Today we headed out to the Terracotta warriors, we made our own way out on the local bus 30kms outside of Xi'an, we met this Chinese guy on the bus with perfect English, seemed to know a bit of Irish History, nice enough guy said it's a hobby of his to talk to foreigners. We arrived at the site and my god there must be hundreds of Vendors, all selling the same statues..we arrived in a different gate and walked to the entrance, of course you have to buy your ticket at the ticket station which was a good 15 minute walk away, not too worry. We arrived in side and the army is pretty spectacular but unnessessary at the same time, the guy who commisioned the army for his tomb was also the same guy who unified China and started the great wall, so he obviously didn't like to see people idle! The army consists of about 8,000 soldiers all different ranks and positions and soom with horses, the excavation still continues but the detail is something else, these guys even have fingernails! The army discovered by a farmer digging a well in 1976..the soldiers don't appear to have any weapons, but we read that they had bronze and metal weapons, some were coated with Chromium to prevent rusting...yes thats right Chromium supposidely invented by the Germans and Americans in 1939 and 1957...this tomb dates back to the 220 B.C mark. There are 3 sites altogther but aparently his tomb was originally over 50 sq kms and took four decades to make! Headed back in towards town, planned on cycling the wall around the city, but snow was coming down unfortunately.
We arrived back at the hostel and they were having a cooking party, well the staff were, they invited us to join in making some biscuits, that was a but of craic. We watched a film and the others arrived back from their days out, we were chatting to a few and then later we all had a drinking game called the ring of fire, fierce good craic, but not a good idea when you have a flight in the morning...as you'll soon find out when tomorrows story unfolds.
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