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Published: April 9th 2011
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It started with a 2.5-hour flight from Beijing to Xining airport.
Xining meant western peaceful… Chinese names of cities always interested me, probably because the root of those names derived so much from the ones I was used to. Take Sydney, London, and Toronto for example, I might be wrong but to me they all sound like… sounds. Unlike this, Chinese city names have more of a Narnia feel to them if I must compare it to anything. Anyways back to what I was saying. Our 5-hour stop off at this transit point was the opening gates to the Tibetan Plateau, and was nothing but a dreamy and mystical experience. It was like I was there, but at the same time my body felt detracted from my mind.
No I was not being spiritual nor ‘feeling so fly like a G-6‘, I was just damn tired and wanted to sleep. Whenever long haul journeys are required, I usually indulge in the practice of staying up as late as possible the night before, so that during the journey I’m knocked out, and even a China airlines seat is comfortable to sleep in. Its pretty full proof, as long as you got someone to aggressively wake you up ever you need to physically move from point A to B and the only minor downside; being incredibly tired for the following 24 hours.
Anyways, we were met by our tour guide, who actually was a middle school English teacher who had never done a tour before (oh how I was not surprised this happened in China), but was fine and took us to the Xining museum. The museum was decentish, but I was skeptical of some of the ancientness of some of the ancient artifacts on display. I had the impression that at least a ¼ of the stuff were there to fill up the spaces and pretty sure I saw some of the furniture on display from the Tang dynasty in my 9th grade Chinese classroom. Maybe my IGCSE Chinese teacher was a secret preservationist of furniture from the Tang dynasty.
What did impress me though was that this city was the smallest and one of the most remote in China, but still had a larger population than Australia.
The Museum tour was followed by lunch at one of the more cultural parts of town, and as usual I surprised most of the people there by ordering and finishing more food than they thought one could indulge. And as a 20 hour train ride followed shortly, I was determined to find a decent bathroom, so asked to be taken to a hotel so I could take advantage of being a Westerner and strut into the lobby and head for the bathroom and have everyone think it was fine, assuming that a foreigner that didn’t say in their hotel would never walk in a random hotel to use their bathroom. My plan backfired as the only ‘good’ toilets in the town according to the guide belonged in a shopping complex. All I will say about it is that I was deeply disappointed. So I guessed I had to wait till I got to Lahasa.
I’m now sitting on my sleeper in a carriage, and doing all that I can to kill time. Activities involving watching full seasons of shows on my laptop, reading, and trying to get my head around the vastness and total remoteness of this plateau. My head hurt …. so its sleep time.
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