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Terracotta army and the ashes are back home!!!

Ack and myself woke up bright and early for our free brekky, but unfortunately Alex was still feeling too fragile and wouldnt be able to make it on the trip to the Terracotta army unless he was wearing adult nappies all day!

On the way to the Terracotta army, we had two stop offs, one at a factory where they made copies of the warriors and various chinese laquer furniture, etc etc, and one at a Chinese history museum.  In the first of the two i got roped into buying a small warrior figure for a few quid (now in the post home) and in the second i was so bored i thought i was going to fall asleep on my feet!!  I am well and truly bored shitless of museums now.

Our guide was called Echo,and we were to find out in the next twenty minutes why some funny bugger had given her this nickname.  She actually repeated sentences about 3 times, which at the start caused us much amusement, but come the end of the day, she annoyed us about as much as Gareth Gates.  We arrived at the Terracotta army about midday, and went into a cinema to watch a video about how they were made and what for etc, etc.  This was quite interesting, but the biggie was still to come.  My first thought when we entered the huge room containing the majority of the terracotta army was 'wow'.  It was absolutely amazing to see, bearing in mind that these statues all date back to before christ.  Apparently you werent allowed to use flash photography, but no-one seemed to be paying any attention to that rule, so i flashed away regardless and got what look like some good pics, fingers crossed.  We then visited two more huge display rooms, and another museum, which were also quite interesting, but largely unexcavated, so not as interesting as the first.

Once again, we both passed out in the minibus on the way back to the hostel and then when we got back, we decided to go and get McD's again, then on to a bar that might show the final days play in the ahses as Alex was feeling better.  This culminated in me having a eating competition with Ackroyd.  Great.  Im proud to say that i will be bringing the trophy back to Bleasby after a haul of:  Large spicy chicken burger meal, 2 chicken sandwiches, one apple pie and an ice cream.....and worryingly i think i could have eaten at least one more Big Mac on top had ackroyd not given in!!!

After this, we rolled to the main bar street near our hostel (which stank of sewage) and tried, but failed to find anywhere that would be showing the cricket.  So few had a few beers back at the hostel and played pool, before the text messages came raining in with news of Kevin Pietersen's heroics and the fact that we had won the ashes back!!!!  Best news of the trip to date!!

After going absolutely ballistic for about half an hour dancing around like madmen, we once again hit the sack at 1am in order to save ourselves some cash.

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