Khotan
Trip Start
Aug 14, 2008
1
4
8
Trip End
Ongoing
Khotan,
Xinjiang Uygur,
China
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Met up with the 2 Americans at the hotel. They were having trouble with their finances as they weren't sure if they could get an advance on their credit card, so they were going to move to another hotel a couple of hundred metres down the road. This was the Happy Hotel, which their lp guidebook said was owned and managed by a local Uighur family who were fantastically welcoming towards foreigners. Needless to say we barely got a word or a smile out of them after checking in. We took a 3 bed room in the bottom of the courtyard. The attached toilet stank terribly but at 30Y a bed we couldn't really complain. Every time we opened the door to the toilet the room was filled with the stench of excrement.
Mao status obscured by dust
We then proceeded into town. They managed to sort out their finances and we had lunch at Weilimai Burger. I had a Chicken burger masquerading as a Cheese Burger on the menu with liberal amounts of mayonnaise on it.
I wanted to see some of famous Indo-European mummies recovered from the Takla Makan, and apparently there were some of these in the local museum. My Rough Guide showed it on a corner of the main square, but there was absolutely no sign of it. I finally found it by consulting Chris the Americans lp book which showed it in a new location. Made my way down there and it was closed for the summer because of the Olympic visa restrictions.
We then got refused entry to the internet cafe we had been using the day before. The guy just shook his head at us and muttered police several times. We surmised that this probably we had been using proxy browsers the day before and that our activity had been monitored by the cops.
After all the dissapointment I wandered down the bazaar which was immense in its size, although many of the stalls were closed, only opening on Sunday. I purchased a Uighur knife for 80Y. Then I went down to the eastern bus station and purchased a ticket for Cherchen or Quimo.
We had dinner at a local Uighur restaurant and I just had the standard Laghman which normally works out at 5Y to 8Y. We then repaired to a bar we had found earlier above Weilimai burger, and which appeared to be the only bar in Khotan.
