The 30hr train ride to Xi’an was quite fun, I met a hongkong guy who acted as a translator for the fellow cabin buddies, there were a couple of chinese comedians in the same cabin, each person had a turn of singing and were rewarded with a generous shot of rice spirits – after a while I was called up from my bunk and sang Waltzing Matilda and Advance Australia fair, when I forgot a lyric I just replaced the word with a random word – as no one understood english except for the hongkong guy anyway.
When arriving in xi’an I was greeted with the sight of a huge ancient wall surrounding the inner suburbs, quite impressive. The city itself is very modern and very expensive in parts; although there’s always a cheap hostel. I stayed in a very nice hostel for $5/night, while waiting for my lady friend from dunhuang to arrive a few days later. Xi’an is most famous for the Terracotta army, 8000 warrior statues that were built to protect the first emperor of china during his afterlife, back in ~300BC. As impressive as it sounds, after I paid for the 25min bus to the site and then paid for the entrance fee ($10), I just wanted to walk out as soon as I walked in – I could barely see anything other than the sight of chinese tourists. The tour groups were so immense in numbers that the typical raising of a coloured flag to signify where the group leader is just didn’t work due to every group leader having similar coloured flags; so some tours had the creative idea of putting unique objects on a stick, like panda soft toys.
The day after arriving in Xi’an, I headed immediately to a visa renewal office, here are the details for renewal:
– you must be within the last three days of expiry to renew, you cannot renew any earlier
– it cost $24 for a one month extension, for most countries
– It involves filling in a reasonably simple form, supplying a passport photo
– a photocopy of a note of residency from the hostel
– a photocopy of your bankcard, with a figure for the amount of money in the account (I put down a guess)
– a photocopy of the passport main page and chinese visa
The processing takes 5 working days, you’re given a receipt of proof that the passport is with the authorities, its also a good idea to have photocopies of the visa and main passport page just in-case you need to change hostels; they do accept the photocopies with the receipt.
In Xi’an I managed to find a long street full of cloth and clothing repair tools, I bought a much needed travel sewing kit to repair the shoulder of my frayed wool jumper. Most of the inner city holds expensive designer clothing shops along with starbucks in close proximity; general yuppiness. The prices are more expensive than what you would buy in the western countries, even though everything is made in china (discovered from some backpackers, as I have never bought designer anything before).
As I put the renewal in on a friday, the processing took 8 days – after which I purchased two train tickets, one to urumqi and one to kashgar; with a two hr wait in urumqi, cutting it fine for if the train is delayed (and they can sometimes be two hours delayed). With some nice luck, I managed to take both trains, totalling 52hrs of train travel with a two hour break in the middle. With some bad luck, I had a cold when I jumped on the first train and ended up with a bad flu by the time I got to kashgar. Kashgar ended up being a perfect place to heal up, healthy markets close to the hostel and the opportunity to call an english speaking doctor when medical assistance was required.
The hostel in Kashgar is within the old town suburb, not a han chinese in sight – the hostel was $6/night, a very old building, shower is only hot for two hours a day and sometimes it wasn’t hot even during those hours – as such I didn’t shower for a few days, the temperature was too cold for my sickness; the shower would have made it a lot worse. I bought honey, garlic and ginger in the markets; for mixing up some healing teas. When the flu was at it’s worst, I had a fever for two days and I couldn’t get my hands warm even under blankets – I called a number for an english speaking doctor which was on the hostel noticeboard, after explaining my symptoms, he smsed me chinese characters for the antibiotics that I needed to buy (you can buy anything over the counter at chemists without a prescription). I stumbled to a chemist to buy the drugs which triggered a quick recovery during the following few days.
Before the illness, on the second day in Kashgar I visited the Sunday animal market just outside of town, it was simply amazing for photos – so many interesting looking old men with central asian style hats, all different kinds of animals were brought to the markets from the surrounding farms. On the borders of the field were market foods, the tasty butcherings from the live animals in the centre, ready to be eaten for lunch; with some fresh bread and broth. Absolutely no pork though, kashgar urgur people are strictly Muslim; quite a lot of females roaming the streets of old town were completely covered by burkas, some even had their eyes covered and wore simply a thick mesh cloth over their body – I could imagine it would be rather difficult to see.
I met up with a Czech guy who I met earlier to xi’an and we decided to travel the ‘stans (central asia) together, to aide in the off chance we may come across some difficulties of which I had heard and been warned about from passing travellers. The first difficulty was only just around the corner, in the form of snow… and lots of it. We paid $5 each to share a car to orkut, from nearby the international bus station, a 2hr drive destined for adventure.
The 5000 Project 