Communism of the past

We leave Xi-an early in the morning. Elles her medicines start to have effect but she is still weak. Tucked into her warm sleeping bag she sits next to me and tries to keep an eye on the road. The Xi-an wall is covered in a layer of fog as we drive by it and the city is starting to wake up. We are on our way to Yan-an, home of the communist party. Mao resided her for a long time making it a special place for communist fans.

The road is in a fairly good state but heavy traffic makes driving slow. The scenery is actually quite dull. The grey winter landscape with dusty fields doesn¡¯t make this ride spectacular. The only diversion we get is from the non-smiling ladies at the tollbooths we pass. Michel turns it into a game to see if he can get them into smiling. Most of the times with no effect. We expect the home of the communist party to be ¡­. Well¡­.. communistic. But the first thing we notice is posh hotels and guess what¡­ a huge KFC. Cheap hotels are non-existent in this town and it takes time to find one that is reasonable in price. Mao is long gone and hard currency is what they like.

We ask Jason to bring us to a good place to eat as we can use some clean food. We end up, other then we expected in a foodcourt. Jason keeps raving about intestines and even orders some. He also recommends us the donkey meat. We skip both and end up with some dull noodles. As we have a long drive ahead of us we go to bed early. We can¡¯t be bothered to visit the former headquarters of the communistic party to look at some memorabilia. Communism is long gone anyway.