Yesterday we disembarked the train at Xi’an at 7:45am and tried our luck with checking in to our hostel straight away. The negotiations didn’t go our way, so most of the morning was spent living our best homeless lives by using public bathrooms to wash and change in. I can’t emphasise what a state we were in enough: we’d climbed the Great Wall on a 34c day, boarded the sleeper train in the same sweaty clothes, and the train bathrooms weren’t a place you’d visit to get clean (quite the opposite, in fact). Whilst brushing my teeth with the help of a warm bottle of water I thought “this is why I work hard, so I can go on trips and do this kind of thing” with absolutely no irony whatsoever. I cannot emphasise the benefits of backpacking enough: you’ll always come home from a trip with new friends, great stories, and having grown as a person by expanding your comfort zone. It’s my favourite thing in life.
After doing a reasonable job of freshening up I went to the City Walls of Xi’an and rode a tandem round the top of them (13km perimeter - they were massive and were the type of thing that only needs to be done once) with a German guy I met. We were talking about Black Mirror and how scarily true aspects of it could be, and then got onto the episode where the prime minister has to shag a pig to save a princess. The topic of David Cameron then came up, and my new German friend has since been asking many questions about British politics.
This evening a group of us went to Xi’an’s Muslim Quarter, which had a busy market and a lot of peanuts. I tried on a dress at one of the market stalls before clarifying the price of it, which was a basic error to make. I was thinking about buying it so I asked about the price whilst trying it on and the seller then joined me in the changing area to start negotiations. I don’t think I was playing my haggling A-game whilst standing in my pants but I managed to get her from ¥1200 (~£120) to ¥150 (~£15) which is respectable. She was standing between me and my clothes and I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the disparity in our attire so I thought ‘screw this, a dress isn’t worth this shit’, grabbed my clothes, and walked back into the main part of the stall. She was seriously not taking no (or even “I’d like to leave now”) for an answer and tried to block my exit from her stall, so I took the only way out that I could see: pretending to be interested in something by the doorway, moving in that direction, and legging it.
I’m now sitting in the communal area of the hostel, knocking back beers with other travellers and wishing this trip could last a lot longer.
Love Emily x
No comments:
Post a Comment