Elong.com may attract you with their low airline ticket and hotel rates, but foreign cardholder beware, the hassle you go through to actually get an airline ticket is not worth it. As it turns out, we had booked our tickets with them, thinking everything had gone smoothly (because we printed out our booking confirmation with them and such) we went to Pudong airport, upon check-in we were told that we had no tickets and had to miss our flight. What happened was that Elong claimed not to have received confirmation for use of my credit card, so cancelled my plane tickets without telling me that they cancelled it. So we were stranded at the airport while my mom made some frantic calls to the company which led to nothing, so in the end we paid nearly double the price for a ticket right at the airport. Interestingly enough, while I was waiting for my mom to make those frantic phone calls, a fight broke out right where I was standing. Some guy and his friends were late in checking in, so the airline attendent wouldn't let him check in, because the system wouldn't allow him. The guy got really angry, along with his friends who were shouting with him, and the guy went behind the counter and started HITTING the airline attendent. O_O This poor attendent merely told him that he could no longer check in and the system really wouldn't let him do it.
Anyhow, we finally made it to Xi'an! Luckily, the "hotel" we booked is nicer than the last "hotel" we were at in Shanghai (I add quotations because they were actually service apartments, but the phrase "service apartments" doesn't flow as nicely as the one-worded "hotel"). The first thing we did was find a place to eat, I was by then starving because I had not eaten the entire day (skipped out on breakfast, airport drama took the place of lunch). We were directed to De Fa Cheng, a self-proclaimed "legendary" restaurant with "delicious" dumplings. The dumplings were at best okay, I'm sure they'd taste better if they were steaming hot like most dumplings are, instead you order at a counter, place your order tabs on the side of your table while carts of pre-made dumplings are rolled around and dumped on your plate as they come by, leaving you with a plate of half warm, half room temperature dumplings. We also ordered some yang rou chuar when the appetizer cart came around, should've known, those were no longer warm either. I'm sure there's a strategic place you could seat yourself, next to the kitchen, to ensure that your dumplings are at least still hot-warm by the time they enter your mouth. At least the hotel is close to downtown.
After lukewarm dumplings, we wandered our way pass the drum tower and into the night market surrounding the Great Mosque in the Muslim quarter. This was a really big night market lined with souvenior hawkers, chuar grillers, candy makers, fruit driers, meat choppers, noodle rollers, sugar cane juicers, tea boilers, caricature drawers, rickshaw drivers (one of which almost took me out), all mixed in with crowds of pedestrians and would be consumers making for a very re nao (literally, 'hot bother') market. My feet actually hurt by the time I got back to the hotel (despite its close proximity to the sites). I thought going back to the hotel would be nice and relaxing, I'd just watch tv and sleep, but, no, I'm still trying to get Elong to book my tickets from Xi'an to Nanjing, which isn't happening right now.
To end, frusturated by tedious "booking" process on Elong, but happy about "hotel". We're going to take a Eastern tour tomorrow to see the terracotta army. Wish me luck!
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