Hello Silent Day...

...when everybody consume like there's no tomorrow.

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Free Vintage Ex Libris Template

Something free and beautiful for your book collection. Click here to download and printing instruction. Via designsponge.

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Buried by Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an

There’s no way you could escape them. They were there, in every corner, every alley and even underground. It’s almost impossible to not find yourself being offered a terracotta warriors T-shirt or statue or keychain when you were walking around the city. Xi’an is a terracotta warrior's mega business empire. Made me sort of wonder, what did the locals do for business before 1974, when accidentally the buried warrior dudes was found.

Our journey continued from Chengdu. After an early one and a half hours flight to Xi’an, we found ourselves sitting cramped in a aged taxi with an aging driver and stone age temperament. With the help of my now dog eared phrase book and clear address, both in Chinese characters and pin yin, he drove us violently to our hostel. After a loud screeching and a sudden halt, we found ourselves standing in what seems like an old mansion, guarded by two verocious looking quilin or lions. Our hostel in Xi’an, similar with the city itself was simply a piece of history.

After settling in, we decided for our mission of the day. A brief interruption, if you please. I know I’ve just been in China for four days, and I know when one’s travel, one should eat what the locals eat. However, at that time I really feel I had enough of noodles and pao. So, our mission of the day was…having a lunch at Subway. For the first time, ordering food in China was so easy, it almost put me to tears.

Fueled by long and thick tuna sandwich, we walked around the city. We caught a glimpse of the Drum Tower and nearby Bell Tower, also went to the Temple of the City Gods and the market inside. By recommendation from a friend, I took my numb-by-cold Mother to the Muslim Quarter. I got the feeling that the market was built especially to fool tourists. How could you explain the logic of haggling 200RMB T-shirt to become 40RMB? I don’t think I’ve ever been haggling that hard in my life. And really, if it was for me, I would just leave the shop when the lady said 200RMB. But it was her who kept harassing us to buy, I give you good price-la, how much you want ha? We ended up with few T-shirts for gifts and weariness, a mixture of emotion came by extreme bargaining and severely cold weather (7°C). We spent the night at the hostel. To chicken to went out (-2°C) except to buy a bottle of Tsingtao to kept me warm in a convenience shop nearby.

After a delightful sweet and sour pork with some sort of veggie chop suey, I started sipping my beer while Mother doing her minor voyeurism on backpackers and locals around us. Then a staff came cheerfully at us, offering to teach us how to make dumplings. Apparently it was The Dumpling Night. So a bunch of travelers gathered around one table and tried our best to fold the dumpling into a neat piece…which of course, an activity which I failed miserably. My mother, on the other hand, was doing really well and even taught the clueless others. We chatted over beers and steam dumplings (yes, the very same masterpieces we made earlier) with the other travelers. Siblings from Australia, a dude from Canada and a fraulein from Germany. The Australian just visited the Terracotta Warriors that day and I immediately asked them of their impression of it. They grudgingly said, “Well, it sort of quite disappointing actually. They sort of just standing there and it was quite far from here so you spent the whole day just to go there and go back here.”

It still didn’t dampen my spirit. I was obsessed with those dudes. Ever since watching the excavation in National Geographic years ago, I swore myself I would go there someday. After a bus ride (7RMB), we finally made it to Bingmayong or officially known as The Museum of Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang (95RMB). It’s a vast complex, almost like a city. It took us 15 minutes walk to finally arrived to the pits which hosted the warriors. One thing that caught my eyes are the amount of professional tour guide available for hire (another 100RMB). They fussed over us with negative sentiments like: “Oh, it’s very very big inside. You could get lost and you’ll miss a lot of things if I’m not there to guide you.” Frankly speaking, it was a bit annoying.

This is what you should do when you get inside (and waved goodbye to the guides). You will find three pits and a museum. Start with the smallest pit, No.3. There was not much explanation inside (obviously), so either you had your research before coming here or rent an audio guide. Otherwise, you’d only see crumbling pottery, down in a big rectangular ditch. Pit No.3 was filled with high ranking officers although when I was there, the warriors seemed to be fighting a war somewhere since there was only few that could be found. Most are in the state of crumbling to pieces or headless. I think the fact that they even managed to survived two thousand years was amazing. Not much could be seen in Pit No.3, except if you want to have your face immortalized in a 3D terracotta warrior picture.

Pit No.2 is bigger than the previous pit. It host similar crumbling statues and obviously hasn’t been fully excavated. They beauty of this pit is you can see few terracotta warriors in their best condition up close. There was a general, a kneeling archer, a cavalryman and his horse and some other things. The details was remarkably meticulous and I read that none of the terracotta warriors found has the same faces. It was said that each warrior is an image of its own maker.

We entered the largest pit as the grand finale. Pit No. 1 was an enormous hangar with the best natural lighting. It supposed to be the climax but at the moment I were there, a work was being done at the place. I will just say that it wasn’t what I had in mind. I sort of expecting more exciting climax. The guides talking loudly all around me were not helping either. On our way back, another 15 minutes of passing through food stalls and souvenir shops (guess what they sell!) later, we arrived at the parking lot. The drive back to the city took longer with the traffic. It was four in the evening when we got back to town.

Xi’an is a beautiful city. I adore the old wall (where you can walk or ride around with bike for two or three hours), the gentrified districts and the Muslim Quarter. Everywhere I walked, I know I am walking through history. What I don’t like is this tourist inferno, this obsession with anything terracotta warriors. I wish I have more time to find the real beauty of Xi’an. I know it’s there but it was so difficult to find, being buried by layers and layers of terracotta warriors paraphernalia.

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Green Travel is...

...not just what happens at the destination, or indeed how you get there. It does not demand that you eschew air travel altogether or hotels or comfort, or that your holiday is within 10 miles of your home. Rather, it asks you to pack your brain as well as your swimsuit, and to assess and then act on the impact of your visit. At its best, it's kind to both place and people, and rewards the host as much as the tourist. It is mostly small-scale, unique and personal. It certainly appeals to the intellectually curious, the ecologically and socially responsible, and to the politically aware. It seeks to add to the sum of knowledge and improve, or at least not harm, the natural world.

I just love how John Vidal from The Guardian put it. I can't make the green claim that my travel has been eco-friendly. My recent travel to China, for instance, was all about flying. With only 11 days, I didn't see how I could travel the vast distances of China, in any other way than flying. However, I tried to be as local as possible. I took the public transport, ate at the local restaurants and tried to shop at the locally owned establishment. I hope it is enough to compensate all the flights I took to get there.

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Recent Things That Made Me Mooing

Latest Magazine addiction
Monocle. What a perfect magazine should be. Enlightening, informing, enticing.
Lonely Planet Magazine. Very hard to find here but I savored each page in it.

Couch Potato Watches...
Tropic of Capricorn on BBC Knowledge Channel. Mostly because Africa mystifies me. Partly because of Simon Reeve's boyishly handsome charm and come on, the man "... has survived malaria, played polo with the corpse of a headless goat, swum with sea-lions, fished for piranhas, climbed the equivalent of half-way Everest while surviving on coca leaves, travelled around the planet by van, canoe, car, train, boat, horseback, helicopter, plane, a 50-metre-long $1m truck, and used a zip-line to get inside one of the most repressive states in the world." What's not to adore?

Unhealthy Food Obsession
Calamari. It's like a five weeks pregnant calamari craving. Strange.


Books Treasure Chest
Pondok Pekak Library & Learning Center, Ubud. Lowest prices for second hand books and their library collection is just amazing.

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Happy Chinese New Year!

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First Stop: Chengdu

Right after we safely landed on Chengdu and few seconds after I said a small prayer to my God, I instantly remembered one of my favorite quote from Orson Welles, “there are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror”. I had a fair share of both at each flight which grows worsen by the unfortunate fact that I am incapable of sleeping in an airplane. To tell you it was the most boisterous flight I’ve ever had would be an understatement. It was a flying market. If you have ever seen more exasperated flight attendants than I did at that flight, please do leave a comment.

Our hostel in Chengdu was perfection. It used to be an old printing house and now a hostel, cool café and creative design office. We immediately felt at home after a warm welcome from the staff. Our double bed standard room was anything but standard. Surrounded by white brick walls and woods, furnished with stuff from IKEA and adorned with framed illustrations, it was worth every cent of 100RMB.

My Mother, the H.R.H’s first request was to eat hot and steamy pao for supper. Informed by the girls at the reception (turn right, keep going ahead and turn right at the end), we thought we’d be eating hot pao in five minutes. Turned out it was an hour later. Yes, like mother, like daughter, both of us lack the natural navigation tool needed. At the point when we were seriously considering returning to the hostel, the tenth person we asked on the street finally understood and kindly took us to that pao emporium.

Problems solved… not. How else are you going to explain that we don’t like pork filled pao but red beans pao to a seller that doesn’t speak English and us, buyers that doesn’t speak Mandarin, other than trying each and every kind of pao they have until you found it? It was a pao nightmare. I barely able to climbed those two floors when we were back at the hostel. That first night in China, I made a mental note to ask the staff on how to say ‘red bean pao’. And to write down the characters as well as the pin yin (latin alphabets of Chinese characters) next time we go out.

The next day we followed a tour to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base, twenty minutes drive from the city. We were the first to arrive there, since the pandas are the most active before their feeding time at 9.30am. It was a huge complex with its own bamboo gardens, science center, nursery and shops. My first glimpse of panda was of two giant black and white creatures having their first bamboo breakfast. They snapped the leaves off with their claw and munched endlessly. One of them was not a morning type since it was perched on a tree trunk sleepily. I took hundred pictures of them, eating, goofing around, climbing, gymnastically rolling down a hill and sleeping while ooh-ing and aah-ing. One thing I noticed there was the lack of information about the panda itself. However I saw plenty of signs stating that this panda was sponsored by a certain company or personage. In the end it comes down to money, after all the pandas are priceless commodities for China.

Wenshu Temple is the next in our list. There was something serene and humbling about it. You could feel the energy of the place, the millions of prayers that have been whispered there since Tang Dynasty, a millennium and a half ago. The temple was beautifully preserved and really a remarkable achievement for artistry during that time. There was also a restaurant and a tea house there. We decided to sit down and have a sip of the famous jasmine tea. For just 10RMB, we had our cups refilled every time its empty. Watching people there; chattering, snacking on peanuts, playing cards, marveling on their grandchildren, reading, sewing or simply people watching like us, was one of the most beautiful experience we had in Chengdu.

Mother always has urge to buy fruits whenever we passed a fruit seller while her daughter has the urge to taking as many shots as possible. We ended up buying oranges, strawberries, cherries, pears and more pao (yes, pao. Again) which we carried all the way to Tianfu Square. There you could find a Chairman Mao statue, standing tall and proud after all these years, watching his people. Now an icon and a cult figure, his face could be found in many galleries of contemporary art and souvenir shops.

I spent the night with new found friends over the hot pot Sichuan is famous for. Using couchsurfing to get in touch with the local, I managed to meet my Chinese peers over boiling meats, mushroom and vegetable. All of them speaks English which was a sort of relieve after communication failures today. From them, I learn more about China than any guide book could ever tell. I could say that they feel excited about China nowdays despite the lack of freedom of expression or better known as The Great Firewall of China. “That’s why God also creates proxy page," one of them told me, grinning widely. One of them also admits how increasingly difficult to have a relationship now, since more and more young people are gravitating toward one thing in choosing their future spouse: money. “It used to be simple. A man meets a woman. They fall in love, they have baby, and they didn’t have anything. Now, it’s all about who has the luxurious car and what kind of apartment or how much the salary.” Sounds familiar huh?

Giddy with too much Tsingtao beers and pork brain culinary experiment (FYI, it was mushy and fatty), we ended the night sipping tea in an old house, located on a gentrified street built long ago. I saw what could be the most charming Starbucks there and watching old ladies shaking their booties in what seems like a late night aerobic exercise.

The blanket was so warm; I didn’t want to separate my body from it. Morning voices included, cookadoodledoo, vegetable seller on bicycle, cars honking at each other, a fierce Pekingese barking at poor newspaper guy. With much struggles, we dragged ourselves out for the next mission of the day: eating noodle. We found one close, the first small restaurant equipped with English menu during our trip in China. Establishments like this are plenty everywhere we go. The prices are cheap, quality is good and service is straight forward.

We spent the day in the new Sichuan Museum (good news: free entry for foreign passport holder), lost in beautiful calligraphies, ceramics and shadow puppets. The museum was beautifully designed and perfectly managed. To think that in Indonesia we have our fair share of historically priceless gorgeous artifacts in poorly kept museums, always left me with a deep sadness. Across the street was a big complex of art market. Some of things they sold there left me cringe with longing. We bought some things for folks back home and harshly reminded ourselves that we still have two cities to go to. Our last night in Chengdu was a cold one but the city and the people are anything but cold. Despite our tragic language barrier, we were showered by many kindness and helps during our stay. We will go to Xi’an and Guilin, but will come back to Chengdu to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Something I truly looked forward to.

Practical info:

• Bus ride 1RMB
• Taxi ride starts from 5RMB, short distance around town won’t be more than12 RMB.
• Make sure to arrive at Giant Panda Breeding Research Base before 9am.
• Recommended stay: The Loft Hostel.
• Must try food: Sichuan hot pot (find the greasiest, most crowded place), Moslem noodles (the cook and waiters are wearing white hats), pao, fried octopus, mapo dofu, pork brain (or not), and late night seafood grill on the street.

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