Xi'an

This city is in Shaanxi province and a really interesting place to spend a few days. There is a fair amount to see in Xi'an itself, as well as a lot of good stuff nearby.

Places to See

• City Walls

  It's an easy 14km circuit around the old city walls on a mountain bike. You can hire bikes from a couple of locations on the wall itself, but the easiest is perhaps at the South Gate. it'll cost about 20RMB for 100mins, and an extra 5RMB for every extra half-hour. Really not a hard-cycle to do. The bikes for hire are really decent too.

• Big Goose Pagoda

  You can cab out here from the downtown area for about 11RMB. There is a great temple complex here and a fair amount to see. The park around the pagoda itself is a really lively area so give yourself plenty of time here.

• Bell Tower and Drum Tower

  Get a combined ticket for 40RMB to visit both. If you time it right you can listen to a concert too.

• Muslim Quarter

  If you wish to visit the mosque you need to suitably attired. No shorts for men/women and no short-sleeves for wome. Great snack street here.

• Terracotta Warriors

  Best option is to bus it there and back yourself. Then you can avoid the bollocks and time-wastage that goes with joining a dodgy tour group. It's about 1 hour to the warriors from Xi'an. Maybe 2 hours max is enough to wander around the sights there. It costs 100RMB for admission plus 5RMB for a golf-buggy from entrance gate to actual main site (on a hot day, not a bad idea!). I was personally underwhelmed by the Terracotta Warriors. The story behind them is really interesting and if you have a particular interest in Qin dynasty history, you'll no doubt be giddy with excitement. A tour from a hostel/guesthouse will cost around 160RMB (not including lunch).

Food and Drink

Unfortunately didn't do a lot of eating out in Xi'an as we often left at the crack of dawn and returned late in the evening to Xi'an after day trips.

The Xiangzimen hostel has pretty decent meals with good veggie options.

Muslim quarter has good snack street food.

Accommodations

• Xiangzimen Internation Youth Hostel

  The hostel itself is pretty nice. It has a lot of character and good facilities. Twins with bathroom are about $US10 per person/night. Rooms are fine, though leaky showers! The restaurant here serves pretty decent food (a mix of Chinese and Western) though you could get nicer food for better value elsewhere. Staff are are little lackadaisical but not bad. They will meet you at the train station/bus station if you tell them what time you're arriving. Look for your name on a bit of cardboard! My main gripe with this hostel is that tours are kinda scammy. The hostel itself doesn't actually run the tours but links up with god knows who to form a group. Whilst this isn't unusual, it often spells disaster or at least massive disorganisation. Our tour was meant to leave at 7.30 am, but didn't leave til nine. We had to wait for an hour at a souvenir shop for some others to join the group (because they had visited an additional site) before we could continue. We were shunted into a restaurant of their choice (even though we were paying for lunch) and had restricted time to do the stuff we really wanted to because of the poor quality of the day trip. I'd recommend you use public transport to get to/from Terracotta Warriors and/or Hua Shan yourself. It's totally doable and will give you the freedom you deserve and flexibility to leave/return when you like without dealing with too much BS.