Day 2, after our breakfast in hotel, we made our way to Zhonglou metro station (below bell tower). From Zhonglou Station , we need change one station away at Beidajie Station and then to Wulukou Station. It costs us only CNY2.
At Wulukou Station, we exited at EXIT D and make our way towards the Xian Railway Station (There's two railway stations in Xian, Xian Railway Station near Wulukou Station and the other is Xian NORTH railway station which is at the outskirt of the city.) After exiting, need walked about 10 mins to the Xian Railway Station, if unsure of which direction to head to, just observe the locals pulling their luggage towards one direction, just follow them, you wont go wrong. At this station, you will sure be approached by many touts offering rides to the terracotta museum, please ignore them and dont start any conversations with them. Once you started talking to them, they will keep following you. We just pretended we dont understand mandarin lol. They just leave us alone.
On arrival of the railway station and facing the station, looked on the right, there's a souvenir shop, the bus station is just behind the souvenir shop. It was so easy to find the bus station. Head to the bus station and look for the queue to board tourist bus 5 (or also known as 306). It costs CNY7 to Terracotta Museum and CNY6 to Huaqing Hot Springs. There's other buses to the museum too but they will stop at more stops and journey is longer. Bus 5 stops about 12 stops but will stop only if there's people alight so the journey is faster about less than an hour. Once inside the bus they will give a brief talk before collecting the fare. They would suggest that we visit Huaqing Hot Springs first (CNY6) and then after visiting board the next Bus 5 again to the Terracotta Museum (CNY7).
NOTE: DONT FOLLOW ANY STRANGERS OFFERING TO BRING YOU TO BUS 5 (306) OR ANY OTHER BUSES, THERE'S FAKE BUSES OF BUS 5 (THEY PARKED BEFORE THE SOUVENIR SHOP ALONG THE ROAD). JUST MAKE YOUR OWN WAY TO THE BUS STATION (EASY TO FIND) AND THE LEGAL BUSES ARE ALL THERE. THE FAKE BUSES WILL BRING YOU TO TERRACOTTA MUSEUM AND ALSO MULTI STOPS TO SOMEWHERE TO SHOP.
The Huaqing Hot Spring was actually the site of a palace built for ancient emperors to bath with their concubines in the hot spring water in winter. It is famous not only for its hot spring, but also for the romantic love story between Emperor Xuanzong and his concubine Yang, in the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907). I did not visit the place cause already visited so many of such bath places of concubines when I visited Beijing twice. Nothing special about it except they added lots of buildings and statues to make the place beautiful and charge admission fees. I felt the history has been devalued by adding so many artificial history.
Note the last bus operation is 1900 hrs, so if you intended to visit two places, need go very early so there's time for two places and catch the last bus back to the railway station.
Please do not visit during weekends and especially their public holiday, otherwise the queues is really really very long. July and August is also not good months to visit due to July being their school holdiay and August will be very hot like a furnace.
Their buses were non air conditioned, as we visited in May, it was still very cold and the natural cold wind was better than air conditioned.
Once alighted the bus, facing some shops, turn to the right and walked towards a car park, from the car park walked towards a very large statue of Qin Shi Huang (First Emperor of Qin). The ticket office is behind the huge statue. But if you arrived around lunch time, I suggested you have lunch first at the many fast food restaurant (like KFC), local food restaurant, etc. Inside the museum there's only one restaurant and may be crowded. We had an early lunch at KFC and took photo of the tall statue from inside the restaurant.
Once at the ticket office, we were approached by many of the guides offering their services, we did not engaged any of them, is really not necessary as there's board explaining each exhibits and the three pits are close to each other, easy to navigate our ways.
Admission tickets cost CNY150 and there's a map behind the ticket to direct us to the three pits.
A short walk through some bushes and we reached the queuing barrier at Pit 1. Pit 1 is the most famous of the three pits.
As it was a weekday and non public holiday, everything goes smoothly for us, no queue and no crowds to jostle for photo taking. :)
On returning from the museum, make your way back to where you alighted the bus and take the same bus no. 5(306) back to Xian Railway Station.
This is where it begins. The Terracotta Army was discovered on 29 March 1974 to the east of Xi'an in Shaanxi province by farmers digging a water well approximately 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi) east of the Qin Emperor's tomb mound at Mount Li (Lishan), a region riddled with underground springs and watercourses.
There are over 6,000 terra cotta warriors and horses in Pit 1, of which 1,000 have been unearthed. They are marshaled into a well-organized battle array composed of the infantry and cavalry. The vanguard includes 210 foot soldiers divided equally into three lines. The cavalry and war chariot follow close in line, forming the main body of the battle formation. The foot soldiers are alternated with the chariots drawn by horses, lined into 38 columns. On both the northern and southern sides of the war formation stand 180 warriors which serve as flank guards. The rear guards are on the western end, with two lines facing east and another facing west. Some soldiers are armed with battle robe, and some are equipped with armor. Read more from Travelchinaguide.
There's a lot of description along the edge of the pit, so I dont think we need to engage any museum guide for a fee.
The excavation works has not been completed. The whole pit was really massive.
Video of the Terracotta Army Pit 1
