So what did I do? - Day 1

Day 1 - 26 August

Started early reached airport about 7am, queue was quite bad at the check-in but made it in good time. Flight was 9.35am. Departure hall will open at 8.55am.

Went to the departure gate at 8.40am and waited, saw people walking out from the departure hall.....ah flight to S'pore was delayed by 1 hour so passengers were walking out and fuming cos some have appointments at 10am etc. Waited.....waited.....then it occurs to me better ask......to my horror the departure gate to Xian has been changed to another gate.....far far away from this gate, actually almost directly opposite end of the current gate. There we were rushing across the terminal building.....

Finally there was such a long queue to the departure gate too because the staffs are also informed last minute so they too are rushing from another gate to the latest gate.....by then the flight was delayed to 10 am....and when we boarded the plane....the pilot also mentioned that the plane had to be taxied to the new gate last minute.....there we go what a great rush...... and then a further delay until 11 am reason??!!.....there is a curfew of the airspace because of Merdeka fly pass practice. So we finally took to the sky around 10.50 am. Xian has the same time as Malaysia......for that matter whole of China does too cos they figured that it is too cumbersome to have multiple time zone for a single country.

So I managed to catch Herbie fullyloaded on the onboard entertainment. Eat, drink, sleep, eat drink, sleep and opcors went to the toilet to do my business across somewhere across northern Thailand.

Haha....arrived 5 hours later. The airport is pretty new and big. Even saw Tan Sri Lee Kim Yew while queuing at the immigration desk. So it was a breeze collecting our luggage and going through customs etc.....on we go to look for the airport bus that will take us down to the city.

The journey down to the city is pretty nice - aircon bus, nice commentary given by the tour guide but I suspect I only catch 10% of the stuff being said. So wife is the one asking and talking...me.....typical banana chinese......ask wife to translate into Cantonese. Was asking wife while on the bus if the wall as inidicated on the map that my mom-in-law gave us was really a wall. Wife said no lah, just an indication of where the ancient wall was. Then to our surprise it really is an ancient wall!!!! How big? Well that will come in Day 3.

Well bro-in-law and GF met us at a hotel where the bus stops. There were old ladies selling maps of Xian, very customer service oriented......I don't remember Sentral/KLIA selling KL maps??

Went for coffee at King Coffee......layout, design and even the logo will pass-off as Starbucks at first glance. Ah next to it is KFC, another sign of modern civilisation :) Well we had dinner at this nice restaurant.....had too much food.......so much that we had to tapau. Then we went to a street very much like Petaling Street near the city walls. Then I noticed a lot of halal shops along that street. Did our shopping, checking out the prices etc etc. Then we went home.