So, without further ado...
DAY 1: URUMQI -> NANJING(ish)
At 4am Xinjiang time (GMT+6), my alarm went off, and I nearly cried. I hit snooze, then got up at 4:10am. I packed quickly (I'm getting really good at packing light, it was quite easy), then we toddled off to get a taxi to the airport. After checking in, we looked at the sign and discovered that our plane has a stop at Yinchuan. At this point, I didn't think it should count as going to Ningxia (The Autonomous Region of which Yinchuan is the capital). So we landed at Yinchuan, and we got off the plane to stretch our legs for a bit. After a wait of 45 minutes or so, I noticed a sign saying that due to weather conditions, our plane would be delayed, and more information would follow. The weather in Yinchuan was fine, so I assumed it was weather in Nanjing - great. A while later, another flight was also delayed, but this one was to Tianjin (next to Beijing) so I figured it was the weather in central China. Then an announcement came: "Passengers for the flight to Nanjing: Your new departure time is 11:30pm." An angry mob formed at the gate, and the woman repeatedly said it was nor her fault, it was the weather, and if they wanted to complain, they should go to the information desk. So the angry mob moved there. There was much shouting, then it was revealed that the problem was not the weather, it was a fault with the plane. More shouting.
After a while, we were given "refreshments" (a choice of Coke, Sprite, Fanta or Water), then bussed to a hotel in Yinchuan. This definitely counted as Ningxia now. We got to the hotel, and Nikki slept for a bit, as she was somewhat fatigued. I wandered around for a bit, read my entire book that was to keep me entertained for the entire trip, had dinner, wandered around some more. Then at 9:15, I was told we would be picked up at 9:30, and to get my bags and wait in the lobby. I went upstairs, to rouse Nikki from her slumber, and was informed she had (fairly minor) food poisoning (again). Excellent start to our trip.
We got to the airport, and at 11:35pm we took off, flying to Nanjing. But only after we were given 20 kuai for the inconvenience :D We landed around 2am, then got on a shuttle bus to the city centre(ish, we think), and got a taxi to a hotel. Hotels in China have an annoying habit of being empty, but telling us they have no rooms. I think it's because filling out the paper work and making the report to the police (they track your every move here) is too troublesome, so it's easier to turn people away. And also, our taxi driver was really quite stupid. The conversation went something like this:
Stupid Taxi Driver: Where to?
Me: Zhongshan Bei Lu.
STD: Where on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: Number 550.
STD: Where on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: Number 550.
STD: What place on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: It's a hotel.
STD: Which hotel?
Me: Jinjiang something
STD: Call and find out.
Me: It's number 550, go there.
Waiting at a green traffic light for me to phone, until a car came)
STD: Is it Jinjiang Inn?
Me: Yes!
STD: Okay.
Two minutes later...
STD: Is it the Jinjiang Inn?
Me: Yes.
STD: Where on Zhongshan Bei Lu?
Me: Jinjiang Inn, number 550
So we walked down Zhongshan Bei Lu, and stumbled upon a little hotel, where they were willing to take us (although she was adamant we were allowed to get a Chinese ID card, despite not being citizens). The bed was essentially a board with sheets, but it was cheap, and it was 4am, so we didn't care.
DAY 2 - NANJING
At 11am, we got up, showered, dressed, booked another night in the hotel, then headed off for a day of exploration. I thought the Blossom Rain Platform (or something like that, not sure how to translate it into English) was near our hotel, but it turned out to just be a park. So we wandered through the park for a bit, then down a street where we felt famous. One boy saw us and did the stereotypical Chinese "oooooooo" when he saw us. One girl literally jumped when she saw us, and even a woman in her 30s tried her best English 'hello' on us. It was brilliant.
We then decided to jump on a bus, and went to the end of the line. We switched to another bus because a brown tourist sign was pointing in the direction that the bus was going, but it turned out to go nowhere near it. We realised we were going nowhere near anything, so we got off and went to a Wang Bar (from the chinese 网吧 (wang ba), which is basically a giant room with lots of computers, kind of like an internet cafe, but full of Chinese students playing games online), and researched places to go in Nanjing. Turns out, there's a LOT to do. So we headed back for the city centre to go to the Confucious Temple. The bus only went as far as a metro, so we hopped on that and got off a little along, where lots of taxi drivers wanted to take us to the airport. We realised we couldn't get to the Confucious Temple from where we were, so we got on the metro again to the very centre of the city. The metro was confusing: our tickets were small blue plastic tokens, and it took watching a couple of people go through to work out that it was a swipe thing.
Anyway, we got off the metro in the city centre, and then were too tired and it was so late that we didn't care, so we were very bad tourists.
It was brilliant. But then we became good tourists again! We had heard that Hunan Lu was good to see at night, as it used to have a night market (which was closed down), but it's meant to be nice at night, so we went.
This concludes the first two days of my time in the east of China.
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