The Best of Shaanxi

* Before you read further, take note: if you click the picture to the right, you can see some of our recently posted photos, and yes, the chicks in the blog header above were actually those colors....hm...

O+K in Shaanxi has revealed a series of extremely fortunate events. Yulin? We gave it good reviews upon our arrival, but what now? If a boom-town, built on coal, and surrounded by dusty dunes is not one's idea of paradise, Yulin may not warrant a several day stay. However, if you appreciate meeting good friends who invite you to their birthday dinners and karaoke, if you like planting trees to stop desertification surrounding one of the fastest growing deserts in the world, and if you don't mind getting free food and curios while walking down the street just for being a foreign face, Yulin is perfect!

Yes, we were completely surprised by our good fortune in making friends that were so eager to show us around. Here's a quick review of the town:

Accommodation: 5

Food: 8
Other than being treated several times for superb dinner and eating an absolutely delicious farmers lunch in a small village outside of the city, Yulin food was decent.

Overall: 9.4!!
Thanks to the generosity of our friends ShiHei, Qi, Zhang, Candy, Lao Zhu,...etc this was great... KTV (karaoke) was the best night yet:)

Last night we took a sleeper train twelve hours to the south of Yulin and now we are in Xi'an, still in Shaanxi provence. For hundreds of years Xi'an was the capital of dynastic China, so it is steeped with historic flavor and maintained with modern pride. We are settled into a very cool, relaxed international youth hostel, preparing to go tomorrow to see the Terra Cotta Army... if you don't know much about Xi'an (or the terra cotta soldiers) definately skim the wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi'an.