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Published: September 9th 2010
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The next day we went to Turpan. I heard that the interesting sites there are kind of in a circle around the main town and there is not much public transportation to those places, so we signed up for a tour at our hostel. We thought a minibus would pick us and some other hostel kids up at our hotel and take us to the points of interest. But information is subject to change! That morning we had to urgently take a cab to a random not-a-bus-stop location where a huge Chinese tour group and their bus were waiting for us. The tour was an "interesting cultural experience," but not one that I would like to repeat any time soon!
Our tour guide's microphone on the bus and megaphone off the bus were both set too high. We flinched whenever she spoke to us on the bus and she usually didn't stop. Also she made us always stay together, but Kayleigh and I were very bad children and ran away from her whenever we had the chance. We were always trying to run away from her megaphone. It was way too loud and also kept us from having moments to
Windmills
And some large red characters talking about wind. contemplate and enjoy the sites. We also got badges that we all wore around our necks.
On the way there, we took a pee break next to a really beautiful wind farm with a backdrop of misty mountains. Our first stop was a tourist crap place that in all fairness did a good job of explaining the Karez system. Turpan is in an extremely dry place in the middle of the desert. It is only the fruitful agricultural oasis that it is because a very long time ago, people dug tunnels, called Karez, that brought ground and rain water from the mountains down to Turpan.
Then we went to the Jiaohe ruins, remains of an ancient town that were remarkably well-preserved in the arid climate. They were pretty cool looking and I totally felt like we were on another planet because the scenery was different than anything I had seen before. A lot of golden-tan colors in the ruins and the hills in the background, and the sky was a brilliant blue. For some reason I thought these ruins would be just sitting in the middle of an empty desert and we'd be like all alone on an
exotic archeological adventure. Probably part of my previous misconception that Western China would be so foreign and in the middle of nowhere. However, tourism in Turpan seems to be VERY popular and the Jiaohe ruins were well developed with signs, a wooden walkway, and 10 tour groups, each with their own annoying leader waving her flag and shouting through her megaphone. As usual, as soon as we got off the bus, we bolted away from ours.
Then we went to a museum about Uyghur culture, or at least what the PRC would like to say about Uyghur culture. Next we went to Flaming Mountain (Huoyan Shan 火焰山), famous for its mention in "Journey to the West" which was apparently made into a shitty movie too. It was not that red, but if you looked at it for a while, you could appreciate the hints of red hues coming out. Plus the texture of the mountain was very interesting and flame-like. We got off there because we didn't buy tickets to go to the next sooper-seekrit-bonus attraction, and we set off to climb it. There were lots of tour buses there, but nobody climbing the mountain! Everyone just wanted to
A REAL LIFE Karez
LOL colored lights take pictures and look at things in the museum. The mountain was very cool and there was a clear path I think all the way up. We only made it about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way because we had to make it back for our bus. It was super doable in a few hours though. Also Turpan never felt terribly hot because it was so dry. I hardly sweat the whole time we were there. The texture of the mountain was VERY cool and Mars like. Again I found myself saying "this is the coolest place I've ever been!!" On our way down we passed a very excited man on a camel, led by a running Uyghur guy. He whooped "HELLO HELLO!" to us waiguos. At the bottom, after dumping some Huoyan Shan out of our shoes, we rejoined with the people in our group who had gone to the bonus attraction. They had made a bee-line for the giant "it is hot in Turpan!" thermometer and were taking pictures.
The next stop was a **REAL** quote-unquote "Uyghur family home for visiting." First we sat down on the kind of seats Uyghurs like to chill on in the
shade and we ate famous Turpan fruit. Turpan is particularly famous for its grapes and raisins. Then the family's daughter came out and did a traditional Uyghur dance for us. I thought she was really pretty and I liked her dress. Her dancing was nice and she was cordial with all of the tourists but I saw or probably imagined a hint of sadness in her eyes. Her older sister was the MC and spoke very good Chinese. Her younger sister was the token cute-authentic-little-Uyghur girl and many of the tourists had her pose with them for pictures. The MC took us over to the raisin table and introduced us to various kinds of Turpan specialty raisins. While she was doing this, a poorly behaved chubby little kid (his mother pinched him and made him cry later) was playing in the raisins with his dirty germy hands as if they were his sandbox! He would eat them and lick his fingers and play some more and lean his whole body into the raisins. Kayleigh and I couldn't contain ourselves and kept laughing during the MC's speech! A fellow tourist and also our tour guide had to tell us to keep
Other Jiaohe Tourists
Check out that guy's green tourist outfit. it down... oops! I mean at least we weren't contaminating the raisins.
Around that time we broke it to our tour guide that we would not return to Urumqi with the group because we wanted to stay in Turpan that night. We asked for cheap hotel recommendations, but our tour guide and also a fellow tourist either couldn't find anything or because we were American, assumed we could afford something really expensive. Anyway, the bus dropped us off at a random place, we cabbed it into the center of town, saw like a Communist Party bicycle parade or something, asked the first helpful-looking Chinese person we saw and found a 120 RMB/night room (about 10 USD each). The guy who worked in the hotel was super nice, showed us to some good outdoor Uyghur food and helped us with saying some simple Uyghur phrases. At our hotel we were like "oooh let's watch Uyghur TV." The channels in Uyghur were very unreliable and frequently cut off.
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