Xi'an, China: Some Sights, Some Crowds, and Yes, Those Famous Foodsby Randi / August 27, 2017
When we were planning our almost-month-and-a-half in China, I chose a few places I wanted to go and added them to our ever-growing list of possibilities: Huangshan which we did and which failed us miserably; the rice terraces outside Yangshuo; and Danxia, the incredible colorful geopark at Zhangye. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to fit the latter two into our schedule given the train times and buses and how far they were from other things we were doing. That’s okay, there was so much to see in this country and I wasn’t tooo disappointed at not being able to fit in a visit to the natural beauty of the mountainous rock formations that somehow made insane colors of rock that will blow your mind. Okay, I was a little disappointed.
Which is why I was SO SUPER PUMPED when the company that booked all of our China train tickets made a last minute suggestion to our itinerary that would make me sublimely happy. We planned all the routes we wanted and our whole schedule (okay Z did) but we (very wisely) hired a Chinese company called China DIY Travel to book the actual tickets. (Have you looked at the ticket booking websites?? THEY ARE IN CHINESE. Have you spoken to an agent at a train station ticket office? They do not speak English and they do NOT try to work with you to communicate. Hire this company if you are going.) Helen, the representative at China DIY who assisted us the whole time, was amazing and I love her. I mostly love her because the week before we were to leave Xi’an for Dunhuang, she sent us an email that said she had been looking at our itinerary and saw that we were just doing a 24-hour sleeper train from Xi’an to Dunhuang, which sounds dire. She said “I have a crazy idea” that we should take a newly launched bullet train (so fast, nicer, kind of like Amtrak?) from Xi’an to a little town called Zhangye that would take less than 7 hours, in order to stop at Zhangye and hire a taxi to drive us an hour and a half to DANXIAAAAAA THE ROCK FORMATION GEOPARK AHHHH YESSS HELEN YOU’RE AMAZING. Then we could have from about 3pm to midnight to get to the park and see the park (plenty of time!) and then return to Zhangye station for a midnight sleeper train that would get us to Dunhuang at 7am. So that would make it 14 hours on two broken up trains instead of 24 on one long one, AND in between we get to see the big f-ing thing I wanted to see so badly! It was a no-brainer. We responded to Helen and said YASSS QUEEN and her response had us crying hysterically we were laughing so hard. Get this: She responded all excited and ended her email of our new instructions with the sentence “I really hope you can have one beautiful place to visit in West of China.” AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. Meaning all the many things we are seeing in the rest of western China are not so much to look at (but it has a great personality?) which I pretty much agree with her about. Z insists that she didn’t intend her words to come out that way and just meant ‘a’ beautiful place in western China, not ‘the only’, but that’s the way I want to take it and you can’t take that away from me. Anyway all this to say, WE WENT TO DANXIA AND IT WAS JUST AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE PICTURES WHEN YOU GOOGLE!
Okay…maybe not AS beautiful or as shockingly colorful as those — because most of the pictures online are photoshopped to increase the color saturation to really make it look even crazier than it is. But the real stuff doesn’t need photoshop! I was prepared to see a much duller (not boring dull, but in terms of color talk) landscape than I saw online and I was fine with that. But it was still so spectacular! I was so impressed and wowed by the color streaks and brightness of this natural phenomenon. So, we did not do any photoshopping (do I ever edit my pictures? lol no way takes too long), but we took every single picture three times – once in normal mode, once in ‘sunset’ mode, and once in ‘expressive color’ mode. Here is the same shot in each of those modes, in that order of normal/sunset/color (/sugar/butter/flour). Erma P I’m gonna do my first slideshow! Dance emoji dance emoji!
So you can see how much variation can exist in photos. You probably are thinking, well that color mode one, that looks a bit like you’re being just as bad as the photoshopping fakers abounding on the internet. But actually, that mode best represents what it really looked like in person! THIS IS TRUTH. The normal mode is sooo lackluster and drab and it’s really not accurate. CAMERA LIES. So I’m going to switch around which versions of the pictures I share depending on what best represents how it really looked in person. Twas amaze.
Before we share all the pictures (we took hundos, each), let’s backtrack and share every detail of my day like I do.
We landed in Zhangye and immediately tried to find food. Outside the train station – Zhangye West, the newer one – is a ring of small restaurants with no menus and no English and just a few tables and like a guy you try to talk to. We went in one that had pictures on the walls and people were smoking so we left. We went in another and they had a No Smoking sign. WE WERE STAYING FOREVER.
We landed in Zhangye and immediately tried to find food. Outside the train station – Zhangye West, the newer one – is a ring of small restaurants with no menus and no English and just a few tables and like a guy you try to talk to. We went in one that had pictures on the walls and people were smoking so we left. We went in another and they had a No Smoking sign. WE WERE STAYING FOREVER.
The man working there was incredibly helpful despite not knowing any English. We used our phones to communicate that I wanted him to give me all the tofu and all the vegetables they had and I tried to get it to say “You probably think I just mean I want a lot of tofu and vegetables, but what I said was, give me ALL the tofu and all the vegetables you have” but that didn’t work. The guy asked if spicy was okay and if we wanted noodles and we were like yes and sure? and he made me one of the best meals I had in all of China I’m not even kidding. It was a giant bowl of super spicy chili oiled broth with tofu and broccoli and leafy greens and deliciousness and then, like he read my mind, a SEPARATE bowl of noodles so I could just take the amount I wanted. It was SO GOOD. And so spicy. BUT SO GOOD.
Here is the outside so if you find yourself in Zhangye you go to the nicest man’s shop and not the gross other ones.
Super full, we then we like, okay now onto Danxia. But…it was THE WORST WEATHER. Remember the aforementioned horrible weather we encountered in Huangshan, my OTHER important beloved choice, that ended up failing us? It was like that – cold, rainy, foggy, very low visibility. In short, a terrible day to visit a site that requires good visibility. We were so upset about that but I was more upset that apparently Universe wanted to ruin all the things I particularly wanted to do! Does the universe not want me to make decisions because that’s a TERRIBLE lesson. Z was tentative about going all the way to Danxia and paying all the money for a taxi to take us there and then wait for hours and then take us back (that’s what you’re supposed to do because there aren’t taxis at the site) if we might not even see anything. But I was like are you kidding, we are definitely going and trying and seeing what we came to see because we came all this way to and ALEXANDER I CAME ALL THIS WAY SHE CAME ALL THIS WAY ALL THIS WAY. And thank goodness we went because, while I’m sure it’s even more stunning on sunny days, it was REMARKABLE. It was definitely one of my favorite places.
So we found a cab very quickly (we were still in the station’s parking lot pretty much) and showed her a message in Chinese that Helen had written for us, saying essentially “please take me to Danxia, and wait, and then drive me back to the main train station” (our night train left from the other station in town – yes even tiny towns you never heard of in China are big enough to warrant two train stations). Helen said it cost her 180 yuan 3 years ago when she did it, and we were just hoping for under 300 given the expected upcharge for not being Chinese/able to haggle, and the lady driving said 240 so we were okay with that! (That’s about $36 which for China is a lot-ish but we were like that is almost the flag-drop in London taxis, so, score.) Also it was a lady cab driver which we liked.
Of course, this being China and us being in a taxi, something ridiculous had to happen. After about ten minutes of driving, the lady pulled over on the side of the road next to a man in a nice jacket that I assumed at first glance was from Jack Wolfskin but it actually said “Jake Wolfking” and despite how delighted this made us, we were still very concerned about wtf was going on. Lady got out and man got in and we were like HEY LADY, what’s happening? She didn’t speak English, she just pointed to the man and nodded. We had no idea what was going on! Luckily, we worked out with the man that he was her husband and was just taking over our long job. JFC it is a mess not being able to communicate. So all was okay just a slight scare.
the men’s bathroom sign was LITERALLY a picture of a man smoking like come the f on China
We got to Danxia at about 4:45 and they had a GIANT building with a GIANT sign that said ‘toilets’ and they were pretty clean. And then the little road to the ticket office was full of camel-shaped (somehow, I know) wooden stalls selling melons and nannerpusses. It was already my favorite place in China.
And it got even better. We bought tickets – under 100 yuan each, which is not bad (like $15), and it includes the (pretty required) shuttle bus around the ENORMOUS, ENDLESS grounds – and got on the shuttle bus to the first amazing area, about 10 minutes down the mountain road, and I was SO HAPPY. It was BIG and BEEYOOOTIFUL! Every area has stairs up to the top of that peak (omg so much climbing) and platforms to walk along to see all views, plus signs and stuff for the highlights. Our first highlight was Sleeping Beauty, the sign for which reads, and this is verbatim, “The earth beauty that was formed during the Cretaceous Period and the nature gives birth to and makeunders after long-term weathering, has relieved and soft lines, fruity and lithe and graceful figure, and colorful dress. We don’t know it is a fairy or dragon out of the sea, but we want to stay here indeed, because it stands here for one hundred million year.” I MEAN. WAS I IN HEAVEN, YES.
So here’s the picture of Sleeping Beauty…not sure if the sign was accurate. Also did they mean makeunder like what they did to Charlize in Monster.
OH this is a good time to tell you an important bit of info: We entered at the north gate, but there are east and west gates too. And, the shuttle you catch at each gate is different, they take you on different routes around the grounds, so you see different things. Now, there is a transfer station at the middle, so you can hop on all the various shuttles and see all the things (just remember to get on your gate’s right bus at the end so you find your taxi), but it took us a full three hours to see everything just up to that transfer station! (That’s also the last station before the north gate.) This place is ENORMOUS! Three hours of driving and climbing and more driving (for long stretches, too), and we saw maaaybe half, probably less. And it was all incredible! I think we saw the highlights. What do you think?
lolol
And, OF COURSE, there were amazing signs. Crucial (not) commentary in the captions.
never seen that used like that before
i mean dude i’d listen to you but I don’t know what you mean
that’s LITERALLY the opposite of what Mother Superior said
Even though it was freezing and I was a shibber, I felt JOY for the first time in weeks. I’m just kidding I know I complain a lot (a lot a lot) but I liked most of China and most of what we did this is just my platform for venting. But I really loved this place. It’s up there with the Great Wall on my list of Mosts.
I didn’t even share the best part yet – at every shuttle dropoff point was a TOILET! And not a disgusting outhouse but a real building with walls and floors and stuff. (Okay it’s not the best part but it’s up there.)
The only negative about this experience (besides the weather) is that a lot of people were staring and very conspicuously taking photos of me, because I am white. FFS, even the ONLY other white person we saw here (actually the only one all day and for days after) took a picture of (well with) us because he bet his Chinese wife that they wouldn’t see any other foreigners so he had to make proof of it? But that wasn’t as upsetting as all the Chinese men and teenage girls (seriously, just those two demos) taking my photo and laughing. It almost ruined my whole day. A few times I said to the person ‘that’s really not okay please don’t’ and they understood I think from my face and tone that shiz was not cool but they just shrugged. Arghhhhh.
While it dampened my spirits (so they could match my clothes!) it did not tarnish the beauty of this amazing place.
We got back to Mr. Wolfking at almost 8pm, bought two tubs of camel-stall melon (I felt like a having pounds of watermelon and cantaloupe for dinner, it’s so good here), drove to the station and had about three hours to kill before our midnight train to Dunhuang (leaving on a midnight traaaaain) so we just putzed around the station and stuff. And to top off an amazing day, this train, which was yet another K train, was the nicest of all the K’s! It had soap in the sink area! It was clean! We bought out the other two beds again (#ghostchildren) and could use all the extra pillows and blankets and NOT BE ITCHY FROM THEM! The attendants were nice! It was smoky but just ever so slightly less so! It was only 7 hours so it was a shame that we didn’t have this one for a longer journey. When I mentioned that, Z asked if that meant I wanted to stay on longer and I immediately turned into Randolph & Mortimer (should start automatically at 0:40 but if it doesn’t, well, go to 0:40):
Onto the next!
Onto the next!
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Olkhon Island & Lake Baikal, Siberia: I Don’t Think You’re Ready For This Jelly (me)
After three weeks of exhausting, nonstop activity in our big summer travels, we planned for four days of just pure relaxation in a presumed idyllic spot, Olkhon Island on the famed Lake Baikal, a tiny fishing village that is hard to reach and so we simultaneously assumed two incongruous thoughts: 1) that we would be two of very very few visitors (pretty true) but 2) that even so the island and village would be equipped to deal with visitors (hahah no). Can’t have it both ways. Really, parts of the island, like the lake itself and the cliffs and rocky terrain along the northern parts of the island, are beautiful, but getting there and for the most part being there is too stressful to allow for any relaxation, or, honestly, to allow me to recommend a trip here.
it’s like a little baby Azure Window! Oh Azure Window, RIP! (read the Malta posts on the main Travel page)
Through the Hostel Baikaler in Irkutsk, we booked a trip to Olkhon Island up on Lake Baikal. Most people in Irkutsk are indeed stopping there in order to venture out to the lake, which is the biggest freshwater lake in the world. The guidebook says that if all the other freshwater in the world disappeared, Baikal would be able to fill our needs for forty years. That’s a big ass lake. So the Baikaler people booked us a minibus ride to Olkhon and a 3 night stay at Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, the tiny ‘town’ on Olkhon. When I say to you to never, ever use Baikaler or Olga’s people to book anything, I really, really mean it.
The best thing I saw all that day of the 8 hour minibus – our only big toilet stop
My view for an entire day – this was the best road we took. SO BUMPY
The minibus seemed nice enough, one of the nicer vehicles we’ve seen, and since we were picked up at our hostel early we got the first row which I figured would help with my carsickness (the van fit about 16 people). I was so funny thinking anything could stop the nausea on this ride, even if you aren’t prone to it. After we left, at about 9:05, we picked up a few more travelers at another hostel, before we set off and…nope, we just parked in a busy market square one block from our hostel at 9:15, the driver got off, and I watched as he joined apparent friends to smoke in the middle of the market. At 10:30 (that’s right), he got back on the bus, and we thought jesus christ are we finally leaving, an hour and a half late? Nopeeee, he drove around while on his phone yelling at people until we found 4 other people to pick up outside a stadium. I mean. WTF. I thought okay NOW we’re leaving and it’ll be fine. Little did I know.
The roads on Olkhon
After just under two hours, we stopped for a bathroom break, which is the best kind of break you can ever offer me. Five minutes later, we drove down the road to stop for lunch. It sucked that our two stops in a 7 hour bus journey were back to back; I was so nervous about having to pee, I was having palpitations. When we left the cafe in the middle of nowhere on the side of a dirt road, the real ridiculousness of our journey started. The road to Olkhon Island is not equipped for people to drive on. There aren’t roads, really, it’s just land. And we were not in a jeep or a landrover, we were in a minibus and pretty much off-roading. We felt every jarring bump and throw from the rocky paths that turned into sand dunes that you had to carefully maneuver and then back into rocky again. It was INSANE. We were all looking at each other like ‘oh my god this cannot be the way’, holding on for dear life to the handles above us or on the seats in front of us. It was like being on a roller coaster that also shook your seat violently and spun you around. I’m nauseous just remembering it. Of course that part of the trip was about 2 hours. It was the worst travel experience ever, until the return journey three days later, which was actually worse.
The town of Khuzir (after a terrible rainstorm, hence the road is a pond)
One of the two main grocery stores in Khuzir/Olkhon
When we finally got to Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, it was not the fresh sigh of relief we were counting on. It was a few lackluster wooden shacks, and our room was a small, dank, windowless affair with two college dorm beds with ugly, not very clean looking bedding on them. Windowless was the worst part. We told the staffer that her colleagues who had arranged this for us months ago promised that we would be in a building with a bathroom inside it (I pee at least every 90 minutes and I cannot be walking to another building in the middle of the night that often). The staffer was like, um no none of the buildings have bathrooms, here is our bathroom — two outhouse stalls about a full minute’s walk up the road of the grounds. (One was a western toilet; the other was a beginning-of-Slumdog-style-elevated wooden floor with a hole in it. When I talk about outhouses from here on out (and I’m sure I will), I mean this latter kind.) The sinks were halfway back down the little road. I mean. No. Your colleagues told us you had a bathroom in our building, and that was literally the only reason we booked with you instead of elsewhere, and we told them that at booking, that it was dependent on that! She was just like well nope we don’t have a bathroom so that’s it. We got our stuff from our jail cell of a windowless room and hightailed it out of that shithole. Luckily, we hadn’t paid yet, and luckily the staffer I guess heard from the colleague who made all the false promises (lies, they are called lies) and gave us our deposit back. We walked about 30 minutes in the sand dunes (omg it was so hard I’ve never been that sweaty before it’s like I had some sort of fever) up the road to Hotel Baikal View. It looked like a little string of colorful motel rooms, little log cabins in three rows, but they were so much better than motel rooms and the hotel itself was that sigh of relief we needed. The bed was the most comfortable in the entire country so far, and they had a bar, and a restaurant, and lots of staffers who spoke English and there was a POOL and a SAUNA and omg it was just great. And still much cheaper than the equivalent would be in the west.
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Our multi-colored string of hotel rooms! So cute
I loved that bed. It had clean white sheets and a big fluffy white comforter. The best. And every single room had its own bathroom. I was so happy that I didn’t have to put shoes and a headlamp on in the middle of the night to pee, I didn’t even care that the cabins were full of bugs (log cabins on a lake, man!), I didn’t even care that it was too cold to swim in the pool (we did jump in after our daily sauna use though, which was bracing but amazing hot damn I love saunas), I didn’t even care that housekeeping threw out my retainer/night guard and I’ve been grinding my teeth like crazy every since. (Okay, that’s not true, I cared a lot and cried but once a one-inch piece of clear plastic is gone, it’s gone. Fuckers.) I did love that sauna, hoo boy. And our first night, all night, was the hardest rainstorm I’ve maybe ever heard. I couldn’t sleep for a few hours because I thought our cabin was going to blow away, or at least flood quickly and completely. It was unbelievable. Can you imagine if we had stayed at Olga’s and I had to go out in that to trek to the outhouse in my boots and raingear and headlamp in the pitch black five times in the night??? Thank god we left. I’m so grateful to Z money for that one. I mean he didn’t want to stay at Olga’s either, he’s not a filthy monster, but yay for finding a nice place.
We ate a few times in the restaurant at Baikal View, because it was about a mile on the sand dunes to the ‘town’ of Khuzir and we were usually so tired from our day of exploring that we didn’t feel like trekking there and back (there’s like one taxi and you have to either be very lucky and find him randomly or get someone to call him, and it usually takes like 20 minutes for him to come anyway so no). The restaurant was fine, full of all the Baikal specialties husband was supposed to get. It was harder for me, but they had a really good pickle plate and good potato dishes (I say that like I’m not just talking about French fries and potato wedges). We also tried this weird kind of pickled mushroom that was interesting. I know the deathly gray color is unappetizing but they were decent.
oh I’ll have my usual thanks I guess |
like the most colorless plate of food ever |
Then, one night, the waitress was the first one (they all only spoke Russian) who understood really what kinds of things I was looking for and tried to help me get something that wasn’t just pickles and potatoes. She said what about this soup, otroshka? I had read about that soup before, and knew that it was cucumber, potato, egg, meat, sour cream, and kvass, that beer-like soda-ish dark bready drink that I for some reason like. She said this version was vegetarian, and they could do it without the egg and sour cream. I was skeptical but excited to have a soup. Lol again.
my kvass soup I can’t believe I ate this for dinner lolol
It was literally chopped up cucumber, potato, and a shittonne of spicy radish in a bowl of cold kvass. I mean. What. We were CRACKING up. It was…not bad, but it was incredibly strange and like WHAT. Imagine cold chopped veggies served in a bowl of undiluted, unadulterated soda, that’s what it was. I mean I ate it. It was still raw veggies. I still can’t get over it. I think the waitresses were laughing at me, having dared each other to see who could get the weird Americans to eat the craziest thing. I said to Husband that it’s usually with sour cream and egg and maybe that makes it less like a soda bath of cucumber and he said actually that sounds like it would be even stranger, and truly revolting. I guess the idea of soda and sour cream and egg mixed into a broth really is disgusting oh man alive Russia.
literally main street Khuzir
We did eat several meals in Khuzir, too. There were a lot of fish shacks, and a lot of small cafes, and a few decent ramshackle places with some things I could pick out. We went twice to this hopping cafe on the main drag (the name of it was just its address, and there’s like one street, so just like…it’s there) that had salads in a glass case (not refrigerated…I am living dangerously) and so I picked out a cabbage-y cucumber-y looking salad and another carrot-yuba salad! I had that yuba salad twice at this place, I was so happy to find it again, my favorite dish of Siberia. I really hope this yuba looking stuff I keep finding in Siberia (also had some in Yekaterinburg) really is tofu skin and not just some weird part of a fish (or worse) that I’ve just never seen before. That would be bad, and embarrassing. Let’s say it’s yuba before my stomach starts to hurt.
I love that this carrot-yuba salad was everywhere in Siberia!
We also went to Kafe Olkhon on you guessed it the main drag, which I really liked the look of. It was a proper old dark wooden pub-sort of place, full of Russian people and travelers. They had a menu with pictures and some English translations, and I got a giant plate of plain kasha (love it, I’m sorry) and a carrot-cabbage salad. It was a great meal for me if totally boring and plain to everyone else. I love that kind of meal.
There were a few sad grocery stores in the town, one less sad that had a few fun chocolate treats we found. That less sad store also had a fellow customer wearing the best shirt I’ve ever seen. I tried to get a picture of her without being too obvious but I failed. Anyway, the shirt was red and in white block letters it said “Puberty Silent’. WHAT. IS. WHAT. We’ve seen the most incredible tee shirts with things in English written on them. I guess this is how Chinese people feel when they see the nonsense character-tattoos of westerners.
ate the entire bag of chocolate-strawberry things on the walk home. should have gotten two of them. yummm
Wandering through the dirt roads once with new French friends we met, we passed a house that had a ‘homemade bread’ sign out front. So we rang the doorbell , it started to pour, and the lady came out to the gate, in that order. We said ‘you have bread?” and she said yes how many? and we said um, I guess two? and she came out with two enormous loaves of bread. like, enormous. 50 rubles each, so pretty cheap. We were cracking up. She didn’t even let us in, we just bought bread from a random lady at her house on the side of the road. It was hilarious. Almost as funny as trying to break into that bread itself, which took not joking all of my strength to break apart. Inside, it was really nice and fluffy, delicious really, but that outer shell was f-ing armor.
“homemade bread” |
the bread lady’s house. she didn’t let us in |
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Okay, that’s enough about the food!
Olkhon itself is interesting. The town of Khuzir (and, consequently, the entirety of the surroundings for miles and miles considering Khuzir is the most built up touristed part, despite it being literally two dirt roads) is not really ready for tourists, at least not a lot of them. It doesn’t not have the infrastructure to support tourism. Does it even have infrastructure? That bus ride, I’m not exaggerating, it was horrendous. We really can’t recommend going to Olkhon because this ride was so hellish and it takes up two entire days. It’s just not worth it. Once there, the guesthouses all seem to be like Olga’s and the very famous Nikita’s, complexes of small wooden shacks with shared outhouses (oh p.s., the entire island except for our hotel was outhouses. The restaurants too – you were lucky if the restaurant you chose even had a key to the nearest outhouse shack down the block. It’s fine when traveling (used to it by now) but like not in the place you’re staying for days). (Nikita’s charges hourly for wifi, so glad we didn’t book there.) It’s cool to be at a place that is so remote and raw, but it really cannot handle the tourist trade in its current state. It’s a shame because parts of the island are beautiful, but I just don’t know how people can really go to see them. There is a hydrofoil boat that might go once or twice a week, saving most of the minibus ride, but then even getting around the island for the tours (which is the most important and best thing to do on the island; you’re not there to stay in the ‘town’) requires driving in minibuses on the same and even worse roads! The entire day! It’s just a mess there.
the roads we drove on for like a whole week
Let’s talk about those tours. We booked a tour of the north cape of the island, called Cape Khoboy, with our hotel. Every hostel or hotel books the same tour, with the same sort of driver and Soviet military-looking 9-person van, the same fish soup cooked for lunch by the driver (smelled great but I wasn’t going to eat even if it was vegan when we were driving all day on those obstacle sources of rocks, dunes, and tree roots), and the same collection of sights before and after Khoboy along the way. It cost 1100 rubles per person (100 of that was a random charge that we weren’t told about in advance and I kind of think was the driver and his friends tricking us but what could be do), which is like 15 pounds, so not bad for an entire day of sightseeing. And the landscape really is beautiful.
Okay, so this is a little terrible, but the name of the cape is pronounced like ‘ho boy’, a little phlegmier, but still close, so the entire week not joking (and still) Z and I were repeating to each other our favorite bit of SNL weekend update:
it’s when your whole body goes
hoo boyyyyy
Khoboy itself requires a decent amount of time for a hike down and up through all the twists of the mountain. We ran into our French friends there, which was hilarious. It was a beautiful place, which makes me sadder about how weird it is to be a tourist there. Seriously if they just paved the road and excavated the outhouses once in a while (it had been a too-long while for most of them) it would be oodles better.
All over Siberia, we have seen trees and bushes covered in scarves and pieces of colorful cloth. It’s like a shaman thing, I think. Shamanism is big in this part of the country. The trees are really fun to see.
Khoboy had an outhouse (worst condition of whole island), so that was lucky, since this was another of the three days (out of four) where I was a ball of nerves all day about having to pee. I’m so dehydrated.
The driver also took us to other outlets along the north side of the island, beautiful rocks jutting out over the lake that we climbed up and hiked down (some of the pics above are those other parts of the cape; I can’t tell which was which part). It was exhausting but really worth it, so beautiful.
But again, the roads. My god. I bet you think I’m being dramatic just for the sake of drama, exaggerating. Here is another picture I took on the route when I WASN’T hanging on for dear life.
These are not roads, and our little bus, my god, it’s a miracle that it made it through. All the tours are in identical buses and I just do not understand how they operate after driving through this. We spent almost 45 minutes driving through WOODS. Like, without a road, just making our way in the woods. In a bus. Here’s a picture of us going through the woods behind another car. The one in front of us really gives you the perspective I need you to have in order to agree with me on how insane this all is.
pretty scary right?
Another day, we went on a hike along the lake with the French people. It was a cold and rainy day, but we said hey let’s be outdoorsy. But then it started to really rain, like buckets, like pouring freaking rain, and the ground/sand was incredibly muddy and I started to have trouble making my way up without slipping backwards, which is a really scary feeling, and the ground just kept giving way instead of letting me progress and it was miserable. Beautiful, but miserable. Luckily, the foggy weather really reflected that state.
that’s a boat!
It totally looks like Japan, or a scene out of Avatar, right? That fog was insane. The farther we went, the harder it got to see where we had come from, and with the rain getting harder and harder and the ground getting wetter and wetter, we all decided to stop and head back before too long (too long for me though). Our shoes were so disgusting. Not to mention our pants. We’re just always dirty this trip, it seems.
I know right now you are like…dude…all of these nature scenes look gorgeous! Why are you complaining so much! But see it’s just because it’s been a minute since I wrote about the driving conditions. After all this beauty, we still had to get back to Irkutsk/civilization. And when I tell you that the return minibus journey was BY FAR the worst bus trip yet, I really mean it. The van was not nice this time. Instead, it was over-crowded, and the door was broken. There was no trunk area for luggage, so 20 people all with giant backpacks and suitcases had to sit WITH their luggage either on their lap or in the aisle next to them, making this the most unsafe bus ever, not to mention impossible to get on and off of. The driver was awful and refused to stop for lunch. The whole thing was so bad that, when we got to the ferry crossing (where we got out of the car) (after about 1 1/2 hours), Z and I actually knocked on the windows of every car on the ferry and asked if they could take us the rest of the way for whatever money they wanted. Unfortunately, the only ones who had room for us were not going to Irkutsk. Seriously, that’s how bad it was. Thank god we made it back in one piece. When the driver started letting people off in Irkutsk, we got off at the first opportunity even though we were like 20 minutes walk from our hostel. We didn’t care we just needed to get off that death machine.
minibus from hell
Luckily, we got off in Irkutsk right near our favorite place, Engineer Coffee (or something like that), with the best, nicest staff and the best coffee (according to the coffee drinker of the two of us). They also had clean bathrooms, free water, and good wifi. It was a godsend.
After we dropped our bags back at the Hostel Baikaler for the few hours we had until our sleeper train to Ulan-Ude, we went in search of food. We decided on the great-named Sushied, with the ‘sushi’ part in cyrillic and then the ‘ed’ added after that. So fun, and the food was decent. I needed all the vegetables and ordered a green salad, a seaweed salad, a veggie sushi roll, and a veggie noodle stir-fry (to share and granted I gave Z most of the stir-fry but still, lots of food!).
my favorite kind of salad is two salads |
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So, all in all, I guess I’m glad we went to Olkhon? Lake Baikal is beautiful, and it’s cool to be somewhere few people go. But man. The discrepancy between the scenery on the coast and the lake versus the journey there and the roads and the town, it’s drastic. If you had a private helicopter you should take that and try it out for 2 days maybe. It really is so beautiful. But what a mess it all was. Except that bed. My god I loved that bed.
the main intersection of Khuzir, Olkhon Island
that lake tho
honestly I think my fave thing about Olkhon is that they recycle. first place we saw in Russia doing it.
24 Hours in Liverpool: A Quick Tour of Beatlemania, Museums, and Other Sights
Almost one year ago, as we traveled across China by train, we were arriving in Xi’an to see the famed Terracotta Army and its thousands of impressive underground Warriors. If you followed along that journey, or just read that post, you know that seeing the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an, although clearly amazing, was quite the harrowing experience. See, China has a lot of people. And most of those people were also trying to look into the excavated pits to see some of the Warriors when we were. To be fair that was our fault for going in August. We didn’t get the best view, and it was probably the most stressed out I’ve ever been. Haha that’s not true I’m stressed out all the time but still, wow. So when we heard that the Terracotta warriors (not all; there are thousands) were going on tour, and one of those tour stops would be Liverpool, we thought 1) jfc we went all the way to Xi’an to see them and they are coming a mere two hours from home?? 1b) it’s okay Xi’an was amazing and it was worth going, and 2) we should go to Liverpool and see our old friends again! So we did. And we liked it, and we loved it.
We made a weekend out of the visit, and we really enjoyed ourselves more than we expected. Liverpool (pronounced LIV POOOO) is way on the opposite side of the country; here in London we’re in the southeast bit and Liverpool is all the way up on the northwest coast. It looks like it should be a pretty substantial journey to get there, but it’s a 2 1/2 hour train. Lol England is baby sized.
We had our Terracotta Take 2 Tickets booked for Saturday afternoon, so we had time to stroll around and get a feel for the city first. I was a little biased towards liking it even before we explored, though, because I recently learned that the Liverpool football club’s team song is “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, as in the big song from “Carousel”. See, sports fans can be musical theatre fans too! I love that so much and I wonder if LFC fans are extra keen to see “Carousel” when it plays (side note you have until September 16 to catch the current Broadway revival!). We arrived the day of Liverpool’s Pride parade, so the city center was extra crowded (like Xi’an!) and extra colorful for us. We found ourselves on the famous Mathew street (one t for real), where we instantly became two of many tourists taking pictures of Beatles statues outside the famous Cavern Club, where the Beatles first became popular, playing super long sets during almost 300 appearances there. Of course, they were known as the Quarrymen at that time, and the position of Ringo was being filled by Pete Best. (I’ll tell you how I learned things infra.)
would legit die laughing if fancy singing was liverpool for opera
The Cavern Club is where Brian Epstein, who would become the Beatles manager, first saw the group perform. During their performances in the early years, the boys would wear jeans and leather jackets, and they would smoke and drink the whole time. Omg and the stage was in the basement and there was no ventilation. Seeing the early Beatles is probably every person’s dream but it sounds like my nightmare. The fans were already rabid in these early years, so even though I find young fanatics of any era supes annoying, it annoys me extra when older people complain about young fans today, because like, that was you with the Beatles, dog. Anyway, Epstein is the one that made them start wearing suits, which elevated their whole vibe and coincidentally brought in a higher fee. Beatlemania soon broke out nationwide, and then they took over the entire world.
Epstein also signed Cilla Black, who was the hat check girl at the Cavern. Do Brits really say hat-check instead of coat-check? Because everyone is wearing funny hats? LOVES IT
I could tell you more about the Beatles right now, since 24 hours in Liverpool makes one quite the expert, but we’re going to take a short break to see the big f-ing thing we came for, the Terracotta Warriors.
The exhibition, on until October, is located in the city center at the World Museum, and tickets are going fast so book online way ahead of time.
As you probably remember from the OG Terracotta Warriors post, this huge statuary army is some A-level grave robbing. Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, ordered all of these figures – warriors, chariots, horses – to be built and buried with him in a huge secret underground city of a grave in order to protect him in the afterlife. Wasn’t HE surprised! Work on the army began when the wee emperor was only 13 years old, in 246 BCE, so they’re hella old, and there’s hella lots of them – approximately 8,000 soldiers were buried with the emperor. Eventually, 700,000 workers were involved with this project in some capacity.
This touring exhibit only has about 8 or so of the soldiers on display, so, a good deal less than you’d see in the gigantic excavated pits of Xi’an. But the exhibit has a good deal more information explaining the significance of the army and the historical relevance of the time period, so we actually learned more than we did in China – probably because all the signs were in Chinese and/or unable to be reached. This museum did a nice job putting together a complete exhibit even though nothing can rival seeing the thousands of statues in the pits.
my favorite sign outside of China
Although, the museum did try to rival the pits. Above is THE BEST INFORMATION SIGN EVER. Let’s break it down paragraph by paragraph, because each one has absolute GOLD, JERRY! First, we freaking died laughing (I’m sorry it was and still is very inappropriate NEVER LAUGH AT DEATH) that the emperor thought ‘hmm maybe I’ll drink this terrifying shape-shifting metal that when mixed with aluminum COMPLETELY FUCKS YOUR SHIT UP [have you seen that video?] to try to attain immortality OH NO WAIT I DIED FROM IT.’ It’s pretty funny.
It’s smart of him to think of plants and herbs to do the trick too, since mercury probably wasn’t so fun to eat, and I absolutely adore the idea of him sending out a crack team of his ‘trusted magician’ plus THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN to find some magic plants on secret beautiful islands. Um, WHY the children? What on earth was his thought process? Besides the obvious “oh i’m so forked up on mercury rn.” Was he like, oh the spirits of the hidden islands probably won’t show their magical lands to anyone but innocent children, so let’s round up thousands and send them into the sea. I GUARANTEE that that magician, if he was worth his salt, took the kids and found an island refuge and was like ‘we are NEVER going back to that lunatic, he will kill us all at some point.’ “Sadly they never return” = “thank god Xu Fu decided to save those kids.”
And lastly, hoo boy, HOW MANY MAGICIANS DID THIS GUY HAVE? I guess if he had 3,000 spare kids to send off on an island-finding adventure, he had more than his fair share of magicians to send hither and thither looking for, ostensibly, weed, but I just love that all these signs kept referring to more and more of his endless supply of magicians. I mean, someone holler at this boy that if sooo many people are claiming to be magicians, it’s just math that some of them are lying. But my favorite part is that he and the fam sought immortality so hard that they tried to ensure it even after they died. ‘Oh let’s put these symbols of immortal beings in our tombs for when we die so maybe they will grant us immortality.’ Guys, did noooo one hear themselves?
One of my favorite parts of the exhibit was a gorgeous suit made entirely of jade tiles. It was for one of the emperor’s family members, to be buried in…inside his tomb…after his death…in order to ensure immortality. Oh it’s TOO GOOD. But at least all their superstitions about the afterlife paid off for us! It was cool to see our old warrior friends again and remember all the good times we had in Xi’an.
Next, more Beatles.
Everywhere you go in Liverpool, you’ll either see a pub with a Beatly name (e.g. The Sergeant Pepper), or hear Beatles music playing from somewhere, or see Beatles gift shops, or statues, or all of them at once, usually. But the official, actually great Beatles museum is called The Beatles Story, and it’s near the river (which is called the Mersey, which is what you will be asking for after you hear ‘Help!’ 5 times in a row in certain pubs). Entry to the Beatles Story is $17 (that’s pounddollars), which seems like a lot if you’re someone like me who is like ‘eh yeah I guess the Beatles were good’, but it’s actually well worth it. This is one of the most entertaining, informative museums. I think the key to enjoying yourself is timing – we arrived at about 6:30pm on a Saturday night, pre-dinner. It closes at 8pm, but we were assured we’d have time to finish the whole thing. When we arrived, the staff was honestly so happy for us. They all kind of exclaimed, “Wow you are brilliant for coming here now!” Apparently, at all other hours, especially on weekends, the place is packed to the gills with people. And since we returned the next morning to visit the gift shop, we saw how true this was. Just the line for tickets alone snaked around and around the entry hall, packed with school groups and visitors from all over Europe. In contrast, on this Saturday evening, we were the only people in that entryway. Amazing tip I just gave you. It was a little tight to finish in time (they let us stay till about 8:15pm), but overall it was great.
The museum takes you through the entirety of their lives – starting with their childhoods, families, and when they first started playing instruments, going through their early Quarrymen years, the Epstein partnership, the albums, the movies, the world takeover, and the deaths/later years. All of it. There’s an audioguide that is included with the ticket price, and it’s very good. Sometimes it doesn’t quite match up with the order of the rooms, but the information is really interesting and helpful.
The coolest part is that the basement is a recreated version of the Cavern Club – so you’d go down the rickety steps into the completely unventilated basement room and see the bar, the stage, and the chairs lined up for the audience. It was very cool, and there was tons of information everywhere about how Epstein took over management, how he and the rest of the band asked Pete Best to leave and Ringo Starr to join, how their early devout fans rioted about the change, &c.
hot tip: when you take your picture in front of this stage, as you will inevitably do, the lighting is such that you will look like a deformed wax figure
When you leave the stage and enter the next room, be warned that the ventilation status (i.e. there is none) gets a whole lot worse and kind of smelly. It was like being behind a restaurant with all that weird hot exhaust blowing out. So hurry on through and get to the more fun times, like the magical mystery tour bus!
not a real bus
Real submarine though!
Move along the halls and get all your timeframes mixed up (this is where the signage and audio started to get confused a bit, prob from all the LSD) and soon you’ll run into the yellow submarine! Guests can enter the sub and take pictures inside, which we did obviously. It was good silly fun to break up all the sad stories before and after, like about Epstein, and Lennon, and George, and America I guess.
We learned a good deal about each of the men (and Yoko too), especially Paul and John since they were the starriest of them. John’s activism was pretty weird. There were lots of pictures of him and Yoko sitting in bed with paper bags over their heads. Not really sure what they were going for but it was anti-war, which is good. My favorite bit of information is that Paul now owns a publishing company, MPL Communications, and they own the rights to Grease, A Chorus Line, and Guys & Dolls. I think it is hilarious that little community theatres putting on these shows are paying Paul McCartney.
John’s white piano
I definitely recommend paying a visit to the Beatles Story Museum, which taught me 99% of everything I know about the Beatles (I didn’t know much before). They have a great gift shop too, with lots of fun shirts and pieces of crap that no one needs but everyone really wants. The shop is open to the (non-ticketed) public.
As a final stop on our Beatles Tour of Liverpool, we drove down Penny Lane. Yes it’s an actual road they wrote the song about. It’s nowhere close to the city center, however. We saw a few black cabs bringing tourists over here to take their pictures, which is probably the easiest option for visitors. There were also giant tour buses but they can’t actually make the turn onto the narrow road. We had the good fortune of being driven down the lane by our friend’s parents. (Thanks again!)
If you came here for the Beatles tourism information, that’s where we end, unforch. But we have a few more famous Liverpool sights to look at. First up, the Bombed Out Church. I KNOW. That’s literally its name.
it’s weird to call it that guys
The Bombed Out Church, named by stoned people?, was once called St. Luke’s Church but then it got bombed in World War II, in 1941 during the Liverpool Blitz, and it has been a ruin and a memorial to those lost in the war ever since. It looks down Bold Street, which is Liverpool center’s most famous/happening/hip af street, so I guess it needed a really cool name. Cool name, guys.
While it was a still functioning church, it was also intended to be used as a venue for ceremonial worship and as a concert venue. I bet whoever set those original usage restrictions had no idea what would happen in 2018:
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I find these posters kind of hilarious, the Gin Party one in a ‘wow even churches in England are alcoholics’ kind of way and the comedy one in ‘hooooly, TOO SOON!’ kind of way. I mean come on, “explosive” comedy? at the Bombed Out church? TOO SOON. So funny.
The last sight we had to see (and had time to see) (time to see what we had time to see! turn the projector on!) was the Three Graces. These are three landmark buildings along the Mersey waterfront, and I have no idea why they are called the Graces and not just like Nice Historic Buildings but maybe someone out there does. The three buildings are: the Royal Liver Building, which opened in 1911 to be the home of the Royal Liver Assurance group and was one of the first buildings in the world to be built using reinforced concrete; the Cunard Building, built between 1914-1917 as the headquarters of the Cunard Line, the cruise line that built the Lusitania (the White Star Line, the makers of the Titanic, were across the street at the time); and the Port of Liverpool Building, constructed between 1904-1907 and the headquarters of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board for 87 years. The Three Graces are part of Liverpool’s UNESCO-designated World Heritage Maritime Mercantile City.
Here are pictures of the Three Graces with the Four Beatles in front.
Graces #1&2
Grace #3
It’s a lovely walk along the Mersey waterfront to see the Three Graces and the whole Mercantile City as you make your way over to Royal Albert Dock. The RAD (so rad) is a complex of docks and warehouse-y buildings that now house chain restaurants, Beatles gift shops, and the Beatles Story. They also are, of course, working docks, and we were lucky enough to arrive the day the famous Clipper Race was returning to the docks. The Clipper Race, or the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, is a year-long sailing race around the world – 40,000 nautical miles – that uses ‘trained’ but amateur crew members. The sailors onboard are regular people like you and me, except crazy like Husbo P because even though they aren’t professional sailors or really getting enough training (because enough training = you’d be professional), they’re like ‘sure I’ll sail around the world on this wee boat for a year WHAT COULD GO WRONG’. A qualified skipper leads each boat crew but like, what if he dies, Jill? The crazy ass civilians can sign on for the whole year or for one of the eight legs of the journey. The race has always begun somewhere in England, and this past one started and ended in Liverpool at Royal Albert Dock. So weird, right? And we were there for their triumphant return. This whole thing sounds like my absolute nightmare.
please don’t make me do this
Anyway, I’m happy to report that Australian Wendy Tuck was the winning skipper this year, the first woman to win. Yay for you, Wendy! And yay for me never having to do this, please.
As you can see, even just 24 hours in Liverpool can be full of lots of fun, lots of arts, lots of culture (‘that’s Petah Tikva!’), and reminders of your nightmares. I would not be opposed to returning to this great city, even though I was there on a Saturday night in the summertime – which means I saw no less than FIFTY suuuuper drunken hen dos (bachelorette parties) with brides-to-be in bright pink sashes in like a 3-block radius. They really pack in the hen dos in this town, jee oh boy. We also saw a few of the stereotypical stag dos (bachelor parties), where they make the groom-to-be dress like a baby and walk around town in a giant diaper. If I can get through that and be happy to return, that must mean it’s a pretty cool city.
It also had some incredible vegan food; I was shocked at the number of signs in restaurant windows I saw advertising their vegan options. You can read about our fancy lunch at the Art School here, and here for a look at the best dinner ever (, one of).
