So, we're stuck in Taiyuan waiting for a train that leaves in 5 hours, so I thought I'd post the first part of my travels. Photos will either be added to this post later, or added as one big post at the end, I'll let you know.
DAY 1 - URUMQI乌鲁木齐=>YINCHUAN银川 (also known as the day I wrote the least detail)
At 6:30am, my alarm went off. So of course, I hit snooze, but then I remembered that Catherine was elaving around 7am for her flight to Shenzhen, and I wouldn't see her for over a month, and we had to leave around 8:30, so I figured I should just get up. I finished packing and skipped breakfast (too early in the day for food) and we got a taxi to the airport, for a rather uneventful flight to Yinchuan. After getting the shuttle bus to town, we walked for about three minutes before finding a 招待所 (A hostelly guesthousey type of thing. Really cheap, not too bothered about the legal paperwork (the government like to track our movements by making us register our presence in every hotel, using our passport).). We dumped the bags and headed to Tourist Site Number 1 - 承天寺 (Chengtian Temple). Which was quite the waste of time and money. One out of the three exhibits was open, and you couldn't climb the pagoda. So we went to Tourist Site Number 2 - 海宝塔 (Haibao Pagoda), which was cheaper and more worth it, although the steps in the pagoda were horribly small, making the climb and the descent quite uncomfortable. Tourist Site Number 3 was the 南关清真寺 (Nanguan Mosque), which was alright. We weren't allowed in the prayer hall (fair enough really), so we saw a fairly rubbish museum which was essentially a lot of photos of famous people I'd never heard of visiting the mosque.
We decided to go for food, so we searched out the 老毛手抓美食楼, a restaurant recommended in the guidebook. We headed in the really vague direction the book gave us, and when we realised we weren't going to find it, we tried to ask a lady on the street. But as soon as we approached her, she shook her head and ran off. Even though Nikki spoke to her in Chinese. A nice man then came over, and walked us to the place, which was quite far, and then walked past shortly after to check we got in okay. We ordered an Yinchuan speciality, 手抓羊肉 (Hand grabbed mutton). It came by the kilo, and as neither of us have any idea what a kilogram looks like, we ordered one kilo. Turns out, that's quite a lot. We also ordered 韭菜炒香干, which was Chinese Chives fried with some kind of tofu. Quite nice really. We did try to order a 羊肉小炒, although that never came (and having seen the quantity of food we had ordered already, that's probably a good thing). The food was really, really good, although the tea was weird. When we sat down, there were cups of what looked a lot like dates, sultanas etc. in old crusty sugar. They added hot water, and it turned out there were tea leaves underneath, but it was so sickly sweet I couldn't drink it.
After eating, we got a cab home to dump some things and go out for a walk. But we ended up discussing our route for this trip again, and changing little bits, and adding Chongqing and Chengdu to the route, which means I might get to hold a baby panda for my 21st birthday :D:D:D
DAY 2 - YINCHUAN银川 => <strike>YANAN 延安</strike> BAOTOU 包头 (Also known as the day I wrote too much)
At 7:30, we woke up, showered in the most mafan (Chinese: 麻烦, meaning troublesome. But who says that?) way known to man (it was a shower head directly over a western toilet.), and headed to 南门 (South Gate) from where we heard we could get a bus to the Western Xia Imperial Tombs (西夏王陵). First, we bought our bus tickets to Yan'an, for the 5:30pm bus (the latest one we could get, and as it's a looooong way, we decided to do it overnight), and asked about buses to the tombs, but they said they didn't do buses there from the bus station itself. So we wandered around 南门 (which looked a LOT like a mini Tian'anmen 天安门广场 square) looking for a bus. Realising there wasn't one, we asked a bus driver who was playing with the side of his bus, and he said to go to 'xinye square.' So we walked in the direction he pointed, and realising we couldn't find it, decided to ask someone. He said there was no such square. So we decided to get in a taxi, and ask the driver to take us to the stop where the bus to the tombs went from. She suggested we take her taxi, for 100 kuai. We realised it was more convenient (no waiting for buses, warmth, probably not hugely more expensive), so we did the 32km in her taxi. The tombs really are in the middle of nowhere. We bought our cheap tickets (yay for student cards) and started walking up the road. It was so cold, so when the little bus thing pulled up by us, we were rather relieved. Only thing is, it was colder in the bus, as the sides were open, and it was windy. We finally arrived at a big building, outside which was a giant stone wall, carved with both Chinese and Xia characters. We took some photos with the Xia characters and then went into what turned out to be a museum. We ran around looking at a lot of old bowls and avoiding tour groups (more on how I hate them at a later date). We wanted to see a tomb, so we went a little along from the museum to what looked like a tomb, judging by the models we'd just seen inside. It turned out not to be. But it had guard towers, which we climbed, from where we could see how to get to a tomb. Once we were on the path up to the tomb, it became stupidly obvious how to get there. We walked around the tomb a little, trying to take photos, but the weather and the weird light made that really difficult. We found the entrance to the tomb itself, but you couldn't go in. Just before, we'd been saying that if you could go in, would we? I decided I would, scary though it would be, but then we couldn't, so no fear required. We went back to the taxi, but only after taking photos with the Kalavinkas (if anyone has any idea what they are, please let me know).
At this point, the taxi driver asked if we wanted to go to another place, the name of which I had never heard, and which was apparently a film studio. So we went. And it was exactly that. There were two and a bit parts - Ming city, Qing city and a really little bit about the cultural revolution. It was interesting enough, but I was cold and stopped caring after a while - not having seen any of the films didn't help matters much. When we got back to the taxi, she asked us for an extra 100 kuai, because we're students. On our return to the bus station, she explained it should have been 260, but because we were students, she would give us it for 200. Her daughter was also a student, so she understood we weren't rich apparently. We tried haggling, but she was having none of it.
We had a while before our bus, so we went for food at a little place near the bus station. It was alright, but the staf were rude. As soon as we went in, the waitress came over, then without saying anything to us, turned to the other staff members and shouted: 他们听不懂 (they don't understand). We proved her wrong. After waiting for a while in the bus station, we went out to the stand for our bus, where were told to wait a minute, as it hadn't come in yet. Around 5:15, we were told it wasn't coming at all, and we were to refund our tickets. We took a taxi to the train station, and joined the slowest queue in the history of time. Well, only after SEARCHING the timetable for Yan'an, and not being able to find it. So we looked at the map to see if there was a line, but we couldn't even find Yinchuan. Turns out, the map was not geographical. How logical.
There was a train to Baotou, stop number three on our route, at 6:43pm. It was currently 6pm. We could make it. But the line was the slowest in the history of time, so by the time we got to the front, it was 6:40pm, and they stopped selling tickets 15 minutes before departure. To say I was unimpressed does't even come close - people kept pushing in at the front, and the woman at the front was going really slowly. So we got tickets for the next train to Baotou - 00:40. With no seats. Then, to kill six hours.
We sat in the quieter of the two waiting rooms (unsure of which was ours) and starting wrinting our travel journals (which, to be honest), is the only way I could possibly remember all of this). Trips to the shop, toilet and reading my book helped pass the time, but it was so COLD in the waiting room. Nikki had seen a warmer room, which was 8 to get into, so we went in and got a free cup of tea. We huddled by the heater and played cards for a bit, ate some noodles, tried (without much success) to sleep. At around 10:30, they suddenly switched off all the lights without warning. We were let into the soft seat waiting room though, which was nice. We played some more cards, and I was too scared to sleep, because anyone that tried around me had "GET UP!" screamed in their ear.
Eventually, we got on the train and made seats out of our bags at one end of the carriage. Only problem was a) it was freezing with the door open; 2) no one shut the door and iii) it was seriously uncomfortable. I tried sleeping a little, but really couldn't. Nikki found two seats around 4am, but no sooner had I sat down when the guy who had been sitting there 20-30 minutes before came back and ordered me to get up. The nice guy across the aisle let me sit in his seat for a while.
At just after 7am, we got into Baotou. Straight to the ticket office to book our tickets to Hohhot (book early or no seats/trains), where for some unknown reason we were pushed to the front of the queue by staff. Not complaining, we got tickets and went to get a taxi to the bus station to get a bus to Genghis Khan's mausoleum (成吉思汗陵). En route, the taxi driver informed us that there may not be any buses, on account of the snow. When we got there, a load of people crowded round the taxi informing us that there were. On getting out of the taxi however, it was a different story. There were no buses, we had to get a taxi. One guy offered to take us to Dongsheng, a nearby city, for 100 kuai each. One way. So that was 200 round trip, then we had to get from Dongsheng to the mausoleum and back. Somebody else offered to take us to the mausoleum, wait for us, then take us back, for 1000 kuai. Never going to happen. He would go no lower than 800, and for 800 we had to take another passenger. There were no buses and nothing to do in Baotou, so we didn't really have much choice.
We got in the taxi, and a really obnoxious woman got in the taxi as well, and we got on our way. Although I needed the toilet, and I discovered later that Nikki did too. We figured it wouldn't be far, so it was okay. We were getting there pretty rapidly when the police pulled the taxi over. They looked at our passports, asked a load of questions, such as "Why are you in China?" "How long have you been here?" "What is the relationship between you and the girl?" Fun fun fun. Eventually, we were allowed to go on our way, and as we left, one of the policemen said: "欢迎再来" (Welcome to come again). I wished I knew how to say "fat chance" in Chinese.
Eventually, we dropped the obnoxious woman off and went on our way to the mausoleum. After buying our tickets, we made a beeline for the restroom, before seeing the mausoleum properly. We took a lot of photos, and say a museum which was built in the shape of the Mongolian word 'hehan' (emperor). We tried to go to the old site of the mausoleum, but it turneds out to be a different site, and the mausoleum isn't even there, so we went back, as we had to be on a train at 7:55pm. We got back around 4:30, around two hours earlier than I expected going by what the taxi driver had said before we got on in the morning. We ate some not very good food, and then waited for much shorter than 6 hours in a considerably warmer waiting room.
Eventually, we arrived and bought our tickets to Datong immediately, then went to find the Anda Guesthouse, which came highly recommended. It's traditional Mongolian style, and in a convenient location, and reasonable priced. But it doesn't exist. Number 78 on that road does not exist. We went to a hotel on Train Station Road instead, which was really quite alright, and not that much more expensive.
And I'm leaving it here, because I am getting some serious cramp in my hand. More later at the next stop where there is internet access and lots of time to kill.
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