Dunhuang, China: The Mogao Caves and the Start of Our Silk Road Journeyby Randi / September 12, 2017
Our next stop on our Silk Road journey was the city of Turpan (the English name) in the Xinjiang region of China. It’s also known as Turfan and Tulufan (in Uighur and Chinese) while I, on the other hand, refer to it as Turpan Alley, because it is a bit of a hole. Turpan was a fertile little oasis town back in the day, and today (and probably back then too) is known as “China’s Death Valley” because it’s one of the few places below sea level and also because IT’S DUCKING HOT AS BALLS. It’s so hot and sunny and dry that walking around the city would have been uncomfortable even if it wasn’t a bit of a hole. Apparently, the Chinese like to say that Turpan is farther from the ocean than any other place in the world, which I don’t doubt but that is a chitty thing to brag about. (I hate feeling landlocked! I love being near water! This trip is difficult for me.) The best part about Turpan (and Xinjiang) is that this climate grows some insane delicious watermelon.
Turpan was an important Silk Road stop because desert traders in desperate need of fresh water love them some temperatures hotter than at any other point in their desert struggles? is that why? Or maybe because of the watermelon. Actually, Turpan had an impressive system of irrigation that I’m sure increased its draw to caravan-peeps seeking water. They brought fresh water down from the snowy Tien Shan mountains, which is the name of the brand of bottled water that we found most in Xinjiang and then in Kyrgyzstan so hooray for longstanding traditions. Archaeological sites in the Turpan Depression (the fitting name for the whole region, although they mean because it’s so low in the earth and not because of what it does to you) uncovered important old stuff from many centuries ago that helped researchers understand the goings-on of traders and others passing through. In fact, Turpan was the site of important discoveries of certain specific goods. Silver coins were big here – in fact, the plethora of silver coins found here helped prove that China’s main trading partner along the Silk Route was not Rome, as many romantic history buffs (are there such a thing) would like to think, but the Iranian world, because zero coins from the Roman Republic were ever found anywhere in China. I knowww. Zilch. Anywhere. You’d think even once drunk on a dare a trader would try to go to Rome. But then I guess they wouldn’t return. Or they just didn’t have enough time in their lives to go there AND back. They were walking, people! Turpan was also big on burying their dead in paper outfits they made in craft sessions, I imagine, like an ancient version of stitch-and-bitch. A lot of boring but informative documents – contracts, meeting notes, whatever – were pieced together to make clothes for corpses. You might be thinking, no way no how corpses were preserved let alone regular old paper that could actually be read! But yeah, that’s how dry Turpan is, that lots of paper and lots of corpses were preserved with no effort on their part other than to Be In The Driest Hottest Land Ever. (We saw some of those corpses in the Urumqi Museum (coming next). I am very much done with such things.) Today, the important things to see include the Emin Minaret, which is impossible to find in the maze of little backstreets, and the ancient ruins of Jiaohe.
The big other draws in the city are the Bazaar and the Night Market – both of which were nowhere to be found during our visit! This is a good time to tell you about the Xinjiang region of China, an autonomous territory in northwest China where these Silk Road sites lie. Being all autonomous, Xinjiang has a separatist movement with its native Uighur people trying to become their own state (that’s what that means) of East Turkestan which is a cute name. China of course wants to quash that but good, and has been kind of sending Han Chinese people into Xinjiang to balance out the population – or dilute the local culture and traditions. It’s all very tense and uneasy. All the Chinese train stations had crazy security, but it’s enhanced beyond anything I’ve ever seen before in Xinjiang. Police are everywhere. In Turpan, there was a police building on every single block – I am not exaggerating – with at least 5 policemen patrolling outside. They say it’s because of terror threats from the local Uighur people, who are mostly Muslim and who look completely different from the Han Chinese. It seemed a little like a control method to keep them down. Throughout the region, we saw average Uighur locals stopped by police to have their phones examined, which is police state bullshit. They are definitely treated like second class citizens in their own land, which is like Indigenous People 101.
All of this to say, we think that maybe the Bazaar and the Night Market – two very crowded very public gatherings, the kind that are difficult to police in excruciating detail – were shut down due to ‘safety precautions’ but possibly as a way to continue curbing the goings on of the Uighurs and take away their traditions and culture. However, Turpan is one of the more Chinese-friendly of the Xinjiang cities; the officials are friendlier towards the locals and it’s more easygoing, if you can believe it with police on every inch of ground. (Kashgar, for instance, is considered more of a problem and the government is a lot more hostile there towards the Uighurs. (Kashgar, incidently, was my favorite part of Xinjiang, but we will get there.)) But then again, I haven’t been able to find anything about these events being permanently closed, so maybe we just happened to be there on a bad day. It sucks that we couldn’t find these two fun events, and I really hope that we just couldn’t find them, because it obviously would be much, much worse to be right that the Chinese government just up and decided to clamp down on the locals doing their thing.
Part of Jiaohe…sort of…we passed a little village on our walk from the visitor centre to the ruins that I think was a separate ticket but we just went in
This guy stands watch outside the Jiaohe ruins
So, let’s talk about what we actually did do. From Dunhuang, we had to drive two hours (inexpensive taxi that we had the Silk Road Yododo inn hire, which was annoyingly difficult but easier than it would have been to deal with getting one ourselves as we keep learning) to the Liuyuan Train Station to get a fast train to Turpan. The security at Liuyuan was our first real look at the Xinjiang craziness. There were dozens – dozens! – of police and security officials, and it was not a big station at all. They found our camping utensils – a magnetic set of a fork, spoon, and baby-sized knife – plus our Swiss Army knife, and were not pleased. You CANNOT get on trains in Xinjiang with anything weapony, including all sizes of knives and scissors. We learned this at this point. I think our foreign privilege gave us a pass and instead of confiscating them, security officials taped up all the knives so we can’t get into them (not without another knife, lol) but let us keep them, and they made us sign a book with our passport numbers given. I guess in case there was report of a crime committed with a tiny little camping knife, they would have our info.
View from the train station, outside the city center. This is as modern as it gets
The train to Turpan was only 4 hours, which is absolutely nothing to us now, and then we got a taxi to our hostel, called Dap Hostel – like giving dap? Hilarious. The hostel was a legit travelers’/backpackers’ land, with tons of dirty yoots smoking and drinking at all hours in an inner courtyard that all the rooms encircle so you have no choice but to listen and smell it all. I did not like this place. The staff was very stupid and the bathrooms were gross. There was one trench sink, like 4 feet long, with one drain and three faucets and everyone would stand cramped together to brush their teeth and spit together and it was harrowing. The service was bad. Z asked for a coffee one morning (they have a chalkboard coffee menu at reception) and one girl said okay. No one brought any coffee. We asked a different girl. She said okay. No coffee. We asked a third. Then we asked the original girl and she said ‘you didn’t get it?’ It took over a half hour for someone to pour Z a cup of coffee from an already made pot. Then we asked if they could call a taxi for us on our last morning to the train station. Two staff members spoke in Chinese to each other for 10 minutes before turning to us and saying, “There’s a bus that goes.” Thank you. You’ve been helpful. If we wanted to take the bus, we would take the bus. And actually, it’s not a direct bus, you have to switch buses, which is bullshit to do when a taxi would be cheap and easier, and also, you are a travelers’ hostel you should know how to call a taxi when it’s the main way of getting around your city.
Who knows if Turpan ever stood a chance with me, because if I hate where I’m sleeping, it’s hard for me to loosen up enough to accept anything. As for the aforementioned sights that actually did exist, let’s start with the Emin Minaret. We walked around the dusty heat of small residential streets trying to find the mosque for almost an hour, and it was supremely difficult. There are few signs, and they are incomplete, leaving you in view of the minaret but with no evident way of actually reaching it. We both said we’d never been so close to a destination – seemingly so close you could touch it – and yet so far – seeing no clear way of actually reaching it. In the end, we had to ask three different random people in the area how to navigate the maze of their homes. One teenager on a bike, one ancient woman on her front stoop, and one shepherd who was, well, herding some sheep. We finally found the back entrance of the complex once we had finished all our water and we quickly bought up some bottles of clear liquid from a chest on the site. We assumed it was cold water. It was cream soda. (Say it with me: FFS CHINA!)
The Emin Minaret stands tall as the defining monument in central Turpan, blending Uighur architecture and history with Islamic traditions. It’s made of wood and brick and is pretty cool considering how it looks nothing like China. There are very few Muslim buildings in China, almost all of which are in Xinjiang, so it’s rare and interesting to see the mixture of Chinese and Islamic art or architecture. A guard let us look inside the basic mosque and we just walked around for a little. There’s a toilet, so that’s good.
screaming from the minaretssss
Now onto the Jiaohe ruins
The big thing to see when in Turpan is the Jiaohe Ruins, about 10 kilometers outside the city. We shared a taxi with a rando from the hostel and usually they charge a flat rate to Jiaohe but this driver just used the meter and it was cheaper so score. Jiaohe is an archaeological site and used to be an important place along the Silk Road, including at one time being the seat of the Protector General of the Western Regions, which is the highest ranking military post of Chinese officials stationed in the west. Jiaohe was a city full of residential districts, temples, stupas, and of course government offices. All the ruins now look the same since it is, in fact, in ruins, and the site is a vast expanse of white dusty broken rocks. Walking around the ruins for hours was the hottest I have ever felt, well, until later in our trip. Our skin was melting. The sun was like a few inches above my head, it seemed. As the cherry on top of this sundae of discomfort and frustration, the toilet on the grounds was padlocked and there are no staff members anywhere near the actual ruins, only at the visitor centre and ticket office which is 3 kilometers down the road. I know. Say it with me.
*shakes fist at an entire country over this*
When we bought tickets at said visitor centre, they didn’t tell us that everyone should take the shuttle bus around that costs 30 yuan extra. We were like, we can walk, we don’t need to pay for the extra bus. The woman selling tickets should have said, well actually everyone takes the bus it is dumb not to. ACTUALLY, they should just add the cost of the bus to the ticket price and be done with being stupid, because there are no signs on the road for how the F to get there. So we were on this deserted winding road like, where do we actually go? We walked down where we saw shuttle buses going and it was three kilometers away in the sun and heat and oh my goddd. For the biggest site in the area, not having any signage is pretty ridiculous. Ugh but why would they ever have signs for pedestrians at any site, right? We already learned this! Anyway, we finally found it, and it was hot. It was fine, for an archaelogical site, but without enough descriptive signs (not just not in English, but like, none) it was hard to care.
The best part of walking, though, was some fortuitous happenings at the end of our visit. On the walk back, we were so hot and so dehydrated that we were really craving some of that famous watermelon. Across from the exit/entrance to return to the visitor center was this lovely little path covered with a trellis with what looked like a restaurant underneath. An old Uighur couple was sitting on carpets on the floor, and we peeked in and saw some watermelons under a big table. So we went up and pointed and communicated that we would like some watermelon. The lady was super friendly and picked a giant one up and weighed it and then was just going to sell us a whole damn watermelon, and we were like no no we want to eat it now, like sitting here, and also we don’t have knives they taped up our knives and she understood and took it in the back to cut up and motioned for us to sit at the table. And then we realized, oh shit, she’s gonna bring us like an ENTIRE watermelon cut up and not just a few pieces like we want. Lo and behold, a few minutes later she came out with a silver platter stacked with an entire sliced watermelon, plus several bunches of grapes. I’ve been talking a lot about how good the watermelon is, but Turpan is actually famous throughout China and the stans for having incredible grapes and thus incredible raisins. I know, raisins, they’re the worst, but no the raisins in Turpan are delicious, as are the grapes, and here we were being given soo many grapes! It was so lovely and kind. We were cracking up at how much watermelon we were housing. It was probably the best watermelon I’ve ever had. And the grapes were amazing. Everything was. When we really could not force any more into our bodies, the lady took the platter away and then came back with all the rest of the watermelon AND the grapes packed in a plastic bag for us to take away. NICEST PEOPLE IN ALL OF CHINA! We stood up and went over to them to pay and they both waved our wallets away and shook their heads. We were like what, come on, are you kidding me? And they would not accept any money. We felt really bad – we ate your fruit guys! – but they really were vehemently against us paying. It was the nicest encounter in all of China. Probably this entire summer actually.
best ever
Aside from that lovely experience, it was hard to find food in Turpan. And not just for me finding vegan food! Just finding food, period! Like for Z too! One night we lucked out and finally found this great Han Chinese restaurant with a picture menu that had tofu and vegetables and ALSO had purple velour booths with the chintziest chandeliers you’ve ever seen. It was inexpensive and really good food but it took way too long for it to arrive. The homestyle tofu was great. We also finally got to try the weird jelly noodle dish that’s all over China. It’s a weird texture but it was done well here – SO incredibly spicy! And hooray for veggies! The waitress also recommended that we get these crunchy fried tomato sticks and we were like, wow sure that sounds really interesting! Too interesting – she meant potato. Lol. They were actually good, like french fries but with a little bit of a sweet exterior too, but we would probably not have gotten them if we knew they were potatoes! Fried tomato sticks sound good, right? Or gross? Make them and let me know.
So I have no idea what this restaurant was called, I’m sorry, but if you go to Turpan and ask the people where you are staying about the purple velvet booths I bet they know it. We had enough leftovers to eat for lunch the next day (no one stole them from the hostel fridge!). It seems I forgot to take a pic of the potato sticks, oh no, but just imagine fries with like, seeds?
yes the couch is studded with huge faux diamonds
HELLO LOVER
spicy weird jelly
tofu in China, I mean, does it get better
We should have returned there the next night, but instead we tried to find John’s Information Cafe in the backyard of the Turpan Hotel which according to our guidebook was a great place for backpackers with decent food. John’s no longer exists. In its place, literally in the backyard of this hotel, is a kebab grilling joint where you point to kebabs and they grill them so everything tastes the same and you reek of smoke for days. It was not my favorite place. I pointed to sticks of vegetables and what they said was tofu/doufu but it did not have the texture of anything resembling tofu so I didn’t trust it and couldn’t eat it. The texture was just so wrong. Shame.
The best part of Turpan, aside from the watermelon couple, was the bread babushka in the alley outside our hostel. She had a stand with the BEST breads I’ve had since my St. Petersburg babushka. Unfortunately, she wasn’t out the day we left. Shame. Also I forgot to take a picture of her cart. Shame. Here is a picture of the rival bread man across the alley from her and much inferior.
this guy said his dumpling-y things were vegetarian. they were not.
So, Turpan Alley. That’s really all I have to say about that. Some interesting sights but I didn’t learn as much about the Silk Road as I did in Dunhuang or our later Silk Road sites (or as much I learned about Turpan from my books, which like…come on you should learn more at the actual site right! Otherwise people will never leave their couches! Ohh…couch…I miss you…). There are so many incredible places in China, lots we saw and lots we have still on our list, that I think this is really for Silk Road aficionados and not novices like me. I can recommend street bread and eating all the watermelon and grapes. Shout out to our watermelon friends.
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Kiev (Kyiv though) Ukraine: Nice City, Interesting Sights, Indeterminate Vibe
I have to admit that I did not know about Kyiv. Not Kiev; I knew about Kiev. But that’s all I knew. Let me splain. As we planned our trip from Russia through Eastern Europe and back home to London, my husband said “we should go to Kyiv”- pronounced Keev. And I said “where is this ‘Keev’ I never heard of it” and he was like “Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine??” and I was like “no that’s Kiev and it is pronounced ‘Kee-ev'”and he was like “wat” and I was like “what is happening” and I learned that Kiev (‘Kee-ev’) is the Russian word for the city, and since gaining their independence, Ukrainians have been very serious about reclaiming their own word for their capital city, ‘Kyiv’ (Keev), the one syllable version that was unknown to me. Can we blame the Russian bots for my ignorance? Now I’m all smarted up and ready to talk about this great city, Kyiv. Or Kiev, if you wanted to I guess. I like the sound of the two-syllable evil version better, but my preferences as a non-Ukrainian don’t matter. Do as the people want us to. It’s Kyiv.
i know this is a hotel but come on pretty
Now that that’s sorted, let’s talk about this charming city. We were solidly back in Eastern Europe now, having left Mother Russia. Oh let’s talk about that leaving bit, shall we. After our less-than-a-day return to Moscow, we caught an overnight train – our second-to-last one of the trip!! – from Moscow to Kyiv. This train was the worst experience yet, isn’t that so fun??? I know some of you who kept up through all the China and Uzbek trains are like, what how on earth could it be worse? What about those 8 hour border stops where you had to sneak into the bathrooms to pee? What about the old Chinese lady in your bed? Well those were all terrible, yes, but hear me out. When we boarded, I thought we were soo lucky because the toilets were automated! Like Amtrak, with the lit-up flush buttons and stuff! They weren’t just holes opening up onto the track! Unfortunately, that luster was short-lived. Apparently the super-fancy (not fancy, basic technology) toilets very quickly broke, and since the conductor isn’t an engineer, he just duct-taped the toilet shut, rendering it unusable for the rest of the journey. I trekked down to the other end of the carriage with a sigh, which turned into a bigger, more horrified scream when I saw that that toilet was ALSO taped shut. The next cabin on was the restaurant car! No toilets in there! And the next one in the other direction was the overcrowded platzkart, packed full of people in bunk beds in the open plan, with lines for the toilet at all hours and so resentful of people from other carriages on their turf. Those toilets were basic open-the-bottom-onto-the-tracks; apparently only those passengers with doors were given the fancy easily breakable toilets. So every hour throughout the night, I had to clamber through the terrifying open section that connects carriages, stepping on the giant metal chain links that wrenched forward and back with the train’s movement and trying not to fall while jerking the heavy carriage doors open with all my might. Over and over again!
I HATE UNCLE TRAINY you see what I did there
Thank all the lucky stars, I was okay. Pissed off and full of impotent rage that I couldn’t actually direct at anyone (I never saw the conductor people, and also what else could they have done), but okay. I was so excited to see Kyiv, which I know I am spelling in the progressive way but honestly I can’t stop saying Ki-ev in my head. Anyway, I didn’t know much about Ukraine going in, except that I had just recently started saying it without the ‘the’ that so many Americans seem to think is required – seriously why do we always call it The Ukraine?? it’s so weird! – and that Oksana Baiul was my favorite skater in 1994 and the only winner to come out of the whole Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan debacle. Well her and Margot Robbie. I was eager to learn more about the country through its well regarded capital city.
Our Russian language skillz would come in handy to understand all the signs in Cyrillic and all the similar sounding vocab, but despite much of the population speaking and/or understanding Russian, it would not be very wise to lead with speaking Russian. Since their independence from the Mother Country, Ukrainians have some tension, to say the least, with Russia, as we all do. We assumed, now that we were back in Europe, that it would be easy to get by with English. Surely most of the people know English! Spoiler, they don’t! It was very rare that we encountered English speakers. So follow Scar’s advice (not the Boy Scouts)(the Boy Scouts suck) and Be Prepared.
I realize this is just a hotel that we didn’t stay at and I shared a photo from a different angle above but it really represents the city’s aesthetic well
Our train arrived at about 7am, so we were exhausted and very much wanting to shower. Our last shower was in that random hostel in Moscow (was that the day before? Time had no meaning any longer). So we took a cab to our lodging. We were staying for the next few nights at the Theatre Boutique Apart-hotel, in a studio apartment situation that operated like a hotel, sort of, in that there was to be someone at a desk in the building of apartments to check us in. I initially liked how it sounded because theatre. The building was hard to find because it was set back in a kind of alley complex that was SUPER shady and graffitied and even at 7am just completely sketchy. I was skeptical. And unforch, because it was so early, no staffers were in yet. The maid was there, luckily, and was used to dealing with guests arriving at inopportune times, and she told us we could leave our stuff and come back in….six hours. I KNOW! I was soooo mad. Surely the main employee would be in at 9, right? And would call us and tell us that our room was ready before the godforsaken common check in time of 2pm? I could not wait six hours! But I had to! Ahhh! Anyway the ‘place’ we could leave our stuff was right there in the main hallway, reeeeeally not secure, so I was not feeling this place at all. Strike after strike. Z was like ‘who is going to steal our disgusting stuff tho’ and I was like ‘disgusting people tho’. I asked the maid if there was a bathroom we could use – we still needed to brush our teeth and stuff if we couldn’t shower yet! Well, this is an apartment hotel type jawn, not a hotel hotel with bathrooms on the main floor or anything, so no, the only bathrooms are in the rooms. Ahhhh! Luckily, the maid was super nice and showed us to one down the hall that was HER CLOSET. Like it had all her cleaning supplies in it and also all her snacks and changes of clothes and pictures and knick knacks and stuff and also a toilet and a tiny baby sink and it was sooooo awkward. I was so grumpy about this whole situation. But there’s no time to sulk when you are filthy and also in a new exciting city! We decided to go out and get food, and that story plus all related stories will come in a separate post about Kyiv food next. After that and some activities which I’ll talk about next, our room was ready, and it was GREAT. I was so happy because after how low my expectations had dropped since arriving, it was so much nicer than I hoped. It was clean and modern, all black and white and cool, with a nice bathroom and a big comfy bed with really good white sheets. I love white sheets. Anyway, so don’t judge a book by its cover or its lack of employees or main floor toilets and all that. I would highly recommend staying here.
St Sophia
The most important activity for us to do in the city center was see the St. Sophia Cathedral, the oldest surviving church in Kyiv. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and you know how we feel about them (loves it!) so off we went to see how the old broad looked after about 1000 years of hard living. The complex is lovely. Note, the Bell Tower costs extra to climb up, but I think it’s worth it. It’s right at the entrance to the whole complex and is nice to end your visit with after seeing the rest of St. Sophia. Also, the Bell Tower is the only spot in the whole place where you are allowed to take pictures so it was worth it just so I can break up all my nonsense with pictures.
climb this biznatch
We had a nice time seeing all the interior churchiness and singing about how Jesus is an ocean, as one does. It’s said that in all the churches in Ukraine that ladies have to cover their heads because god hates seeing us evil-doers or whatever nonsense your religion teaches you to keep you down, but I don’t remember anyone telling me to do so here. I think they are more lenient with tourists. Anyway, we ended with the Bell Tower climb, because we like climbing this. I counted about 200 steps up before I stopped and lost track, which isn’t as bad as it could be buutttt the stairs were pretty, um, not reassuring as you could look through all the thin metal and exposed piping of the layout and see down forever and it was a little anxy. As you would expect of me because this is what I do when traveling in foreign lands and living my life, I banged my head super hard on a metal pipe despite there being a colored swatch on that section because it was low and apparently everyone hit their head on it before they decided to paint the cautionary alert on it but of course I am special and hit my head after they flagged it. It was really painful and we had to stop for a few minutes for the pain to subside and for me to run through the customary thoughts I have every time I hit my head which invariably have to do with Natasha Richardson. Luckily I was okay though, and it seems like Liam is now too. And the views from the top were nice.
“And the hands get heavy oh the hands I don’t know what to do with the hands or the feet”
Our next sight to see was the Golden Gate in the middle of the city, standing like a fortress to remind us of all the fortifications they once needed (prob still need) against enemies. It was named after the Golden Gate of Constantinople, and although it was completely destroyed during the Middle Ages, it was rebuilt by the Soviets in the ’80s. It’s a tad controversial, because no images of the original gate actually exist, so the rebuilding process was under scrutiny from historians et al. who were like ‘no THIS is what it should look like’ ‘ no THIS is’ ‘no YOU’RE mother was a hamster’ and finally Vlad over at the Soviet Historical Society was like ‘no guys this is what we’re doing, you disagree I kill you’ or something probably close to that.
The gate/fortress jawn is right at Zolotovoritsky Square, a lovely little square near a park and a nice row of restaurants and stuff. It’s a nice little city.
Okay so I THINK there was a lil church at the top of the Golden Gate?? And this is me in it?
looks like a funky curved lens doesn’t it like i’m in a funhouse mirror or something
This city is so nice, full of statues and greenery and beautiful buildings. I keep saying that, don’t I, that it was so ‘nice’ and I really hate that word. But there’s not much more I can think of to describe it, because I never really clicked with it. It was great to be back in Europe, and to see such lovely architecture and important monuments and relics of history and all, but I never really jived (jove?) with Kyiv. My husband liked it a lot more than I did, but I didn’t necessarily dislike it, not at all. I just didn’t connect with it. It was nice to look at, nice to be in, but I didn’t feel much for it. My heart wasn’t in it, despite its checking off all the proper points on my list like it was my Walter or my Frank in a Nora Ephron rom com before I met Tom Hanks. (Tom Hanks, btw, would be my Warsaw. Stay tuned for that, our next destination.)
who dat ninja
now that I like
As always, I loved finding funny signs or product names in stores, and despite being back in Europe, we still found some, like this brand of milk that can probably only be enjoyed by blond boys named Chad who swim for just-sub-Ivies.
Or this shop, which we made a LOT of very bad jokes about because Tories are the ones who would cut all arts funding in the UK you get?
AIN’T NO SUCH THING
We had a great time exploring Kyiv. I know you’re probably thinking…you didn’t do that much, right? Well, that’s because our main activity warrants its own post (coming next, along with a food post). The main reason for our visit to Kyiv, besides logistics, was to visit Chernobyl. We took an all day (like seriously from dawn till nighttime) tour of the zone of the infamous, horrible nuclear disaster, and it was astounding. Devastating, heartbreaking, and we learned so much that is only now coming to light about the disaster. It’s a truly worthwhile trip to take if you are in Ukraine or in Kyiv, which, despite my not clicking with it whole-heartedly, I still do recommend visiting!
The Train to Chengdu: THIS BETTER BE WORTH IT
August 9-10
Dear little baby laptop diary,
Dear little baby laptop diary,
Today, August 9, is our third year anniversary! No not you I don’t even know you! Z and I got married three years ago today! Yay for us! Happy anniversary! Unfortunately, our meticulous schedule has us departing on a 26-hour train today,from Guilin (we had to get a car back there from Yangshuo for the station) to Chengdu. Not the most typical way to celebrate the occasion, but we are on an adventure. Because of this special day – but really because the last few trains have been abysmal experiences – we booked out the entire cabin for the first time. The ticket booker we used said they buy the other beds very often for people who want it to themselves, and they buy the other two beds as children’s tickets (so they cost less), for fake children. Or, as we were hysterical to see the agents refer to them as, “ghost children”. They book the kids’ tickets under fake names, so we were excited to see what fun Chinese names our fake children got.
The tickets are issued to both of our full names plus “Junior”. Of course. But still funny!
Let’s hope this actually works and they don’t try to resell the two beds in here, because guess what guys, this train most resembles the last shitshow, to Guilin (when we 2 extra bodies (children) (not the ghost kind)), but it is EVEN WORSE. It’s like someone said, “Give me the oldest train carriages you have for this route and let me make it even shittier!” I know every single time I’m like, hey baby laptop, this train is EVEN WORSE than the last one, and the people reading are probably rolling their eyes like how is that possible, but somehow it really is the worst yet. Since that gorgeous St. Petey to Moscow special sleeper, we’ve gone slowly down the ladder of quality and cleanliness, with few exceptions on the straight slope down. I read my old diary entries on our early Russian Trans-Siberian trains and want to punch myself in the face for thinking that wasn’t the height of luxury and being such a brat about it. (We have to go back through Russia to enter Europe from the ‘stans later so I’m actually excited to sleep on a Russian train again. I KNOW.) Nothing in here has been cleaned since I don’t know the previous dynasty. The walls are stained to a brownish mix of age, dirt, and who knows what else; the sheets are stained and full of stranger hair; it reeks of smoke – which is usual, but it also reeks of something mixed with smoke. We can’t pinpoint the specific stench, but it is NOT PLEASANT. I believe it’s the smell you get when decades and decades of Chinese people sleep, live, and eat weird smelling food in tiny compartments that never get cleaned. It’s pretty bad. It’s also freezing – the air is on super high and we can’t control it – so we are shibbering, and icked out. I mean just look, even one of the nets on the wall has lost the will to live:
it’s like the hallway from The Shining
oh man I can still smell it
The toilets are insane. Similar to the last train (when I shared pictures; you’re welcome) but dirtier, ickier. And the sink room is the same, except for one crucial difference – a pipe is broken, apparently, because the water drains…out onto the floor from below. Like, the used dirty sink water is just draining through the sinkhole and onto the floor. Including water spat out from tooth brushing. So if you want to use the sink WHICH I DO, you need to watch the water level on the floor so it doesn’t pass your shoes and touch skin ahhhhh ewwwww.
I can’t imagine what this would be like with other people in here and I hope I don’t have to.
Since we had to drive from Yangshuo back to Guilin to catch this 12:30pm ish train, we left at 9:30am ish today to begin our journey, and we are supposed to arrive in Chengdu at 2pm tomorrow. So, we needed an entire day’s worth of food for today plus half a day’s for tomorrow. I had a crapload of leftovers from dinner at Lotus Vegetarian in Yangshuo town last night, three containers actually! So I brought those to eat. Of course, takeout containers in China have been laughable, and the chinese food juice leaked all over the plastic bag it came in, the bigger plastic bag I thought would keep it ‘extra safe’, and my beloved reusable tote that I carried the food in. I have to wash that. So gross. Everything somehow smells like stinky tofu. This whole country smells like stinky tofu. Maybe it’s just stuck inside my nostrils.
I ate as much of the leftovers as I could (leftover noodles do not keep well) and was eager to throw the containers and the bags out asap. It had to go in the sink room, where the only decent sized garbage was. Sorrynotsorry.
At the station, I bought these taro cakes that looked decent, were super cheap, and, eureka, had English ingredients listed so they were accidentally vegan. Let’s compare the picture on the box with the actual product:
This is not what was advertised. They were like little squares of powder, and as soon as you touched it, it completely fell apart into a pool of powder. We still tried to eat them – it was like the G-D CINNAMON CHALLENGE. We were CHOKING on powder. So f-ing weird. I am mad, I want my taro cakes. I don’t know if the company is a pos or the store just like changed the product for shits and giggles? Don’t know man. But now I don’t have a fun dessert for this train!
I just found a black hair under the pillow.
I really have to pee but I don’t want to unlock the door to our little safe place. Also, the toilets are disgusting. We are back to the kind that just empty clear out onto the tracks with a big hole you can actually see through. One of them is broken and stuck in the open position so you can just look through and see track the whole time. Fun times.
Z still feels like crap (we have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow! his turn to need one!), unfortunately, so while I can sort of act amused by all this, he is miserable and I feel terrible. It doesn’t help that I bought those taro things primarily because he loves taro. He will be so disappointed when he wakes up to learn that they are just cubes of baby powder. At least we have good fruit! I have a container of cut up cantaloupe – seriously, the cantaloupe in China is OFF THE CHARTS. I know usually it’s like the fruit added to fruit salads and trays that no one wants and you’re like eww get off my tray, but I’m obsessed here. It’s sooo good. I can’t get enough. I also bought a bunch of grapes outside the station so they are unwashed and I can’t wash them in train water so I didn’t reallllly think that one through (I can save for hotel at least), three very promising black plums (I love plums!), weird little fat short bananas that are actually good and maybe sturdier than the regular ones (not as much bruising!), two apples courtesy of Tea Cozy’s daily fruit supply, and a super fun treat for our anniversary, our absolute favorite thing we discovered in Burma – custard apples! I don’t know how we will manage to eat them unless we just save for hotel, but so fun.
some of our great fruit! hooray for the fruit in China!
For these long disgusting Chinese trains, I really can’t recommend enough that you bring a bar of soap and a handtowel. Just being able to wash your hands well and dry them satisfactorily brings a great deal of peace. At least to me.
Remember on the Russian trains when I complained about how they didn’t refill the soap dispenser for a while?? HAHAHAH I was so stupid! At least in Russia people use soap! I have yet to find a non-hotel bathroom in China – in ALL of China – that has soap. Just no one washes their hands after using the hole. No joke, in restaurants, malls, trains, stations, public toilets, museums, everywhere, I watch as people just rinse ONE hand in the water for a hot second and then shake it off onto everyone they pass as they exit. There is never soap ever. So disgusting. How is disease not more prevalent? Actually I don’t know the stats at all, maybe it is.
I’m drinking a random store-bought iced tea with zero sugar, barely any flavor, and no bubbles. I hope Chengdu has bubble tea near our hotel. We also have two 4-liter jugs of water for this 26 hour journey, plus two 1.5-liter bottles and the rest of my 2-liter bottle I started this morning. Plus two baby sized ones for brushing our teeth. So for drinking that is about 12 liters. Is that enough??
Ooh it’s raining outside! I like it, for some reason. It’s relaxing, to be inside while it’s raining out. Like hey this is a disgusting hole and we already smell of smoke and China’s national stench, stinky tofu, but at least we are inside.
Z’s getting tired of Chinese food, and I am a little bit too. It’s too bad that it’s hitting us now, when we are about to be in Sichuan province (land of our favorite kind of Chinese food! Super spicy Sichuan!), but it’s understandable given we’ve been here for almost 3 weeks. That’s a lot of Chinese food. Chengdu has a good deal of Western food apparently, and a great many HappyCow listings, so I’m excited. Also we changed our hostel booking to a very nice hotel as a treat for our anniversary and to balance out the trains and some of the prior accommodations and really just everything, and I hope it lives up to its billing and our expectations, but honestly after this train, anything could seem nice.
It’s so odd remembering the Russian trains, on the classic Trans-Siberian routes, where yes we were bunking with regular traveling Russians but the carriages were filled with other tourists. In China, this is not the case. Even on the Beijing to Shanghai train, we didn’t see any non-Chinese people! There is a group of white college-looking people on this train, but they are in platzkart (not called that anymore I know but it’s a good word), the open-bed-dorm style class, so everyone we see on our carriage is Chinese. That’s why everyone stares, they’re like ‘wtf are you doing out here, you know this isn’t meant for you to see, right, it’s very dirty’.
Damn it’s really raining hard now, maybe I don’t like it. I’m scared things are going to start leaking through the ceiling onto us, which would be sooo not fun.
When I get back to London, well we get back at night so I am going to shower and then sleep. Omg. My bed. But the next day, I’m going to hopefully welcome a Tesco delivery of groceries (I need to do that online several days before, I guess when we are in Poland! Someone remember to remind me!) and make a green smoothie with Vega powder omg I miss that so much. And then we are going to watch Netflix all day. And get vegan soft-serve at Yorica in Soho! Omg whyyy did I think of that I want that now. And we will get pizza delivered, Z from Pizza Union down the block (well I guess he’ll pick that up) and me from Basilico because they do vegan cheese. Or maybe by then someone else will have vegan cheese! What a world is happening out there!
I have to go tell someone to stop smoking in the hallway.
Ok no one is in the hallway or in the next room, which means the smokers in the carriage-connecting parts – the actually signed smoking section, if you can believe it – are next to the air vent and so it is getting circulated to all of us with the air conditioning. Cool. Cool cool cool cool. Oh wow it started hailing.
My eye is twitching! from stress?
I just had to find the boiling water station – no more having it in every carriage – and it was THROUGH THE OTHER END OF THE NEAREST PLATZKART CARRIAGE. Omg I have never been in platzkart before it is a zoo! First of all, the bunk beds are TRIPLE TIERED! Ah can you imagine having a top bunk that is actually third up? So crazy! And everyone is just standing around the open plan talking and eating and wow it is very loud. Thank goodness we are in rooms with doors, even if they provide more surface area for dirtiness.
An attendant just knocked and I let her in and she looked around and at the empty top bunks and I SCREAMED WE HAVE ALL FOUR and of course she didn’t understand my words but was FREAKED OUT from my tone and my volume and she ran away. Z said what the fuck you just terrified her! But I was so nervous that she was looking to put people in here that I burst nervously into shouting. Oops. But don’t even think about it lady!
Yay she didn’t she was just confused! We showed her the ghost childrens’ tickets and she got it. We are safe. Phew. I am so excited to shower and enjoy Chengdu. PANDAS! Good food! Hotel amenities! See you on the other side.
