beat-up passport, bending at the edge, in-between the laminate where the picture is. Smartly, Sarah has managed to keep hers pretty pristine. After much discussion with the custom guy's partner/superior to make sure it was legit, we were finally let through. After changing money and getting on the bus, you immediately notice China is a little rougher around the edges, but also less than half the price.

Caught a bus then walked and caught another bus to the downtown train station hoping to maybe even get a train that night to X'ian (SHEE-AHN). Ahh, hope, the wonderfully naive notion.


Andy waited in this seedy line outside (it was absolutely immovable inside and the 'Information' booth was in name only) -- it was the only way to find out anything. After tons of people staring at us in the line and one drunk guy up front occasionally beating off people that cut in front for tips, Andy managed enough broken Chinese to find out that there were no trains to X'ian that night and only hard seats the entire next day. It would be an all nighter packed on wooden seats - for 16hrs. Since we wanted to see other distant parts of China overland and still make it to Vietnam in time, we decided to check planes. Plus X'ian was just a two-day stop and there's no way we'd be rested after that train trip to make it worth it.

Out of desperation, some exhaustion and still getting used to the currency, etc., we checked in to perhaps the worst hotel of the trip. Without going into the sordid details, let's just say we learned our lesson fast about getting stuff sorted out beforehand.

Then we had to get plane tickets. We didn't even know if we could get on a flight the next day, much less how much it would be. We found a Chinese travel type place, they had the seats and the price was cheaper than in Korea, so great! But they would only take cash. So we found a Bank of China, and thus spawned another big problem that wouldn't manifest itself fully until later.

The buttons for the PIN code at the ATM not only didn't have the corresponding letters on the number keys (a first in our travels and this is how Andy always remembered his PIN), but also it was in reverse, making it difficult to even mimick it by spacial relations on the key pad. (We also learned quickly just to memorize the number as well as the letters.) After the third or fourth PIN entry failure, Andy's card locked up as the bank assumed it was a security breach. There was no hope for the card now without contacting the bank and who knew how long that would take. Sarah, tried her card a couple of times and also couldn't quite figure out the new keypad. So we wrote on a piece of paper a keypad with what the corresponding letters would be on it, then tried to figure out the numbers from there. We just couldn't remeber if Zero had any corresponding letters.

We also went to another bank machine just to be safe. This time, Sarah's PIN entry worked. We sighed a deep sigh and got the tickets. However, the bank problem would come back to haunt us later.

Tickets in hand for the next day, we caught bus #26 out to the Quindao (others might know it as 'Tsingtao') beer festival. It was a loud raucous night, but we did meet our first black person living and working in China. He was from Ghana and was manning one of the booths at the festival and spoke good English. He said there were probably 5 others from Ghana in the city and that they moved to China for economic reasons, but discovered it was just as bad as Africa, he said!

The next day we hit the 'beach.' It was really more like tepid polluted water, but we walked on the pier and we both tried to go in for a little bit but you couldn't really swim. Well, you could if you liked touching things the whole way.

Later, leaving for the airport, we couldn't figure out where exactly the private airport bus left from so we opted for the public bus then we thought we could take a cab from its end point. It went through some fascinating neighborhoods and one enourmous 'suburb' that must have had a million or so people. Finally, made it to the airport in plenty of time.

The flight to X'ian went incredibly smoothly, although for some reason on Chinese planes they seem to want to update you a lot. They keep giving information like, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are now ten minutes into the flight, we have 45 minutes of flying left." There was also a bizarre statement that sounded like, "Also, please be aware of the attacking mirrors" but we weren't sure what it was.

We were the only westerners on the flight, but that changed after we touched down. X'ian is a pretty big tourist draw. Our bus took us into town and we walked from the hotel from there.

We saw the X'ian History Museum, basically a nice, clear and 'concise' history of China and the dynasties, since X'ian was the ancient capital for so many years. Later, we realized the bank card thing was coming back to us. We were running out of valuable cash. The hotel wouldn't take credit cards or travelers check - and we needed to pay for our room, ongoing train tickets, and buy the tickets to the Terracotta Warriors the next day. We used the last of our cash to buy the train tickets to Chengdu, in the Southwest, in the province of Sichuan, because we had learned that you can only get the upgraded sleeper seats days in advance. And the train station in X'ian was even more of a madhouse than Qingdao.



Also, now we learned that even Sarah couldn't get money because her Citibank account was empty and she was having trouble transferring funds from her main bank to there. Andy finally had to try to call the bank about his card, while Sarah tried numerous PIN combinations and usernames she had forgotten to transfer the money from her main bank to her Citibank.

On the phone, Andy first tried to use the calling card he bought in Qingdao, but the PIN they gave him didn't work and he wasn't sure what other glitches there were to get past it, so that was pretty much a waste. Now he tried to use his original calling card from home. Luckily, the international access number worked and he got through. After 10 minutes and three or four levels of people who said we would have to either go back to Beijing or Shanghai and settle it there OR wait in the mail two weeks for a form to fill out to get a new PIN sent to the New York address, Andy finally got through to an emergency guy in Dallas who said this is 'not normal procedure, but we can reset your PIN over the phone.' Exactly what we needed to hear. He then said, he'd just have to wait till business hours ( 1.5 hours later) to have a second 'unidentified person' come on the line a do a 'dual key turn' to reset the PIN. After that, it would be another two or three hours before it cleared through the system and Andy could get cash. Andy said he would call back in an hour and a half.


He did, and after going through all the levels again, was transferred to a 'mystery woman' at the other end of the line that just said, "Go ahead..." Andy said the new PIN into the phone and that was it. There was not even a 'thank you' or repeating the PIN or anything. She just hung up. Like some kind of espionage scene in a movie or something. A couple of hours later he tried to get cash. No luck. We figured we'd just try in the morning. When we did, about 8 hours later, it finally worked. We were back in business.


The next morning, we paid our hotel bill, plus an extra night and set out on bus to see the Terracotta Warriors. The site was discovered by peasants digging a well in the 70's; there were no real written records of it, and it turned out to be one of the greatest archeological finds of the century. Constructed thousands of years ago to guard the Emperor in his tomb in the afterlife, this place was no joke. The massive first excavation yielded a 2 football field-sized plot with thousands of restored warriors there and many more waiting to be dug out. These are all life-sized warriors (and horses and chariots) made from terracotta clay from the region and baked into present form. No two warriors, however are alike, and each are said to reflect the unique facial features of the actual standing warriors at the time. Moreover, if the statues weren't perfectly executed by the artist, then the artist was. Killed that is. If that weren't enough, even the tomb's builders and architects were murdered and sealed into the tomb, enabling the secret to remain hidden until the mid seventies. Pretty brutal stuff. The originals were colored with a patina which apparently fades upon contact with oxygen, which is why they are delaying excavation of the thousands more warriors believed to be hidden in the new buildings, in hopes of developing the proper technology to preserve them.

The next day, we decided to rent bikes before boarding our 12pm train. X'ian is a crazy city, especially near the train station where we were. But along the city walls, it's actually quite peaceful and a great place to ride. We managed to ride around the inside of the entire city wall, about 15k in an hour until we were back in the bedlam of X'ian's train station. It was so bad, Andy looked back after looking away for 30 seconds and Sarah was gone. Granted Sarah would be the only blond hair in a sea of dark hair, but it just shows how many people there were! Andy retraced his route several times, even jumping over to the hotel. No luck. After 25 minutes and the boarding time to the train approaching rapidly, he figured she would be able to find the hotel and just meet him there. It turned out to be true. There she was, also finding it impossible to see Andy's brown hair in a sea of black! There was no time for small talk, however. We had to pack, check out, then barrel our way through the nightmare train station and it in time for departure or who knows how long we'd be stuck in X'ian because there's only one a day and it's almost impossible to get train tickets on short notice.

When we saw daylight,

we knew we were alive. To get to Korea we chose a dizzying mix of cab to bullet train to bus to ferry to train to subway to foot. Astoundingly, we made each connection seamlessly and waited no longer than 15 minutes in between any of them. The bullet train from Hiroshima took us to Fukuoka (the town we had stopped in earlier briefly on our first leg). We decided to 'wing' the ferry to Japan and it paid off. turned out there was one leaving in 10 minutes which Andy immediately bought a ticket for. Waiting in line, an attendant frantically yelled out 'Beetle! Beetle?' Sarah said yes (it was the name of the hydrofoil we were on). I thought they would just move us to the front of the line and we would board. Instead, we enter another huge room with literally hundreds more people waiting. It was passport control/customs. We had forgotten about that part. But to their credit, they whisked us past everyone, saving us about 2 full hours then onto the boat which already had its engines running. As soon as we sat down, the boat pulled away. The trip to Busan (or Pusan), Korea took about 3 hours. In Busan, we boarded the fast train to Seoul and arrived there a few hours later, taking a subway to the hotel, and eating dumplings and kimchee in the homeland for the first time.


The next day, we treated ourselves to an English bookstore and stumbled on about 200 protesters sitting in the street with 500 riot police were gearing up to remove them. The protesters had music blaring through speakers and would occasionally chant countered by the police yelling demands over their loudspeaker. It seemed like it would go on for hours and blow over peacefully and we moved on to see the rest of the city.

Perhaps the most fascinating was visiting the DMZ through a tour led by the USO. We boarded a bus early in the morning and it seemed like there was barbed wire set up all along the river for the entire trip from Seoul to the border. We crossed a couple of checkpoints, including a bridge where you weave in and out of black and yellow bumblebee-looking metal barricades until you come to the US Camp. We were briefed by U.S. and South Korean Soldiers in conjunction with the UN peacekeeping mission then boarded a military bus, escorted by South Korean Soldiers through the first (and last) 3?lines of defense. A huge mound with wire that is designed to stop tanks. A second minefield. Third, an enormous wire fence with little stones piled on each other which was a technique South Koreans had used for centuries to detect if a fence had ever been tampered with or breached.?All three of these defenses we were told stretched the length of the Korean peninsula, diving the two countries from sea to sea.


We then came to the 'Freedom Bulding,' a UN-designated safe zone marking the border where the South and North Koreans patrol vigilantly. Here, they stand meters apart from each other with nothing in-between, the South Korean soldiers adopting a stiff Tae Kwan Do defense stance the entire time we are there. Then we see the crisply-dressed North Korean soldiers looking at us through binoculars! creepy! -- However it was also strange because either their crisp uniforms were ill-fitting, ( i.e. too big for their bodies), or the soldiers were slightly malnourished, which took away a little of their fierceness. We were told not to point or use any derragatory or inflammatory language, as the North was listening and could construe anything as hostile UN actions.

We even saw one of the three tunnels dug by North Korean to invade the south. Which, I understand the North only recently admitted was theirs (previously they had claimed it was a South Korean tunnel to invade them). Then we got to go up to high ground and see into North Korea itself through binoculars. In the distance, you could see the third largest city in North Korea and barely make out through the glasses the giant white statue president Kim made for himself. The closer North Korean town, the one flying the world's largest flag, is abandoned.

The rest of the week saw us enjoying the art scene in Seoul as well as the rest of the city, and getting ready for our second leg to China. This time, we had to buy one air ticket if we wanted to go overland through remote, vast parts of China and see everything we wanted to while still getting to Vietnam on time.


With all our bags and tickets in hand, we merrily left for the airport, ready to go to X'ian in China. When we got there we were met with a stunner: The gate agent saw that our 2nd entry on our Visa into China had expired. Turns out, BOTH our entries had to be done before a certain date. We felt like idiots and it felt like the guy might as well have reached behind the counter, grabbed a shovel and slammed us across the face. We were dazed, but went all the way back into Seoul and vowed to get new rush Visas for China and readjust our tickets.


After figuring out that the entire Chinese embassy had moved, we did. And in two days, we were on our way back to the airport, this time to go to Quindao, China, opting to make our way to X'ian, China's ancient captial from there by train or plane. We just hoped this time, we'd make it.