Turpan Hotels - Comments and Reviews

Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey King of Chinese legend, was coming through XinJiang on his way to fetch back Buddhist sutras from India, when he and his master Xuan Zang were blocked by an impenetrable wall of flame rising from the desert.

Not that an impenetrable wall of flame is any barrier for a magic monkey. According to the story, the class...

June 14, 2008 I started the day by walking around Hami for a bit. It was a Saturday, so all the kids were out in full force to play in the park, which was set up like a carnival for their amusement. I saw a man with three monkeys on a leash and a small tricycle. I do love a good monkey show, so I followed him for a few minutes. He walked straigh...

Went on a train at 9:30pm, will arrive Turpan tomorrow morning, met some nice people on the train. It will be very hot... sigh!

During this trip, I have had several occasions to experience Chinese roads and traffic, whether in town or outside, in the desert. Most of the infrastructures are in ok conditions, but people's driving is often erratic, to say the least. One sure thing, the pedestrians never have right of way and when (2-3-4)wheeled means of transportation are f...

Friday 15th of September 2006. Overnight bus journey to Turpan (Tulufan) 184 miles. Naomi (London), Gaynor (the older lady from Bristol), Luke and Valeran (the Swiss French couple) and I were all getting the night bus. We had all booked early enough that our bunks were together. When Naomi said he had bunk number 1. I thought she would be at the...

This is short because I was mostly ill for these 4 days. Spent full days driving through the desert, with a mixture of hotels and wild camps. Highlights include: - A near fight in a market when a lady tried to charge us GBP14 for what should have been a 50p meal. - Sitting outside Mogao caves because I didn't want to throw up on an important Bud...

You can tell who's been in China for a long time and who has just recently arrived. Long-timers know that in China, one RMB has the same value as one dollar in the USA; it basically can buy the same thing if not more (4 RMB for a bowl of noodles, 11 rmb for a cab ride, etc). Long-timers act accordingly (24 rmb for ramen? Are you crazy?) Recent a...

*** Confucious say "China's great!" *** We left a rainy Sydney on a fast plane to China, our first port of call, Hong Kong. Hong Kong is essentially made up of Hong Kong island and the Kowloon peninsula on China's mainland. We arrived on an early flight and headed immediately for Kowloon, the cheap** part of town, and made a bee-line for the inf...