Day 38 - Train to Dunhuang

Day 38

We didn’t sleep well on the train.  The beds were hard and the train was noisy.  They also locked the “western toilet” room and that meant that I HAD to use the squat toilet, and I was not happy!  They just don’t like to clean them.  It isn’t a matter of getting the toilet paper stuck in the pipes because they warn you not to use it while we are stopped in the station.  Now hopefully you know what happens when you flush the toilet on the train without me having to explain more…  We arrived at Liuyuan on time and Lily got us off the train and then we found Marvin, the tour operator.  After we got on the bus we rode two hours on one of the bumpiest roads I have ever been on!  We finally made it to Dunheung without anyone getting motion sick.  We left our luggage at the hotel, had an early lunch and then went to a Mogao Buddhist Grotto that they are restoring.  The lines were super long and we got so tired of just standing around.  We left there about 3 p.m. so we could go ride camels.

At the Mogao Grotto.  The guy in the lower left corner is Marvin Wu, out tour operator.

More Grotto

More of the Grotto.

It is a huge complex that is partly being restored and partly lived in by some monks.

This part of the Grotto didn't have as many people in it, but you can still see lots of people walking around.

These people are lined up to see one of the shrines in here.  The Buddhist Statues in this are are still in place because it is not as heavily Muslim as the other areas were.  The frescoes are amazing also.

We were almost to the place to go ride camels, when the bus got in an accident.  A guy crossed over the double yellow line and tried to cut in front of the bus.  He knew he shouldn’t have done it, but what made it all worse, was the guy’s wife gets out of the back of the car and starts yelling at out bus driver for ruining their vacation!  Another time that I was glad I couldn’t speak Chinese because Marvin told us later that some of the language she was using was equivalent to the F word here.  We had to get out and walk the rest of the way to the place.  There we were divided up into groups of 5 and sent with a camel wrangler to get us on the camels.  It seemed to be one big long continuous line of camel riders.  This place has around 700 camels that they rotate around on all day long.  They were still going strong there when we left at 6:30.  And, it was fun.  My camera died just as I was getting a movie about David’s camel getting up from the ground, so that was the end of pictures for that day. 

The line of camels going up the sand mountain and back down.  We didn't see a camel spit.  Sorry, Caleb.

This was the area that the camel wranglers brought you do to get on the camels.  The people with the orange boots on were people that also climbed up the mountain to slide down it. 

And, away one group of five goes.

After the ride, we walked to the Shrine at an oasis called, Crescent Lake.  It was very pretty and looked so inviting, but we were getting tired by this time from the lack of sleep and the need for supper.

Made it to the hotel and got in our rooms.  The bus drove us down to a Muslim street market so that we could get some dinner.  We found some yummy pita and beef pockets and also something that was very much like fry bread with jam in the middle.  We got more than one of those!  Now we are super tired, dirty and wanting showers!

Day 37 - Turpan to the Sleeper Train

Day 37

This morning, we took the bus ride to Jiaohe Ancient City ruins and walked all around to see them.  It was a civilization that was here during the Tang Dynasty.  I thought they did a great job in their restoration.  They still have more they are doing, but it was great what they have finished.  After that, we went to see the underground wells system that was developed – the Karze Well.  It was an amazing underground system that allowed them to get the water from the mountains to the lowlands without a lot of evaporation in the extremely dry climate.  The displays showed how they lived at this time.  It was interesting. 

Ruins of the Buddhist colony that are being restored.

More of the ruins.

Jiaohe Ancient City.

More of Jiaohe.

Jiaohe Temple

Jiaohe.

Jiaohe was built on this mesa.  It had a river that went around it and they used that for their farming and were pretty well protected from their enemies.  They had over 100 pagodas on the north (the are closest to the bottom of the picture).

More of Jiaohe.

They had outfits that you could pay 20 Yuan and get your picture taken in it.  No, I didn't take them up on it.

Lunch was almost that same as yesterday with a lot of similar dishes and they bring them out one at a time and put it on a “lazy Susan”. I’m sure they call it something else, but that is what we know it as. 

After lunch, we went to see a place that was telling the story of the Monkey King, a Chinese tale that they are very proud of.  We were sort of pretty sick of hearing about it by the time we were done today, but we were all intrigued enough to try and find the story to read it.

Statue of the Monkey King.

More of the statue.  These are the Monkey King's helpers.

Monkey King...

Monkey King...

Monkey King...

And, you could have your picture taken with the live characters of the Monkey King!

Then we went to the grape valley and saw how they take care of the grapes and dry them.  They dry them right on the vine and the best grapes (according to our guide) are the ones that are dried at just the right height.  David and I bought 2 kilos of grapes to take home with us.  They are that good!

Yes, they sleep right among the grapes in the summer.

You could pay money to watch a cock fight.  Poor birds.

I just thought this tree was interesting.  It looks like it should be dead, but it is still very much alive.       

These women were working as they sat there.  Beautiful things, but the price was matching it.  

Part of the Grape Valley.

We made a visit to a grocery store before dinner so that we could get food for snacks and breakfast on the train.  They were not able to book all of us on the same sleeper train, so they had to split us up between two trains that left about 45 minutes apart from each other.  David and I were put on the second train.  I believe the tour guide was extra glad at this point that we had Lily with us because none of us knew anything about the Chinese train system and this way he was able to go with the first group and make sure everything went well there while Lily took care of the second group.  We waited around and finally got on at about 11:15 p.m.  Lily made sure we were all settled in our cabins before she went to bed.

Train station toilet.  One woman on our tour got motion sick from the ride there and had to come in and use this!  We ALL felt bad for her. Every so often, a flush of water comes through to "clean things".  I decided I could wait...

Train coming into the station.  We had tickets for a "soft" sleeper, which meant that we only had four people to a room and a "mattress" that we could sleep on.  Sheet and pillow were provided.  We slept in our clothes, for the little sleep that we got.  "Hard" sleepers have six to a room and just a plank to sleep on.  There there are the chairs and benches to sleep on and those that stand up for the whole ride.  It truly was a memorable experience.

Day 36 Urumqi to Turpan

Day 36  Urumqi to Turpan

We started out the day with a big breakfast at the hotel.  Got the buses loaded and drove for 3+ hours to Turpan.  Because this is the National Holiday in China and EVERYONE has the week off, the traffic was insane.  We saw two places where there were several cars involved in accidents.  Most of them just fender benders, but still slowed us way down from getting to where we were going.  The bus was having problems with the air conditioning so it got a little warm at times and we had to delay our afternoon activities for an hour or so. 

We checked in at our hotel and then went to lunch at the Muslim restaurant that is connected with the hotel.  It was a big lunch with some really spicy foods again.  This area is known for its love of spicy foods.  I had to be really careful with what I ate.  After an hours rest, we got back on the bus and drove to the Flaming Mountains area.  We walked around and saw a village of the Urgur people.  They live very simply and in conditions that they have probably lived in for centuries, except now they have cars and motors to replace the horses, donkeys and cows.  We bought some freshly dried raisins there.  Yum!

This area is very windy.   There are windmills clear up to the mountains in the background.  What you see in the air is dust.

Here they are building a new high speed train that should be done next year.  It can take people from Urumqi to Beijing in about 11 hours they said.

This is a graveyard of the Ugyur people.  They build little tombs for their loved ones.

Some are the are on the way to Turpan.  Nothing grows here it seems.

More landscape.  This is called the moving mountain because the shifting sands on it keep changing it.

We loaded back on the bus and went to the Pachikli Grottos,  a ruin of Buddhist monks, that they are in the process of restoring the frescos and such.  The Muslims took out all the statues when they first got there because they believe that a statue of a person is an idol of worship.  We then went to Gaoching, another ruin and we had a donkey cart ride to the actual ruin that was about a mile down a very dusty, dry dirt road.  Our donkey was tired and didn’t want to work anymore, so all the other carts that were behind us got to pass us. 

The mosque of the Urgur village.

Village street.

This is an oven where they back their special bread.

The door to this Muslim home, announces that they have daughters here.  This is how the family get to know if they are compatible with other families.  If they have flowers painted on the door, they have daughters in the home.  If there are building on the door, there are sons in the home.  So if you have both daughters and sons, you will paint both on the door.  

A home of the Urgurs.

Because they live so far away from Mecca, if they can't make the trip to Mecca when it is time, they can climb this mountain instead.  Yes, those are steps all the way to the top!  When you come down, you take the zigzag steps down.  

After that ruin, we went back to the hotel, but before we actually got in the hotel, we went with the Murdock’s and the Shauerhamers and got some dinner at one of the local Chinese Restaurants.  They saw us walking down the pathway and invited us in with their “English” menu.  We were just going to go to the store and grab something quick, but did this instead.  It was good.

At a table next to us, I noticed three young men, 11 years old, looking our way and talking and it seemed like they were trying to get up the courage to come over and talk to us.  It was like, “I’ll go if you will.”  “Come on, don’t be chicken!”  Finally, I told the others at our table about them, so we looked their way and smiled and said “hello” in Chinese.  That brought them over and they got to speak in English to us.  We asked their names and how old they were.  The parents that were with them, loved that we were talking to them.  They start learning in English in elementary school here and to have a chance to actually use it was a special experience for them.  They don’t get a lot of Anglo visitors in the area because of the possible threats of violence, so we were quite an item to have 53 of us walking around their town.  

On our way back to the hotel, there were two little girls ahead of us and they kept running past us and then looking back for a little bit.  Finally we said, “Hi” and they said “Hello” back to us.  They were so cute. We found the people Turpan very willing to use what English they used for us.  Long tiring day though!

This is the lobby of our hotel in  Turpan.  We could get wifi if we wanted to sit in the lobby as the men smoked...

Day 35 Trip to the Silk Road - Urumqi

Day 35

We got up at 4 a.m. to meet the taxi that Eva had arranged for us at 5.a.m.  We got to the airport about the same time as the Clarke’s and the Pace’s with Lily. Lily is a Chinese girl that met with one of the BYU couples in Ji’nan last year while they were riding the bus.  She was a big help to them and they became quite close.  That couple wanted her to experience more of China, so they paid her way to go on this tour with us.  The Shauerhamer’s were about 10 minutes behind us, but we had to wait for the desk to open, so it really didn’t matter.  Everything went well with the flight and we arrived safely in Urumqi about 1 p.m.  We met the other people that were here from BYU for the tour and we were finally on our way to check in at the hotel about 3:30.  We had to drive around for a while because we couldn’t get into the hotel until they had everything ready for us. 

We quickly dropped our things off in the hotel room and then went to the International Bazaar in the Muslim area. There were armed guards in several places because there had been warnings that there might be some unrest during the National Holiday in China.  We felt safe enough.  There was a whole lot to buy there, but we only ended up with a warm had for David that we paid 50 RMB for (about $8 US) after bargaining with a twelve  year old girl. She was tough!

This is the little girl we bargained with to get David's hat.

These knives are specially made in Xinjiang Province, but if you buy them, you can't take them out of the province.  Makes sense, right?

The Mosque in the square of the Muslim Bazaar.

Outside of the Muslim Bazaar

Just a sampling of all the things you can buy here.  I had a hard time passing these up for my granddaughters, but I only had so much luggage space...

Urumqi was built in 1985 or so from the small village it was to the capital city it is now in the province of Xinjiang.  This are is famous for its part in the Silk Road.  The Silk Road was first a passage way for the Chinese to get the bigger horses that were in the Middle East.  Chinese horses to this point were small and they wanted bigger horses for their military.  Later it was used for trade to get spices and silk to the west.  We noticed that lack of people riding bikes in Urumqi and our guide said it was because they were encouraging people to buy cars and the city was not really set up for bikes to be ridden.  This area is surrounded by mountains and desert.

 Dinner was at an ethic Chinese restaurant.  Lots of spicy hot dishes!  Lily couldn’t even help us with the names and what was in them because she was unfamiliar with the local food. 

Dinner with Lily at our table.  They gradually put all the dishes on the Lazy Susan and you turn it around to serve yourself.  No forks at this meal!  We are all getting better with the chopsticks, but Lily, of course is the best.  She showed us how to get the long noodles out of the soup bowl into our bowls.  We were so glad that we had Lily along with us!

These are all different kinds of raisins!  Who knew for about all we see in the US are the black or green ones.  We are raisin experts now after this trip.

After we got back from the dinner, we walked around with the Clarke’s, bought some ice cream because we were looking for some of the local yogurt that was supposed to be the best in China and couldn’t find any. In looking for the yogurt, we went down a set of steps that we thought would take us to the other side of the street and find the grocery store that was supposed to be in the area.  What we found was a huge underground shopping mall!  It went on for blocks in both ways.  There seemed to be mostly higher end stores down there.  We never did find the grocery store.  I bought a nice strand of pearls for 200 RMB (about $63 US).

The lobby of the five star hotel we stayed in in Urumqi.

I HAD to take a picture of the flower petals in the toilet of the hotel!

Outside the window, a look at the dirty window and the city of Urumqi.

A Muslim wedding was going on.

Another car in the wedding procession.

They even made us feel at home with the rubber duckies in the tub!  This one is for you, Randy!