Daily Light

Most Sydneysiders, except for those who infrequently ride or have a vested interest in CityRail, would agree that Sydney’s suburban rail network is one of the worst in the world. Old and extremely dirty trains can be overlooked for a while but not forever. Trains without adequate ducting and/or air conditioning, especially during the hottest and coldest times of the year, could also be overlooked for a short time. Heck, most of the failings that could be listed could be overlooked over a short period of time.

However, as someone who uses the network on a daily basis and relies on the services for getting around, my patience wears thin after years of promised improvements never actualise. I’ve been using the CityRail network for over 20 years and there really hasn’t been a reasonable level in improvement that should have occurred during the last 2 decades. There are still some trains on the network that have been around for that whole 20 year period and were supposed to have been phased out by 2010.

Well its now 2010 and we still have those old trains (with no airconditioning), we still have mass overcrowding (everyday), constant delays (not just a reasonable amount that would be expected on a complex network), extremely dirty carriages (some I’ve seen in the last month make a dump look like a garden park), and yet we still have constant fare increases that are above the standard rate of inflation.

Here’s today’s story: I went to the station earlier than normal because I had to buy a train ticket for my week’s worth of commuting and to my frustration I discovered that there would be no train services for the next 14 days. To add to this slap in the face, I got stung with a $4 per week fare increase. Where previously I was paying $36 per week, I am now having to fork out $40 per week for the same crap service.

I won’t say it is worse service simply because of the current train line closure as that would be a purely subjective opinion. This kind of line closure, without any adequate warning to commuters, is the standard level of service we have come to expect from CityRail. There were no signs on the station last week, nor any announcements over the loud speakers to forewarn of the closure. You just turn up and have to hope for the best with this network, so despite the agreements made by CityRail to meet certain performance improvements and lift customer satisfaction, it appears that as we step into the next decade, CityRail will continue to deliver poor services and increase fares regardless.

If there were any other practical method of getting in to the city to work each day, I’m sure myself and almost every other commuter would be using it instead of this grossly mismanaged and run-down network. This is not some political playground where what you say and do really doesn’t mean anything in practical terms, this is the backbone of Sydney’s commuter network. We’ve been through transport minister after transport minister, changes in management to the CityRail corporation, and all that happens on a practical level is the ineffectual shuffling around of timetables, intentionally misinterpretted customer satisfaction surveys, and media to trump up the minority of good points about the network. No one seems to be directly accountable for this ongoing evolution of misconduct, yet the people who rely on it day in and out to live their very lives, suffer in increasing ways.

It’s a sorry state of affairs.

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(Sorry about video quality, I tried just uploading it to Vimeo without converting it first. I think I will convert it first, like I did the last two times, next time.)

I’m always finding ways to practise my Chinese since I came back from my holiday. Before I went to China, I was too scared I would make a mistake or something but after my holiday I realised that making mistakes is all part of the learning process. Recently, I’ve noticed that I have been making a lot of mistakes with my pronunciation.

I tried to explain these problems I have been having to other people, including the people I practise with daily but I couldn’t really explain it by just writing it out. At least with the people I practise with I could say “听起来一样” and then point at the word I wrote on some paper. Basically, I tried to explain it as: Chong sounds like Chomg with an M there. When you watch the video, you will understand what I mean by this sound.

After making the video someone sent me a message on Twitter to point out that had made a mistake with my sentence. In the video I said 今天早上我吃咸肉煎蛋面包, 也我和大悲拿铁咖啡.. but I left out all the past tense modifiers.. oops! Oh well.. Still lots to learn :) Anyway, watch the video and it should all make sense! :)

Oh.. I will try to do some more Shanghainese comparisons if people want me to? Maybe learn a bit of shanghainese from me? Although I may not be the best of teachers :)

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I really, really want to go and live and work in China but I’m finding it hard to generally live life here in Sydney and get everything together in my off-work hours to make it all happen. I am literally jealous of all the people that have gone before me and are already there and while they may not be raking in the money (one type of success) or have their name in lights (another type of success), they have certainly been successful at achieving the goal of living and working in China.

I still have this as my ultimate goal so it’s certainly not something I have given up on but maybe I just have to be a little more realistic about the huge change it would be and give myself a bit of time to digest it and really get the motivation to move forward with it. So for now, I will just go ahead and plan another “holiday” to China and not force a complete move on myself and see how things go by themself.

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dailylight blog 28-Nov-2009 from Luke Parsons on Vimeo.

My YouTube videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/light487

I’ve been smoking about a packet of regular smokes a day for the last 20 years or so, at least up until about 50 days ago now. It was about that time that I made the amazing discovery of electronic cigarettes (otherwise known as electronic nicotine inhalators). When I first found out about them, through a link on Facebook, I thought that they were a brand new technology as I had never even heard about them at that point. The reality is that these devices have been around for over 3 years!! There has been a far reaching campaign by certain agencies in America to hide these devices from the general population and even so far as to label them as unsafe to scare people away from them.

What this meant for people like you and me is that we never even got a choice to decide whether we wanted to continue smoking extremely harmful and life-threatening tobacco or give this new “healthier” technology a try. The study that was conducted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did find a single harmful chemical, in trace amounts, in 1 of the 19 products they tested. Even though that same chemical can be found in higher amounts in basic food such as potatoes, they decided to do a big press release and declare them as unsafe. I could go on and on about this blatant cover up but there are many other websites and blogs that are more qualified to report on this topic, including the fact that the FDA had a current lawsuit against them from one of the major electronic cigarette companies at the time of the press release.

Basically you have three options: You can quit smoking, keep smoking regular cigarettes, or “vape” on electronic cigarettes. Now of course if you are a heavy smoker (or even a light one), you will know just how hard it is the quit smoking. There are so many factors and reasons why giving up smoking is one of the hardest things to do but again, there are plenty of blogs and articles out there to read about that so I won’t go into that here. Just know that it is extremely tough and that people who can’t give up smoking are far from weak-minded. The second option of course is to keep smoking, which is what most people do despite the fact that it is killing them with ever puff they have. Despite all the evidence, all the anti-smoking advertising, all their family and friends’ advice etc etc.. These people continue to smoke cigarettes.

But why should they now, when there is a healthier alternative. Notice I didn’t say “healthy” or “safe” but instead used the word “healthier”. I fully acknowledge that nicotine is a chemical but so is caffeine, both of which have a lot more similarites than people usually give caffeine credit for. I also acknowledge that extensive, 10 year long studies haven’t been done on electronic cigarettes, however it does not take a medical degree to know that vaping nicotine, water, propylen glycol and/or vegetable glycerine (which are the main ingredients of the juice that go in an electronic cigarette) is far, far safer than continuing to force the general population to smoke regular cigarettes for another 10+ years until the studies can be completed. It also doesn’t take a rocket scientest to figure out why the governments are so set against it.. but I’ll leave that up to your own imagination. :)

Anyway.. check out the video, if you have any questions post a comment and I’ll try to answer as best as I can. Another place to get answers is at the Totally Wicked e-Liquid forums found here: http://forum.totallywicked-eliquid.co.uk/ .

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Ever since my China trip I have been trying to get back there and stay for longer than I did before. I have an itch that needs scratching and in the meantime I have decided to scratch it with a quick 4 day trip to the nearby city of Brisbane. I’ve been to Brisbane before for a conference but didn’t really get to see much of the place because I was.. well.. in a conference the whole time. So this time I am planning on being a bit more like a tourist and doing all the standard tourist type things in Brisbane.

On Friday I will be catching a flight from Sydney, leaving at 10:00am and arrive in Brisbane at 11:30am. A 30min ride on the trains to my hotel in the city of Brisbane will follow and after unpacking my bags, I will start exploring pretty much straight away. The company I work for, CUA, has its head-office in Brisbane and there are a bunch of people there I want to meet. On the way, I will be making a short detour to the Brisbane Queen Street Visitor’s Information Centre to pickup a FiveInOne Pass.

The FiveInOne Pass, which costs $145 AUD, gives me entry into 5 of Brisbane’s most popular attractions: The “Story Bridge” climb, Kookaburra River Cruise, Riverside Adventure/Activity Park, The XXXX Brewery, and the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I’ve checked with all the prices on those sites and all included it would have cost just under $200 for all the entry fees. It sounds like good value in any case and there’s two activities covered that I wanted to do before I found out about the FiveInOne Pass as well.

I really wanted to try and have a go at abseiling down a cliff again but all the places I looked at were booked out. The Riverside Adventure Park has this activity available. Also the Story Bridge Climb is something I wanted to do as well because it just seems like a cool thing to do for me. Then when I found out that I would be able to get a picture of me holding a Koala at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, I knew I had to go there too. It will go nicely with the picture I have of holding the Red Panda in Chengdu.

One of my work colleagues also suggested that I go on a Rivercat to see the city from the river but of  course now I will just go on the Kookaburra River Cruise instead, which is an old-style Mississippi river paddle steamer. The Sunday cruise I am going on has a live jazz band as well so I am hoping they will play music to fit the mood of the paddle steamer rather than new-age style jazz. I don’t think I will have time to see the XXXX Brewery but it isn’t something I was that interested in to begin with, so it doesn’t really matter that much.

Speaking of work colleagues, my direct supervisor and my big boss plus another work colleqgue at the same position as me all work in Brisbane so I will be having lunch with them on the Friday. I’ve met my superviser and my big boss but not the other one. It will be a great opportunity to catch up with them and meet her as well. Also without realising it, I’ll be arriving on the last Friday of the month when each HUB office has their end of month drinks socialising function on. So I will be going to that on Friday evening to meet a lot of other people from other departments that I talk to on the phone but have never actually met.

All in all, it sounds like a lot of fun and well worth the effort to fly up there. I’ll be sure to take lots of photos and possibly even some video while I am there.

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Well it’s been a long time since I have written anything on my blog. I kept meaning to write more about my trip but fulltime work sunk its unrelenting claws in and ate away all my gumption for writing. Everytime I thought of writing something else, I felt guilty about not having finalised my trip but now I’m just going to continue on.

Soooo… trains, Sydney Cityrail Trains to be more precise. I guess everyone can find at least a few things wrong about their own hometown’s public transport system but I’ve been told by many people who visit here from all over the globe that Sydney has the worst of any developed country in the world.

There is no end to the amount of screw ups, chaos, filth, and management bungles witnessed over the years and it appears to just get worse as time goes on. What has sparked this latest rant on the subject is the train I am sitting on right now as I write this.

The seats on this train are the most uncomfortable seats I can think of. They are almost as hard as wood and the legroom is next to non-existant. What makes these seats really suck though is the design of the backrests. The angle they are to the seat is about 95 (or maybe 100) degrees. In other words, they are almost completely straight up and down. From a visual point of viewing the design is pleasing to the eye and to be fair, they are probably ergonomically correct too.

However just because something is correct doesn’t make it feel right, as can be seen from the over zealous application of political correctness. If I was only going to sit on this train for 10 or 15 minutes then it wouldn’t really matter all that much. As it is though, I have to sit on these uncomfortable seats for over 1 hour and my back, neck and shoulders get progressive more and more stiff, and more and more sore.

The thing with all the trains on the Sydney Cityrail network is that the management who are in charge of agreeing to production contracts are only, and I can’t stress this enough, concerned with who can deliver the requirements at the lowest bid. Stuff efficiency, stuff comfort, stuff practicality etc.. The bottom line is the bottom line. This is why every carriage on the network has so many design flaws because if those design flaws do not affect the requirements, they are always overlooked.

We only need to look at the brand new trains, which have only just been commissioned by Cityrail, to see just how true this is. The new trains have been built to meet capacity demands but someone forgot to check whether they will fit on the platforms or not. Yes! That’s right! The new trains are too big for many of the stations around the city, including those that are in the inner city itself! They have now had to waste millions of tax payer dollars on refitting (read: extending) those stations that are now defined as being too short. This is not the only major oversight in the design of the new trains but it’s a huge one that can not go unnoticed.

However, and here is the sting of it, nothing has been done nor is being done to rectify the situation for the short, medium and long term. Admittedly they are extending those platforms as a fix but I am talking about putting a stop to the stuff-ups, bungles and general chaos being created by morons who for some unknown reason are in charge of providing transport to Australia’s flagship city. It may not be the official capital city but when asked, most foreigners first say that Sydney is the capital (usually correcting themselves within a matter of moments). It’s a perception thing…

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It’s been two weeks since I got back from China and I haven’t updated in almost a month… the reason? I’ve been adjusting to being back. Don’t fret though, as I have not forgotten about the blog and I have a very good memory so I will be able to write about my adventurers in as much detail as I did before.

The reason I stopped updating during my trip is simply a matter of time and energy, or more precisely the lack thereof. By the time I made it to Beijing I was already starting to feel the strain of the long days and nights of travel, I’d worn a hole in my shoes even!! So anyway, I should have some updates coming over the next few days.

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City Walls

A view from the South Gate looking North up along South Street.

As I mentioned in myprevious blog entry, the mornings here are quite cold and mostof the time overcast as well, so I decided to do something that would allow me to see the city but at the same time keep me relatively warm. The inner city section of Xi’an is surrounded by the original city walls and visitors can gain access to them at the North and South gates. Not too sure if they can be accessed by the East and West gates but I didn’t see anything resembling a pedestrian access at those gates.

The length around the entire city walls is approximately 40km, so walking around them might take half a day or longer. There are three other alternatives though: take a 10-seater electric powered buggy, a rimshaw taxi pedalled by a shifu, or hire a bike of your own and ride around it yourself. I chose the latter, which unsurprisingly also turned out to be the cheapest option at only 20 yuan (plus 200 yuan deposit).

Here is my point-of-view while riding around the city walls in Xi'an...well sort of, I had to get off the bike for this photo. :)

The bike ride around the walls is supposed to take, according to the people who rented the bike to me, about 80 minutes but it actually took me about 90 because of the prevailing easterly winds that morning, which slowed me down along that section of the wall. I brought my gloves with me that I had haggled for the previous day and they came in handy for this long bike ride by not only keeping my fingers warm but also preventing my thumbs from getting blistered from the rubber hand grips.

As I travelled around the wall I was able to cycle close to the sides and take a peek over, and also stop whenever I wanted to take a closer look. At one point I spotted some people flying some kites but these guys weren’t just flying kites like I did as a kid, they had professional looking equipment with belt-harnesses to keep hold of the kites. I couldn’t hazard a guess how high they were but by the look of the massive spindles they had, the kites must have been extremely high.

Here are some of the people doing their dancing.

At another point along the wall I heard some music as well as karate-style yelling coming from outside the wall, so I stopped for a peak and found people dancing in a courtyard, and others doing some kind of martial arts exercises. Further along the wall I spotted more people doing various sporting activities and execises in the well manicured park that ran along the outside of the wall.

Before even the half-way point (about 20km) I was getting worn out and having to cycle into the wind wasn’t helping. I also had the impression I was riding uphill slightly, which was confirmed later on the return sectionof the wall where I could allow the bike to roll along without pedalling much. It made a great start to the day and definitely added to the positive experience of Xi’an, which up till then hadn’t been so great.

Awesome Food

Just prior to going to the wall I went to find a restaurant that a friend had recommended on the previous day. I found it and worked out, after asking the people standing out the front, that it would open at 11:00am. When I finished my bike ride, I asked someone for the time and it was almost exactly 11:00am. Perfect! Time for brunch then! The restaurant was quite close to the South Gate so it only took me a short time to get there. I alked in and asked for the menu first to make sure it wasn’t going to be too expensive, it wasn’t so I indicated (with hand and body language) that I wanted to dine there and to be seated.

And so began a quick realisation that I lack proper restaurant vocabulary. I’d never had any problem buying food and drink off the streets but when you go to a restaurent, zhege and nage (this and that), don’t always cut it. You can tell them that you want “this” or “that” of course but I guess they also want to know how you want it, and choosing the tea to drink with the meal was also just as difficult. It took maybe ten times longer than it should have to order my meal but I got what I was expecting when the food did arrive in the end, so I guess that’s all that mattered at that point. It did give me some ideas on what language I needed to work on though, so that was good.

Here is the wonderful, toffee covered stuff.. still not sure if it was some kind of fruit or sweet dough.

I ordered some Lamb (cooked with some sort of thin, crumbly batter on the outside; cut into strips) and a bowl of Dumplings in some kind of spicy soup. Before those two dishes arrived however, they brought me some kind of complimentary tofu soup. It didn’t have a lot of flavour but it was light and even a little sweet so made for a good starter. Most likely it was something that would assist in the digestion of food. The lamb was succullent and juicy, with the dry batter on the outside making for a perfect combination. The dumplings were also better than the average dumplings I’ve had in China, with the level of spiciness of the soup just right.

The thing that surprised me the most was the dessert, which was also complimentary. It was a small plate of what seemed to be sweet dough, cut into strips and then completely and utterly drenched in warm and sticky toffee that was going hard as it cooled. The moment I had one bite of this, I basically pushed the other dishes aside until I had eaten about half the plate. I could feel my stomach getting full so I took a break, had a smoke (yes in the restaurant) and a couple of cups of tea, then went back to work on the meal in front of me till I could not eat a single bite more. I didn’t eat again till the next day because I was so well fed there and it only cost me 65 yuan for everything: 20 for the dumplings, 25 for the lamb and 20 for the tea, as per the menu prices. Amazing food, the best I have had since arriving in China. I’d arrived at around 11:10am and by the time I left, at around 12:45, the place was packed full of people. Obviously this was a very popular restaurant locally.

Massage

In every city I have been to so far, with the exception of Wuhan, I have had a massage. Each time the massage has had a lot of similarities but also little things that are not common to the other city. In Xi’an I actually went to a low-quality place thinking it was the place that the same friend, who recommended the restaurant, had recommended I go to. The place she recommended was actually about half a block away and had all the same features at the front of the store, which is why I thought it was the right one.

In any case the massage was average, not bad by any means but it was obvious that these people didn’t have the same professional training nor resources that the other previous places did. I paid less for the 1.5 hour long massage though, so I guess even in Chinayou get what you pay for when it comes to professional services. In this place they had the same foot bath at the beginning but also put some kind of milk extract powder into the water that, upon making contact with water, expanded into hundreds of tiny little squishyballs. Admittedly, this actually felt great on my sore feet and later she added more hot water and more of the milk extract powder.

The actual massage itself was, as already stated, mediocre but the conversation was at least different to the regular “where are you from?” conversations I have with most Chinese people. So at least I got to practise a bit more daily-life style Chinese language at the same time as the massage.

Afternoon with Daphne

Nothing to do with what I am writing here but another good photo of the Xi'an City Walls. :)

After the massage I went back to the hostel for a while to access the free wifi internet there and to make contact with a friend I met online who lives in Xi’an. We organised to meet up after she finished work at 3:00pm so she could show me around a little. Daphne teaches English and Chinese to primary and middle-school students. She teaches mainly to the expat children that go to school in Xi’an. She took me to the South, out of the inner city area to where the White Goose Pagoda is. It was a much more pleasant part of the city because there were less people and it had a lot of park areas surrounding the main tourist attraction itself.

We grabbed some coffee from KFC, which was better than I thought it was going to be but certainly not cafe level of quality, and sat in one of the parks and chatted the afternoon away. After we had finished chatting about life, work and language, we decided to grab a bite to eat at a nearby noodle shop before she helped me get a taxi back to where I was staying. Having friends in a city that you are visiting, even if you just have a cup of coffee with them, makes a big difference to the experience in that city. All in all, Day 15 was perhaps the best day I spent in Xi’an: the city walls, the food, the (mediocre) massage, and afternoon with Daphne made it all seem worth it.

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Actually this picture was taken the day after but for some reason I didn't take any photos on Day 14.

Trying not to let the previous day’s events bother me too much proved to be more difficult than it would seem. I was constantly aware of the people around me and was expecting to be pick-pocketed or something at any moment (and even now a couple of days later, I find myself a little on edge though much less). The thing is, the vast majority of Chinese people are honest and wouldn’t even think of stealing or scamming someone but nevertheless, the previous day’s events weighed heavily on my mind.

I decided to have a decent sized breakfast at the hotel and give them one more chance at redeeming themselves but the breakfast was mediocre and reasonably expensive. After breakfast I headed out to see the Great Mosque in the Muslim Quarter of the city, On the way there I discovered a StarBucks coffee shop on the West-South corner of the Bell Tower intersection. No.. not South-West corner.. the West-South corner.. hehe.. As I’ve previously mentioned, most of the time you cross the road in Xi’an by going underground and at the Bell Tower intersection there are a number of exits around the points of the compass. The South-West corner would come out on to South Street on the West side of the street. The West-South corner exit comes out on West Street, on the South side of the street. Confused yet? Well, it’s actually really handy to know the difference in the street sides and makes it much easier to navigate the main part of the city,

In Australia, StarBucks coffee sucks so badly that they had to close about 50 or so stores Australia-wide because no one was drinking the coffee. :) Fortunately for me, the StarBucks coffee in China is superb and I ended up having coffee there every morning since finding it. It’s a little expensive but definitely worth it in a country where “good” coffee is hard to find in large quantities. With my big, venti-sized cup of Caramel Latte in hand, I strolled westward down the West Street (西大街 on the map, the exit to StarBucks would be 西大街南口). Along West Street a little way can be found the Muslim Quarter off to the North of the road itself. Within this section is a plethora of little shops and of course the Great Mosque.

During my failed attempted to gain access to the Great Mosque on this day, due to the route I took being closed for construction, I decided to buy a couple of things I’d had inmy mind to buy for about a week. The first thing was a good pair of warm gloves because the further I went North, the colder the the mornings got and the longer it took for the day to warm up. In Xi’an it was taking till about 1:00pm to get to a decent enough temperature to be comfortable without a jacket. I haggled with the lady and managed to get the price of the gloves from 100 yuan down to 20 yuan. I attempted to haggle with the same lady for the second thing, a t-shirt, to below 20 yuan but she wouldn’t budge even with a lot of joking around. I left the store saying that I would find it elsewhere but she didn’t follow me and negotiate a new price.

This experience taught me two things, how to haggle a little better and also that the t-shirt’s real price was 20 yuan. With that information, I would later (on the following day) get the same shirt from another shop for 20 yuan because I knew that was the proper price. The fact that she didn’t chase after me was a good indication that 20 yuan was the real price of the shirt and that it is unlikely I could get a better deal elsewhere in the city. Unless I was to buy multiple shirts and then I could ask for a further discount because I was buying in a higher quantity. The thing I noticed with the haggling was that you didn’t really need to know any Chinese at all because they all use calculators to show the price they are asking and offer you the calculator to enter your own counter-bid. I think the fact that I used a bit of Chinese and played around with her a little helped a lot though as: 1. She knew she wasn’t dealing with a complete idiot and 2. the playful banter put us in a good buyer-seller relationship where both sides felt more comfortable.

For the rest of the day I basically walked around the city to get a feel for the place and find the essential things in the environment that I might need to use later, like an ATM that would accept my card (as not all the ATMs will). The tourist information centre was also another good location to know as you can basically walk in there, tell them what you are trying to do and then they will give you all the information on how to do it. I also attempted to locate a decent tea-house to sit in and drink tea but they are few and far between in Xi’an for some reason. There are literally hundreds of Noodle shops littered all over the city but next to impossible to locate a tea-house. Failing that, I just wandered some more before returning to the “hostel” and bumming around for the remainder of the night.

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Saying goodbye to new friends. If I ever go back to Chengdu, I'll definitely stay at Sim's Cozy Guest House again.

My flight was due to leave for Xi’an at 1:00pm today and so I made my preparations early in the morning, packing my bags and doing everything except for actually checking out of the room itself. Had a shower and a shave, ate a bigger than normal breakfast, said goodbye to some of the friends I had made and so on. I arranged for a driver to take me from Sim’s Cozy to the airport because it cost the same and was more reliable than trying to get a taxi. On the way to the airport I was able to write a couple of blog entries so I am starting to catch up with myself in real-time now. :)

The flight was with China Southern and the meal and refreshments plus the service level was, as I expected, far superior to that of Air China. The flight was surprisingly short at just 1 hour from take-off to landing but upon arrival there was some confusion over whether I should be debarking from the plane or not as it was a 2-stage flight that continued on to another destination. I asked the flight attendant and showed my ticket and she confirmed that I had arrived at my destination. I had called ahead the day before to arrange an airport pickup, so I made my way out of the airport and found someone holding a sign with my name.

He was a little confused as he assumed that there was supposed to be two people arriving, one person called Luke and the other person called Parsons. :) I told him that my famly name was Parsons a few times and then again in Chinese and he finally caught on to the concept. He immediately got on the phone and sounded a little annoyed with whoever he was talking to but I signalled to him that I needed to use the bathroom and I left him to his conversation. I was put into a decent looking car and my backpack into the trunk of the car and away we drove on to Xi’an city, which is about 40km from the airport.

We arrived in Xi’an after a fairly uneventful drive, except for the last 500m or so when we got into the centre of the city and the traffic got really crazy. After I got out of the car and my backpack was retrieved from the trunk, I was greeted by a man who claimed to be from the hostel that I had booked in, who led me into the foyer of a hotel. Only thing was, it was not the same hostel or hotel I had booked online. After questioning him about this, he advised me that the hostel was under emergency repairs and that it only had a few rooms left occupiable. He told me that I could stay in a single room here for a little bit more than I had booked for but I argued nicely with him that it was not what was agreed on, so he lowered the price to a more acceptable level.

At this stage I was already suspicious but I had no further evidence to suggest that he was playing games, so I went along with it and he showed me the room which looked nice enough and after a bit more questioning, I handed over the money for the room. From that point onwards everything started to get really weird. Stories about the room’s services, my check-in receipt discrepancies and a whole bunch of things just kept adding up to, what is obvious to me now, a scam. I called a couple of friends in China and had them do a bit of digging and I even tried calling the original hostel number but it was his phone. In the end I demanded my money be returned, minus the airport pickup fee of course, which I got and I walked out. It took a few nasty words in Chinese to get through to them that I wasn’t going to stand for it.. such as “fei hua” (Bullshit), when the girl at the counter suddenly couldn’t understand English. I made her check the money for counterfeit right there in front of him, in the special machines they have here in China. I left telling him that I was sorry but I just didn’t feel comfortable with the situation and sorry for the trouble, to try and leave the situation with him keeping at least a bit of face.

So, there I was in Xi’an with nowhere to stay and the sun quickly sinking in the sky. I called one of my friends in Shanghai again, and asked her to help me out in finding out where I was so that she could give me the closest, and easiest, hostel to stay at. It was at this point that my China Mobile ran out of credit.. aiya!! :) Luckily there are China Mobile stores just about everywhere and a few doors down there was a full service store who were able to assist me directly with adding 50 yuan credit on to the phone. As it turns out, the hostel where I am now staying was only a few more doors down the road. I checked in to the hostel and went to check out my private room.

Compared to Sim’s Cozy this place was a, ’scuse the french but no other word justifiably describes it, shit-hole. Maybe I was a little jaded after my bad start to Xi’an and nearly being scammed big time but the more I stay at this place, the more I realise what a bad hostel it is. The food is 3 or 4 times more expensive than all of the hostels I have stayed in, the drinks are 2 or 3 times more, the music they play into the early morning hours is crappy club music you’d hear in any dive across the world. The people who frequent the place seem to be people who don’t even stay at the hostel and just come here for the food and drink, as if the place serves more as a pub with rooms to rent than an actual hostel. Anyway, I am extremely underwhelmed by the place to say the least. Perhaps the only good thing about it is the location; it is dead centre, in the middle of the city,which makes it easy to get to places.

I had a decent shower to wash both the physical and mental grit of the day away and went to bed early. The bed is more uncomfortable than all the beds I have slept on in China and would be the length of a standard child’s bed in any country. Apparently the place changed ownership in the last year or so, and so that is probably why it is so bad now. It can only get better from here on out, right?.. .Only time will tell…

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