When I last left you, I had arrived at my hostel in Xi’an.

Whenever I arrive at a new place I have a pretty standard routine of what to take out of my bag and how to setup my electronics for charging.

Before heading on this trip I looked up what kind of plug adapters I’d need for the various countries I’ll be visiting.

For converting plugs into different outlets, I use a Ceptics charger that is a plugin unit with USB slots.

Once I know what kind of outlets are used, I pick out the different adapter slides that slide into the unit and, voila, I’m all covered.

For this trip I brought 5 different slides and, wouldn’t you know it, the plug on the wall here in Xi’an had two different types of outlets and I didn’t have a slide for either of them.

Well, shit.

In fact, ironically, one of the outlet types was a Type A which is the kind of outlets I’m used to in North America.

So, to that end, I was still able to plug in my USB charger for my phone and (eventually) my external battery packs too.

The problem is, how the hell am I going to charge my laptop?

It’s a 3 prong plug and the outlets are only 2 prong.

I mean, it’s not the end of the world or anything but I do need my laptop to pop together these blogs.

So, on top of having a broken website backend that I had to figure out a bunch of workarounds for, now I would soon lose the charge on my laptop and not be able to blog anyway.

As I was lying in bed I figured I’d look up whether there were any places nearby where I could buy a 3 prong to 2 prong adapter but I couldn’t find anything.

It’s not like back home where you just pop over to Walmart or some Superstore and get what you need.

As a last ditch effort, I went to the front desk and asked if they knew where I could buy one and, as if the heavens above opened up, the dude literally pulled an adapter out of his desk drawer.

Unbelievable!   Problem solved!

The blog will go on…

Free Walking Tour

After 8 hours of much needed sleep, I awoke this morning with a plan.

An ambitious plan.

Since this was my one and only full day in Xi’an, I had to make it count.

Obviously visiting a city for just one day isn’t ideal but Xi’an was never supposed to be part of this trip.

It’s just a bonus city at the beginning on my way to Tibet and Nepal.

So, let’s try to explore as much of this bonus city as I can!

Now, the best way I know of to do that is to join a free walking tour and that’s exactly what I did.

At 10am, I met Yunyun at the meeting spot along with 9 others.

Her name by the way literally translates to “cloud, cloud”.

We walked through a park outside the city walls, entered through one of the wall gates, and stopped at the calligraphy museum.

The street outside is where all the artists set up their stalls to sell their handmade art.

I bought some because unique, original souvenirs are the ones I want.

Then it was on to beer alley and food streets.

In all, the tour lasted 2 1/2 hours and gave us a good look at the southern section of the city inside the walls.

Here’s some things I learned on the tour…

Jing means capital, hence Beijing is the capital of China.

The city of Xi’an is 3000 years old and was China’s capital for 1000 of them, during 13 of the total 24 Chinese dynasties.

It’s also home to 50 different universities with many of those attending staying in Xi’an to work at top companies like dji and Alibaba which headquarter here.

China has 56 different ethnicities but Han is the dominant one at over 90%.

The city wall is over 1400 years old and spans 6km each way.   It was constructed with 98 watch towers spaced every 120m because the range for shooting arrows was 60m.

Poetry is big in China and when kids are very young, they are given a book of 300 Han poems they are supposed to memorize.   In fact, answering questions about the poems are part of the university entrance exams.

Early writing, or calligraphy, was written on the shells of animals and then progressed to being written on bamboo.

These were both very expensive which meant writing was only accessible by the rich.

Eventually chiseling into rocks with knives was used and even the common man could then write.

In total, there are over 90000 characters in the Chinese language but only 5000 of them are used in daily use.   Yup, only 5000!

Oh, and finally, the symbol for China is two characters – the first means “Middle” and the second means “Kingdom”.

Yeah, it was a very educational tour and Yunyun’s English was impeccable as she’d previously worked on cruise ships in different parts of the world.

Definitely one of the better tours I’ve been on and for those who read this blog regularly, you know I normally don’t do links but I’d highly recommend her tour.

Oh, and she gave us all a personalized bookmark with different sayings written in calligraphy that she did herself!

I mean, c’mon, what tour guide does that?   I was blown away.   Now that’s a souvenir!

Food and my celiac plan for this trip

Phew!   After all that I was still only halfway through my day.

The tour ended at 12:30 and I headed back to a spot Yunyun had pointed out that served lamb with buckwheat noodles.

Now, I believe buckwheat noodles are gluten free.   At least they’re supposed to be.

Which segues perfectly into my thoughts about being celiac while traveling, especially here in Asia.

Okay, so, yeah, I’m celiac.   I can’t eat gluten, wheat, flour, or soy.

I was diagnosed 6 years ago and while I don’t get sick or even have to make multiple visits to the bathroom if I eat it, I will break out in hives if I eat it over a prolonged period of time.

Don’t get me wrong, I still diligently practice a gluten free lifestyle back home and while I travel, I’m just saying if I eat it accidently it won’t really effect me – at least in the short term.

In the long term though, you’re really not supposed to eat gluten at all because it will mess up your intestines and I don’t even want to think about what would happen then.

The nature of food in Asia is that alot of it has gluten in it and I wouldn’t even know where to begin trying communicate my needs to a street food vendor.

Even if I translated it to Chinese and showed them, they still wouldn’t understand because it’s just not something people here are aware of.

So, given all that, I’ve decided that on this trip, I’m probably going to accidently eat gluten probably a bunch of times.   Hell, sometimes it may not even be by accident.

Blocked!

By the time I was done lunch it was 1pm so I decided to just head back to the hostel for a couple of hours to reset, relax, and, maybe, just maybe, start blogging.

I know you’re reading this in the future but by this time I still hadn’t written yesterday’s blog and it was already a half day behind.

Also, I had planned to do the next stop on my list – a visit to see the famous Terracotta Army – in the late afternoon to avoid the crowds of tour busses during the day.

So, I had already mentioned all of the issues I’ve been having with my website, or at least the backend of it which is where I type up all my blogs and upload my photos.

What I haven’t mentioned is that I can’t even access my website in China.

Like, it’s blocked.

If you didn’t know, China has the “great firewall” protecting their citizens form the cruel world outside their borders.

Websites like Google, Twitch, Discord, YouTube, and, well, you get the idea, are all blocked here.

Add findingtodd.com to that list.

Yup, my website is officially blocked. I believe it’s because some of the plugins I use on the site actually use Google like the Google Font you’re reading right now.

Oh, and Flickr where I upload my photos, yeah, I can’t access that website either.

Thankfully there’s VPNs out there that allow you to circumvent all that but, man, it sure is a pain in the ass to use one because everything is so slow as your IP address gets bounced around the planet.

Thankfully there’s VPNs out there that allow you to circumvent all that but, man, it sure is a pain in the ass to use one because everything is so slow as your IP address gets bounced around the planet.

By the time I got everything figured out, over an hour had passed and it was time to head back out again.

Guess the blogging would have to wait til later.

I did, however, get to charge my phone back up from 20% to 80% so I was ready to go for the rest of the day.

Man, I wish I had that external battery pack, just saying…

Terracotta Army

At 2:30 I was back out there, ready for my next stop of the day – The Museum of Qin Terra-cotta Warriors and Horses.

The Terracotta Army are thousands of life-size clay models of soldiers, horses, and chariots which were buried in the grand mausoleum of the first emperor of China.

They were buried with him to act as guardian figures for his tomb and to serve their ruler in the next life.

The site, which is about an hour east of Xi’an, was discovered in 1974 and excavation has been ongoing ever since.

Before I left for my trip, I took the time to map out how to get there using local transit.   I even had map markers for the subway stations I’d be going to and where the bus stops were.

And, today, I threw all that planning out the window and used DiDi (China’s version of Uber) to get out there instead.

You see, with so much crammed into one day, I needed things to go orderly and, as much as I feel I’m better than the average person out there navigating foreign metro systems, I just didn’t want to take the chance of something not working as planned.

So, for 80 yuan ($16), I took a taxi to the museum site.   The ride took just under an hour and I arrived on site at 3:30pm.

I was told to either visit the site right when it opened or in the late afternoon to avoid the crowds so here I was in the late afternoon.

Yeah, there were still crowds…

As I exited my taxi, I was immediately approached by a man offering his services as a tour guide.

And then another, and another.

This, of course, was expected and I just brushed them off.

For me, it wasn’t even about the price of the tour which, by the way, each of them immediately started discounting as I walked away.   Nope, for me, I just wanted to go at my own pace and see what I see.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I’m not a huge museum guy.   I’m more of a visual learner.

And, boy, was this going to be a visual experience!

I just didn’t need someone telling me all the history of everything.

Anyway, after getting through the swarm of tour guides, I bought my ticket and entered the site.

It was a nice peaceful walk through the small park in a slight drizzle of rain to the main gate.

There are three pits where excavation have taken place and Pit 1 is, by far, the crown jewel.

Not only is it the largest pit but there are thousands of warriors dug up and on display in row after row in this vast building.

And the whole area was surrounded by wall to wall people up against the glass barrier protecting it.

Oh my God!   So many people!

And this was supposedly the slow period of the day!

Pits 2 and 3 weren’t quite as spectacular but they were differently worth the visit.

In total, I spent roughly an hour and half navigating through the museum.

By 5:00pm I was out the exit straight into the food and souvenir area outside.

With beef fried rice in my belly and a couple souvenirs in my bag, it was time to head back into the city as I still had one more thing to cross of the Xi’an checklist today.

Dancing Water

Multiple times during the day there is a spectacular music and light show at the huge water fountain outside the Great Wild Goose Pagoda in the southern part of Xi’an city.

The taxi back into town got me there just after 6:30 which was perfect as a show would soon be staring at 7:00.

Again, like the museum, thousands of people were surrounding the barrier around the hundreds of water holes in the ground.

I managed to find myself a spot in the middle and then, at 7:00, the show begin.

I’ve been to a handful of these kind of shows, most notably the ones in Bucharest and in Lima, and it’s just a great way for me to just lose myself in the moment for awhile and think about the awesomeness of the situation I’m in at that moment.

I mean, here I was, thousands of miles away from home again exploring another new city and going on more adventures.

I truly am one lucky guy to be able to do all of this and it’s in moments like these when I really reflect on that all.

The show itself lasted about 20 minutes and, soon enough, I was heading back to my hostel.

I decided to give the Xi’an metro a try to see if I still had it when it came to taking foreign metro systems and, yeah, I still got it.

Easy peasy.

Well, aside from my phone battery being down to a dangerous low level of 15%.   Yikes!

My kingdom for an external battery pack!

Honestly, it was a race back before my battery died.

But, in the end, I got back still with 12% left.

Ah, small victories!

And, also, insert the obligatory “first world problems” meme here.

It was 8pm when I turned in for the night.

Boy, what a day!

As I said earlier, obviously it’s not ideal to have such a hectic, jam packed day when you’re traveling but, hey, that was the hand I was dealt and, in the end, I did pretty much everything I wanted to do today.

Tomorrow is a relatively easy day as I have an morning flight from Xi’an to Lhasa where my week long Tibetan adventure begins.

So, yeah, stay tuned, cause this trip is just beginning…