Xi'an

Xi'an has an enormous wall encompassing the center of the city - wide enough to drive a bus on. Dus & I rented a tandem bike & took a lap around the top - which ended up being a suprising 14km/95min trip. They only allow the bikes to be gone for 100 minutes - which means a good pace must be maintained to avoid additional charges. Smart Chinese.

Found our best food yet in a tiny cafe/closet of a place. By pointing at other customers' selections we ended up with lots of fresh vegetables, stir-fried noodles and steamed dumplings - most of them heavily spiced with red chillies. We ate multiple meals there & had a few folks asking for the address after hearing our rantings. If only China had (decent) addresses, perhaps they would have found it!

We managed to cover the main sites of the Terracotta Warrior thingy in just 40min - then made it back just in time to miss our train. Refunding the tickets was an interesting (let's call it "worthwhile") experience. The official refund process returns only 80% of the face value as long as you manage to locate the appropriate refund window before the train leaves. The other option is to sell it to a scalper or someone else. Tickets seem to sell out days before a train leaves - so attempting to buy them at the station's office is often fruitless. However, if you ask around long enough, someone always seems to have a few spares they'll sell for about $6 above face value. Seems logical that they buy these tickets for every (popular) train & thus the black market is created.