I ask you eat food.

• Ninedeuce's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Urumqi

Trip Start May 29, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Jun 28, 2007 Next
Entry

  Urumqi, China
Monday, June 11, 2007

I only stayed in Hotan for one night because there's really nothing to do there except inhale dust and get stared at, plus I wanted to get on the 25-hour bus to Urumqi through the Taklamakan Desert, which is this giant circle of sand in the middle of Xinjiang. Apparently the Silk Road split east of the desert and went around either the southern or northern edge because there was no way to cross it and live.  Well, those guys were fucking pansies, because I did it.  I mean, I was on an air-conditioned bus instead of on foot with a bunch of camels, but still.  I'm an adventurer.  There were settlements for the first few hours of the trip, the last of which was this sort of weird area with mud huts and some plants surrounded by sand dunes.  There were cows grazing in the area, which was pretty weird.  Sand dunes and cows.  I tried to sleep, but even sleeper buses here are too cramped for much of that.  Plus the driver and his homeboy chatted all night and blew smoke on me, and the people in the back kept coming to the front to fuck around and bumped into me all night.  The scenery was sweet, though. We drove through sand dunes for like hundreds of miles.  Like you couldn't see anything but these huge, pristine sand dunes and they stretched away from the highway in all directions for miles. 

We stopped in some desert town on the way and I got off to get some soda or something and got some serious attention.  This guy on the other bus came over to me and asked me if I spoke Chinese, then immediately asked me to go to dinner with him when we got to Urumqi.  That's sort of been the pattern over here. Uighur guys will ask you some random question, then ask you out immediately.  I know what it's all about. They see western movies where some dude asks a stranger out, then they go eat and do it.  I suppose if I was them I'd give it a shot, too. 

We eventually got to Urumqi like 5 hours late.  I don't think I need to take anymore 20+ hour bus rides.  I got to another generic Chinese hotel, but this one had something awesome: the "for men only" towel, only 10 yuan.  It said it was designed specifically for washing the weiner with, either before or after intercourse.  It was even made with "special Chinese medicinal formula of herb." There was a women's one, too.  

There's nothing to do in Urumqi but go to KFC if you are sick of eating lamian and kebabs, walk around and buy cheap things you don't need, and go see some underwhelming exhibits on how well minorities are treated in the PRC (or at least that's what the government-produced signage said). But I still like it here. All the things I need are available, unlike out further west, and there are more Chinese people here, so I can practice with people who actually speak better Chinese than I do. I went to a salon here, which is one of my favorite things to do when I travel. You either end up impressed with yourself for being able to tell the hairdresser what you want them to do, or you end up with a good story after you fix whatever they do to your hair.  This time it went alright. My hair is shorter than I want it to be, but I got it cut like a Chinese girl, which is sort of cool.  We watched a Korean soap opera dubbed in Chinese while the girl cut my hair, and the other girls asked me questions about whether Americans all have hair like mine, if it would be possible for them to dye their hair the same color as mine, and whether I liked Xinjiang. When I said I did, they said something like, "Yeah, you like the Chinese part, right?" I guess Chinese people really aren't into Uighurs.  The soap opera was really funny. There was a scene at a funeral in which the background music, which was really loud, was a Muzak (TM) version of "Stairway to Heaven." I guess it's a catchy tune because the hairdresser ended up whistling it while she did my hair. 

I'm leaving now for Turfan. 

Print this entry Share Urumqi hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry