Taipei Suites Hotel Xinjiang Urumqi

... We saw the troops patrolling the streets but overall this presence did not seem too suffocating: teenagers 'aped' the soldiers as they passed and on the whole, most people appeared to be going along with life as normal. Urumqi itself was surprisingly more of a "Chinese city" than we expected, with the big roads and skyscrapers we had grown accustomed to elsewhere in China. We also saw fewer Uigher people than we thought we would ...

My last day in Xinjiang was spent mooching about Changji with LX and Ma Jun. It was exactly the kind of day of doing nothing much in particular that I needed in order to wind down from too many days of seeing and doing way too much! First we went off for a big lunch at another Hui restaurant. Then as we dawdled towards a video arcade, Ma Jun saved me from having to buy a new back pack by getting the old one repaired (the one where the zipper busted just as I ...

Finally it was time to go back to Changji. We stopped at a couple of shops (including a farm for deer antlers, boo hiss) on the way back, but arrived a lot earlier than I expected. The tour to Kanas was fun, I'm glad I went on it. Not only was the scenery spectacular, but I was forced to speak in Chinese for the whole time and I learnt how to split melon and pumpkin seeds fairly quickly, thanks to the auntie sitting across the aisle from Lirong and I who kept showering us in the damn ...

... but that it should be easy to fix and if I rested and took medicine to help make me stronger, the dizziness and blurred vision would go away. He told me which roots I needed. I think LX was surprised by how readily I agreed to follow the doctor's instructions, but what the doctor had said made sense to me. I started drinking the medicinal tea I was prescribed that night and have not felt dizzy since, despite overdoing it and still not getting enough sleep. Placebo. Perhaps, but ...

... other. I was pretty sure Mum was not going to be able to rest at ease until she managed to hear my voice and know that JV had told her the truth, I really was fine. This made me feel pretty ******, having pretty much sentenced my Mum to 10 days of worry. What a horrid daughter I am. I went out to lunch with LX and some of his classmates at a place that served Hui (one kind Muslim minority group in China) food. After that, the lot ...

... just before you get on a plane to a place that has been in the news for riots, beatings and slitting of throats, it rings too much like somebody who is not expecting to come back. My poor mummy, I've gone and broken that promise again. Once on the plane, I read a travel magazine about Xinjiang and looked out the window at the mountains and the desert and finally calmed down. I was even cheerful, despite the nearly empty plane (evidence that plenty of other people thought my ...

... the former city of Jiaohe. As with most historical sites and museums in China, captions are few, terse, and ill-translated, and in a city that is exposed to the elements and has been abandoned for something around 600 years, it's difficult to tell the difference between a home and a room for grain storage, or the remains of a wall from an oddly shaped rock formation. Sure, that basement prison (or was it cold storage? a pool ...

... holiday though, which witnesses the second largest annual migratory event in the world (next to Chinese New Year). What do you expect when 1.3 billion people all get the same two weeks of vacation per year? Once in Urumqi I met up with Charles and Peter. Charles is an old friend from college. We received the same fellowship to China in 2001-2002 and most of my major trips (Tibet, Changbaishan, Yunnan) were done with him. Besides an excessive problem with ...

... China. So, Turpan is "the desert oasis". It is notable for being the lowest area in China (the nearby lake is 150m below sea level, and second only to the Dead Sea in terms of the lowest point on earth), the hottest place in China, surrounded by ancient abandoned cities, and a good place for growing grapes. Laden with our backpacks, we headed out in the 40øC heat to John's Cafe (we seem to be doing a tour of these of late), where we had arranged to ...

... the place. Me and Asaf spent most of our time just wandering around the muslim areas, i'm never hungry as i eat whatever is see, sometimes its good, sometimes great.. sometimes i just throw it out. We also met quite alot of Israelis here (Erez, Reut, Gadi, Roni on the first day and Liron on the last) and it seems everyone is going to Kashgar from here, were we will also go, then maybe come back to this ...