China Part 1

Hello Again. Told you I'd call didn't I? I bet you've been checking every few minutes. Will he won't he? He did!! Yeah!

So as an extra special treat I'm going to try to attempt to have a go at doing this China Blog all in one. I may get frustrated and bored half way through (as will you when you read it) and give up and do it in two parts so who knows you could have an extra one to read. Oooh the excitement!

So China. We arrived in our first place Kashgar (A town recently on the news for a mass stabbing) after a long journey and an early start from our last camp in Kyrgyzstan. The journey over the border was a bizarre one. We went through the Kyrgyzstan side of the border fine no bother, then it was a 150 km journey through no man's land to the China border (this was something to do with the Soviets) over mountains in which we experienced rain, sun and snow! Passing through the China side was surprisingly easy after CJ had warned us it'd be a nightmare and a few hours later we got to our hotel. We were all on a "new country buzz" and went for a lovely Chinese dinner which took much longer due to the compulsory use of chopsticks!

We had three nights in Kashgar and it was a great little (I say little, it was frickin huge by our standards) place. Kashgar is in the far west of the country and is in an area where the people are part of a minority group called the Vigas who crave independance. This meant everything was in Chinese, Vigan and badly translated English. My favourite part of Kashgar was when a few of us went for dinner in a market place and ate on the stalls. We had noodles, dumplings and fried fish. We decided against the Sheep's heads! It was great fun going around the stalls and trying the stuff through a mixture of pointing and Aoife's Mandarin book. When we were eating the fish we wanted to know what type of fish it was so Aoife asked in Chinese: "What is this?" He replied: "Fish"
No shit sherlock

Some things I noticed about China: Loads of people frickin mental, you get stared at everywhere you go, mopeds, dentists everywhere, a woman with hairy legs, clothes shops everywhere, crazy driving, more mopeds, noodles, bad english translations.

An example of the translations

Dinner at the marketplace

Market dinner



Kashgar

 After three nights in Kashgar it was time to hit the road. As we were not allowed into Tibet we had to drive all the way to Laos in 4 weeks as our visas wouldn't allow us stay longer. The following week or two saw us drive at a mental rate spending no more than two nights in one place due to the huge distance we had to cover. Having said that we still saw a huge amount of really cool stuff along the way.

Next stop was Turpan. Turpan is the second lowest point on earth being below sea level. Luckily its in land and a desert so it doesn't worry about it too much. Here we visited the ancient city of Jiaohe. This ruined city is extremely well preserved and it was really cool to look around even if I nearly passed out from the heat. The ancient city was an important part of the Silk Road and dates back to no later than 1800BC.

Me at Jiaohe Ruins



Ancient city of Jiaohe

 After a night camping in a quarry we went to a place called Dunhuang. We had two good nights here and this was where we went to see the Giant Indoor Buddha. I was a bit hungover and I was like oh right yeah some Buddhas in a cave wupdeydo but oh boy these things were cool christ they were huge never seen anything like it. Unfortunately you couldn't take pictures but I managed to get one off the Odyssey blog but it just doesn't do them justice



The reclining Buddha

 Moving on we visited the Cities of Zhangye, Wuwei and Lanzhou and spent one night in each as we shot across the country. The best of these towns was Wuwei. Wuwei was well off the beaten track. You knew this by the way people stared at you. Chinese people are obsessed by Westerners and its likely that in Wuwei we were some of the first Western people they'd seen in the flesh as loads of people stopped us wanting photos with us. In the evening we were walking through the main square and stopped to watch some Tai Chi. When it had finished I turned around and I'm not exaggerating when I say there was 100 people watching us! I got a photo as I walked/ran away which gives a slight idea of the amount of people staring. The only Western people they see are on TV in films and stuff so when they see us they automatically associate us with that. Its frightening, but pretty cool. Very good for the ego by the time we were leaving China we were strutting around like rockstars. I was thinking of paying some to come with us and boost my ego everyday I'd let them sleep in the wood rack on the truck but CJ wouldn't let me so unfair..



A parting shot of our admirers



A family we met when we went for noodles

Wuwei

More of our fans

However, none of this compared to the campsite in Jiayguan. Here we stopped and camped next to an old part of the Great Wall. We set up camp and went straight up. This was whats known as a "Wall Buzz" We spent a few hours walking up and down it and also had a beer!
Oh and on one of the towers. There was human shit. Just thought I'd+ put that in for my fans who enjoy hearing shit stories!

The wall!

Having a Beer on the wall

View from the wall

A view of the wall

Human shit on the wall...

CJ Naked on the wall (This one passed the Censor!)

After our Wall Buzz we went back down to camp to find Police waiting for us! Because they didn't know we were there apparently they insisted we move to a hotel for the night. This was at 9pm! After a row with the campsite owners and CJ trying his best to plead there was no changing the minds of these 5 guys with guns so we had to pack up camp in the dark and move to a hotel. This wasn't the end of the world but just shows don't mess with the Chinese authorities!

After this hectic week or so we arrived in the city of Xi'an. It felt like we had passed through a barrier into the West. As we came into the city we saw McDonalds, KFC and Dunkin Donuts. The place had a more Western feel and it had a strange uplift on the group. We arrived at the hotel and everyone went out for some good old fashioned bad for you fast food. However, Denis the miserable old basterd wouldn't go for McDonalds so I had to go with him for yet more feckin noodles. The old man let me down there so he did! :)

The following morning we then headed to another great iconic sight of China: The Terracotta Warriors. The Terracotta warriors were a fake army created and buried years ago. The idea was that the army would allow the emperor to rule the after life. They are being slowly restored and man they're cool..

Ok thats all for now you're probably bored already!

Coming up in China Part 2: Beijing, Lijiang, Dali and Pandas!!

See you next time, same Bat Blog, same Batty writer!