Getting Around Xi'an

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After visiting Terracotta Army Museum, don't forget to ride a free bus to The Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Park with your Terracotta Army Museum ticket. It is about 1.5 Kilometers between these two sites. It takes about 15 minutes on each ways. You will pass by towns along the ways within Lintong district.

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We were driven all the time by bus, and couldn't get an idea about parking conditions in Xi'an. However, in contrast with the Great Wall at Beijing, where we had to leave the bus 2 km before arrival, here it was easy to park near the walls door.

Privileges for tourists, rigidly controlled time, or best conditions... what is the answer?

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Xi'an public transportation company provides a bus route for tourists to visit major attractions including Mt. Lishan cable car entrance, Huaqing Hot Spring, Tomb of Qin Shi Huang, and Terracotta Army.

The different between this public bus and other public buses is Xi'an is that it comes with a tour guide inside the bus to provide some useful information of the attractions, and suggest an easy way to visit these sites in one day. Unfortunately, their tour guides speaks mandarin only. I took some note from a tour guide as the following:

1) We should visit either the Mt. Lishan or Huaqing Hot Spring first, then catch the bus to Terracotta Army. This sequence saves you pretty of time due to the bus route arrangement.

2) The bus service is between 7am to 7pm, 8 minutes each bus leave from the Xi'an Railway Station.

3) These buses only stop at assigned bus stops with their Bus Signboard Only.

4) Bus Fare: Xi'an Railway Station to Mt. Lishan or Huaqing Hot Spring is Y6 (1 hour). Mt Lishan or Huanqing hot Spring to Terracotta Army is Y3 (25 minutes).

These buses leaves from a bus-stop on the east side of the Xi'an Railway Station, in front of the China Post Hotel. Please refer the picture.

They are other bus companies provide similar bus services to these attractions. But based on the comments from other travelers, these buses stop at tourist shops to make you buy things. A lot of taxi drivers would come to talk to you and want to give you a ride to Terracotta Amy for on Y5. I did not do that as I heard so much bad comments of these drivers, and they could do nasty things to you.

Bus 306/307 are good enough. They are very safe, friendly, comfortable, time saving and affordable.

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Tour Xian had come very highly recommended to my by Victoria (sugarpuff) who lives in Beijing and so the email process began, deciding on an itinerary and a price that was suitable to both. Having been told, same as with the Great Wall in Beijing, that seeing the Terracotta Army was best done with a personal guide, we were happy to book him.

The email address is tourxian@yahoo.com.cn
Mr. Liu is who I organised it with, and George is his assistant, and he was great. George's real name is Pan Jianh Nan, but he goes, "just call me George"!!!

We paid George 1000rmb in total for the day, he was slightly dearer, as he also came with a driver, so that is why, but still I recon its very reasonable price.
100rmb at the time was $90AUD each
mobile phone number is 0086 13991296445
On this day, we paid for all our entrances ourselves, so the 500rmb each is all we paid George.

George also picked us up from the train station from Beijing in the morning at no extra cost, and we were very grateful for that, as it was pouring rain and very chaotic!!!

Our day at the Terracotta Army went like this:
8.00am - George picked us up from the Hotel
9.00am - arrive at terracotta soldiers - entrance fee was 90rmb = $16
12.00noon - left T'cotta soldiers and drove 1hr back to Xian
1.00pm - lunch at King Town No. 1 restaurant - very cheap and yummy, Tracy and I paid for lunch for George and the driver as well.
2.00pm - drive to Muslim Quarters and Great Mosque - very interesting and great shopping here! Entry to Mosque 25rmb.
4.00pm - drive to Small Goose Pagoda - entrance was 50rmb.
6.00pm - arrive back at Hotel. George also helped us put extra credit on our mobile phones.

George will be more than happy to do whatever itinery you give to him!!! He is a young guy, speaks very very good english and very very funny!!!

NEXT ... The train trip was unreal. We did NOT need a sheet, the beds had sheets, which were very clean, in fact the cabin room was spotless, which we were quite pleased about!

I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND using the services of Tour Xian, in particular George, as he was fantastic and we could not fault him one thing on the day. If you would like any further information or have any questions please email me :)

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Tracy and I had wanted to do an overnite train trip in Vietnam but didnt get around to it. So we were determined to do it in China, although we had received many warnings about Chinese Trains. Having done my research on vt and asked many many questions, I had decided to go "first class" and opted for the soft-sleeper tickets. Basically, (as far as I understand) there are 4 classes of tickets, starting with the dearest which is soft-sleeper, then hard-sleeper, then soft-seat and then hard-seat.

Soft-sleeper means there are 2 double bunks in a separate room, the room is not large, but big enough for yourself and your luggage. We were lucky enough to only have one other chinese man in our room, and he spoke good english and was very friendly and helpful.

There are 2 advantages to doing an overnight train trip, and both of them save you money. Firstly, you save on the cost of one nights accommodation. Secondly, the cost of the train trip is a fair bit less than the cost of an internal flight. Alvin was kind enough to buy our train tickets for us, lower berth was 400rmb I think and upper berth was 417rmb, or the other way around. It worked out to about $72AUD each for the train ticket. Our 2 internal flights cost us about $250AUD each, so there is a huge difference in price.

And, furthermore, it is a very pleasant trip, the gentle rocking of the train very quickly lulls you off to sleep and when you wake up, you are at your next destination. Tracy and I both had a great nights sleep on the train, and we would definitely do it again in the future.

Another advantage to booking the soft-sleeper tickets is that there is a special waiting area at the Train station for only people with soft-sleeper tickets. We were glad to discover this, as when we walked into the main waiting area, it was packed to the rafters and pretty unpleasant place to be. The other waiting room had nicer seat, Im assuming the toilets were nicer and not as crowded. This was great, as we had about 4 and a half hours to kill at the Train Station, we ate a bit and played cards for a while. We had to be out of our Hotel by 4pm as there were National Day rehearsals and if we had left any later, the roads would have been blocked. Our train didnt leave until 9.18pm so we had a lot of time to kill at the station.

Our train left from Beijing West Train Station, and when we were approaching the station in the taxi we were like OMG!!! This place was HUGE (I seem to use that word a lot when describing China!) Im sure it was bigger than our main Sydney Airport. Our train was called the Z19 and it was about the only recognisable thing on the HUGE board we saw!

Overall, I would definitely recommend doing an overnight train trip in China, I will be doing it again one day.

Public Transport - Tourist Bus 5 (306) - 14 yuans per person - from the East Square of Xian Railway Station - takes approx 1 hour - you'll receive a return ticket and upon leaving you can either take the Tourist Bus or can catch a mini van - we chose the mini van back but it was more comfortable and faster on the coach - but as it wasn't there waiting for us we opted for the then and now option.

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By a great stroke of luck, we had Clarence Guo as our driver, host and guide. We are from Alaska, and we were traveling with our 86-year old father to China for a month. It was our first visit. We were safe and well taken care of. His e-mail address is clarenceguo@yahoo.com. He has written a book on the Terricotta Warriors. Additionally he took us to meet Chinese people who still live in caves.

He is a safe driver, charges reasonable prices, has lots of information and answers to our ga-zillion questions, and is a wonderful man. When we think of Xi'an; we think of Clarence Guo.

Expect quick and terse answers to your e-mail. That's just Mr. Guo's style. He and his wife run what would be considered a home stay in the US. Again, it was safe and clean and an easy walk in the evenings to restaurants and entertainment. The apartment came with a kitchen, full bath, two bedroom decorated in Xi'an style. The refrigerator was stocked with everything we needed to be comfortable.

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By a great stroke of luck, we had Clarence Guo as our driver, host and guide. We are from Alaska, and we were traveling with our 86-year old father to China for a month. It was our first visit. We were safe and well taken care of. His e-mail address is clarenceguo@yahoo.com. He has written a book on the Terricotta Warriors. Additionally he took us to meet Chinese people who still live in caves.

He is a safe driver, charges reasonable prices, has lots of information and answers to our ga-zillion questions, and is a wonderful man. When we think of Xi'an; we think of Clarence Guo.

Expect quick and terse answers to your e-mail. That's just Mr. Guo's style. He and his wife run what would be considered a home stay in the US. Again, it was safe and clean and an easy walk in the evenings to restaurants and entertainment. The apartment came with a kitchen, full bath, two bedroom decorated in Xi'an style. The refrigerator was stocked with everything we needed to be comfortable.