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Published: September 29th 2007
after 40 hours on the train, and many interesting experiences, (including the pretty girl with the sore eye who took photos of the freak with the hair; trying to fit onto the top bunk with all our luggage on the tiny beds - much worse for kt than me!; way too many instant noodles, flavoured with sauce that smells like promite, and vegan oreos; chatting to people in english!; being the only white women on the train; running out of water in the shared sink/bathroom; playing 'big two', a cantonese card game; jamming with some uiyghr guys; staring at amazing scenery; hearing out first bit of uiyghr, which sounds like english spoken backwards with lots of glottal stops and guttural noises - so much for it not being too difficult; discovering crazy bands on my ipod - thanks adam; and being told via an interpreter that some woman thought i had nice round hips, good boobs and a very cute face - very beautiful......etc..)
we are in urumqi!
it's a strange clash of cultures. you can see the chinese, but in equal parts, middle eastern and eastern european cultures. we went for a walk through the people's park today and saw lots of old men in suits practising various instruments, including piano accordion, as well as a big group of people dancing near the lake, and the usual bums sleeping on benches. i think old men are the same everywhere in that they gather together in parks and chat and smoke and spit and all that. not so much drinking as in australia, though.
walking through town is fascinating. apparently the population is about 2 million, and it's a lot more 'cosmopolitan' than i realised. lots of tall buildings still (guess we haven't left the city yet), but also lots of street life as well, with market bazaars and people selling fruit and chestnuts and maize and sweet potatoes. actually, i love the sweet potato men. they drag their carts around with sweet potatoes roasting in the coals, and you can buy one for a couple of yuan. yum. there's writing all over buildings in mandarin, russian, and arabic scripts, as well as the occasional english letters.
when we finally made it to the hotel we'd booked (after much hassle trying to get a taxi - wow. we were really glad to have made friends with a local guy on the train who helped us out and actually paid for our taxi to the hotel. he's working in venezuela on the oil fields, and comes back to visit his family every few months, and he spoke some english, and shared his grapes and stories with us on the train. i can't even remember his name, but i hope he has a great life), we discovered it was a lot more posh than expected. this was because it was the only place with room tonight. tomorrow it's back to dodgy hostels, but for $25 AU we get a double room with a big big bed each and hot shower and bath and tv and a sauna and stuff downstairs. not sure if you have to pay for the sauna, but if not, we're totally using it.
after the 40 hours on the train, it's totally worth the luxury and expense for one night.
as well as seeing the park, we also went to the xinjiang national museum, which was cool. full of communist/nationalist propaganda in mostly decent english (though there were a few weird phrases), but if you ignored that part, it was cool. i think i liked the mummies the best. mummies! real live mummies! (well, ok, not live, but you know). it's strange, pickled mao looked really dead, but the mummies totally looked like they were about to open their eyes and jump out at you. maybe it's cos their skin still looked like skin, they still had fingernails and hair and teeth and all that. weird. like discoloured, dehydrated people.
after the museum, we wandered back towards the food places, and discovered a bakery that sold these weird balls covered in sesame seeds, about as big as a billiard ball. we'd seen them in beijing and kt was keen to try one. turns out they're this weird doughy/rice floury fried thing with red bean paste inside. i took one bite and quickly ran back in to buy another one for myself.
we were still hungry after that, so we headed across the road to a place called "good coffee" (kt was pretty keen for a good coffee). not only did they have about 50 different kinds of (expensive) coffees, they also seemed to have a lot of different "australian" things on the menu, such as "australian fruit and vegetable juice", "australian beef fillet", "australian pizza", "australian fried rice". interesting. typically, we had found the one place in the middle of china that served "australian" food, whatever that it. i got a salad covered in mayonnaise and garnished with egg, so ended up pretty much just eating lettuce (jess will be impressed with that one), and a mixed juice, which, thankfully, was pretty good. kt picked an ice coffee at random and ended up with some weird coffee cocktail full of bailey's, and also a thai fried rice with lots of crab stick. yuck. she said the rice was a bit bland, and the coffee was too intense to drink much of.
another strange meal on the travels of tegan and kt, i guess.
apart from that, there's not much to tell just yet. as usual, there are lots of photos to come. i can't wait to post the one that we took of me with the zebra statues. kt had to give me a boost so that i could climb on top of it (we couldn't resist the whole matching hair thing). this place is really incredible, though. people continue to stare at my freakishness, but mostly they tell me the ears and the rest of it are beautiful, so i seem to be quite admired. actually, another guy that we met on the train, who spoke very good english, was asking how i got the scars on my arms (i didn't go into much detail) - apparently here, and some other places in china, there was a fashion for that (maybe still is?) and people really like it when they're keloid.
so maybe i'll move to urumqi. or not. i can't wait to get to kashghar (kashi) and turpan (turlefan), as well as all the other places we want to go. south china looks awesome too. but this part of the world has well and truly captured my imagination with the crazy mixture of amazing cultures all contained within one province, as well as the incredible desert/tundra sort of landscape. we saw snow-capped mountains on the train when approaching the city! apparently you can get a cable car up there, or walk (maybe not), or hire a pony. sounds pretty cool.
speaking of cool, the temperature here is probably 20 degrees, but getting cooler as the evening progresses (glad i brought some warm clothes!). well, i think it's evening. officially, they run on beijing time, but unofficially, xinjiang is two hours behind. so the clock on this computer says 7:33pm, but it might only be 5:33pm. makes it hard to tell when things like restaurants will open and close, but we'll figure it out. tonight we're off to the night markets, where hopefully i can buy some wool to make myself a hat. i managed to buy a crochet hook today, so i'm planning on crocheting some kind of beanie-type thing. there were heaps of cool felt ones in the traditional dress section of the museum, as well as all the really ancient ones from hundreds of years bc, so maybe i'll get inspired to make something really cool. can't believe i left home without a crochet hook! what was i thinking?
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Mum
non-member comment
Wow!
What an adventure you're having!! Sounds like you guys are making friends and getting around ok. And obviously australian things are the flavour of the month... so proudly declare your aussie-ness when needed! Love Mum