Well we got back from our week long trip across China. It was awesome. Exhausting, but really really cool. I took about 400 pictures, and I'm in the process of uploading them as we speak. I probably won't be able to put all of them up, but I'll get the good ones. And they'll be here when I return. It was awesome. I shall begin with a run down of the trip.
On Friday, we got out of our Chinese Politics class early (sweet...) and we headed to the train station. This week was a holiday week (National Day was on Wednesday), so the train station was unbelievably crowded, allthough not as crowded as pictures I've seen. Our first train ride was a 20 hour soft sleeper to Xi'an. "Soft Sleeper" means that there are four beds in a private room, although everyone shared a room with two Chinese strangers. I thought the accomodations were fine, but there were others in the program who didn't share my sentiments. Really the only thing that was gross was the bathroom, but it's China and I've yet to see a clean public restroom in the whole country. Also, if anybody was bitching already, they were in for a rude awakening when we took the hard sleepers, but there will be more on this later.
Anyhow, we slept and hung out on the train and arrived in Xi'an at about 5:00 pm. After a much appreciated shower in a super nice hotel (with a super nice bathroom) we ventured out and found a really cool bar street where we enjoyed a few drinks at a Wild West themed bar called "Ol' Henry's" and the "Touch Pub" (which looked like a strip bar, sans naked women). It was a really cool area, and oddly vacant for a Saturday night. The next day we headed out to the Terra Cotta Warriors, which was really cool. After that, we went to a really cool Mosque/Shopping district which had excellent street food and a lot of cool knick-knacks. I managed to snag a soviet style winter cap (complete with Red Star) for only 25 kuai, so that was exciting. That night we boarded the train again for Jiayuguan, which was another 21 hours away. This time it was on a hard sleeper, which has a 3 bed bunk bed and no doors to the rooms. Although it wasn't exactly the most comfortable place to sleep, it did the job. Plus it was fun to just lie around all day and read and listen to music and stuff.
That evening we arrived in Jiayuguan, which is an industrial town in the middle of nowhere. We stayed at a reasonably creepy orange hotel, but it was nice to have a shower. We ventured out again that evening, and there was a festival going on. We played a laser gun game, and I managed to impress everyone with my Texas shooting skills. But there was no prize. We walked around and enjoyed a beer at another bar (but the beer was this really shady Tsingtao knock off that tasted like half Keystone/ half water). The next day we went to a really cool fortress place in Jiayuguan, which was where the Western part of the Great Wall begins. It was sweet. After that, we went to a section of the Great Wall and climbed it to the top (which sucked), but once we got there, the view was amazing and we did a little mountain climbing. After this, we had a 5 hour bus ride to Donghuan.
Upon arriving in Donghuan, we had free time to explore it's famous night market, which was really fun. The street food was good, and we ate dinner at this open air restaraunt and had a great time. The next morning we woke up and went to the Sand Dunes, which were awesome. They were over 800 feet tall, and we were able to sled down them. It was wicked. We also rode camels and had a good time. It was awesome. After the dunes, we went to this place that had a bunch of grottoes, which are caves/buddhist worship places. We saw the 3rd largest Buddha in Asia, and it was awesome. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed. This was cool, but after a while everyone was ready for the tour to be over. After this we boarded another train for the 12 hour trip to Turpan.
Upon arriving in Turpan we boarded a bus and went to the Flaming Mountain, which is a famous site featured in a Chinese folk tale about the Monkey King. It was pretty cool. We also toured an the ruins of an Ancient city (and some people almost got attacked by the donkey pulling our cart). After that we went to a Uigur vineyard, and we enjoyed some snacks and toured the home. This was definitely the busiest day. We were supposed to visit 2 more sites, but everyone opted to skip those (they didn't sound that interesting) and travel on to the next city and to our hotel (we hadn't showered in 24 hours, and this was after visiting and playing around in the sand dunes). The next stop was Urumqi, which is the largest city in Xinjian Autonomous Region.
Crap! my comptuer is about to run out of batteries. I'm going to upload more pictures and finish later. PEACE!
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