through the looking glass

I just found this straggler. thought I’d toss it in. course, as it’s a year and a half later, 99%’s prolly outdated. well, you get what you pay for

Also bear in mind, this trip was, well, I could afford to splurge (for me this means the cheapest room I can find with a private bath and minimal vermin), so I did. you can find cheaper bunks, there’s almost always a place in china with dorm beds for next to nothing if you look hard enough. this time around I just got a bit stuck on a guarenteed shower after walking around the desert in summer. though I took taxis, busses can be had to all the tourist spots, and some of the less tourist ones if you can convey to a local what you’re trying to do and they’re feeling helpful enough to tell you which bus to take and where to get off. however taxis are one of those expenses I don’t so much mind, as more often than not, if you share a smoke and get to talking, they’ll tell you about a place or two not listed in any guidebook that’s free to enter and likely better than anything you would have found on your own, given only a day or two in each place.

road conditions ::

the gansu highway (silk road) is under major construction, so large chunks are simply missing or still to be built. as it’s the desert off roading as it were isn’t exactly a challenge, but it’s not smooth as silk and it will take you a bit longer than advertised to reach your destination. I found it was only about an hour or so longer when it was longer, but I got lucky more than once. don’t put yourself in an I-must-catch-this-train frame of mind.

Hami :: Xinjiang

Hotel :: Hami Binguan, 80 kuai with foreign expert certifcate (after much haranguing, they did *not* want to give me a cheap room). excellent room, excellent location.
Local map :: available, chinese only
3 wheeled moto taxis :: 3 kuai gets you around most of the city
taxis :: start at 5 kuai, runs up fast, swear they must use meters at all times
time zones :: screw it, just go where you want to go and hope for the best
food :: buy as many melons as you can carry. seriously. also eat anything from the small places in the ugyur areas, particularly things with bread. amazing bread products.

Gansu ::

Liuyuan

not many busses from hami to anxi, no matter what the ladies at the bus station say the day before. dropped here off the bus to dunhuang to catch one of the dunhuang-anxi busses. a strip of gas stations, repair shops and a few exhausted restaraunts, try not to get stuck here. bus timetable unknown, ran into a minivan driver who usually runs from dunhuang to jiayuguan who gave me a lift in the empty bus, 70 km for 80 kuai, down from 150. likely busses pass through sometime, but it was noon under the desert sun so I caved.

Anxi

Hotel :: , 100 kuai, bargained. decent room, a/c, electricity disappears for a while in the afternoon
Local map :: not available, but not necessary, the town/city is tiny
moto taxis :: readily available, but not necessary
taxis :: overavailable. getting to places out of town will cost you a pretty penny and you should be prepared to negotiate heavily, including the walk away. taxi to three places, ending in qiaowan for lunch and bus catching, 70+ km on seriously bad to no roads, 7ish hours, and some good insights on how to see local attractions without paying entrance fees, 200 kuai (down from an initial 800). I bought us lunch, and he waited with me for the bus even though I said it wasn’t necessary.

Qiaowan

nothing to see except a run down shack housing the human skin drum (I gave it a miss), decent restaraunt with very friendly owners across the street, busses come through about once an hour on the hour heading down the silk road. 40 kuai for a berth on a sleeper bus to lanzhou that dropped me on the outskirts of jiayuguan, though they would have gone in had I not said ‘oh, anywhere’s fine.’

Jiayuguan

Hotel :: ridiculously expensive, too used to tour groups. looked in piles of places, finally settled for 120 down from 240 in the poorly located ** with a nocturnal hairdressing shop down the corridor. cheapest place in town is 80, go for it if you have zero sense of smell, don’t need light, and don’t mind bathrooms that look like they survived the rebellion.
Local map :: never found
taxis :: helpful, but like to keep the meter running while being so. decent prices for out of town trips, 60 kuai half day out to the first beacon tower, stopping at the oldest bit of the great wall, passing by but not stopping into the great wall fortreess. 150 kuai to the ‘underground art gallery’ wei-jin tombs (well worth it in my opinion, but sparse, and not much to learn if you don’t have any chinese) then on to jiuquan, including hotel shopping (he even helped with some chinese to chinese translation)
food :: restaraunts close early, very early. street food hard to come by in the north end of town. either stay south towards the square/new bits or eat before 7.

Jiuquan

Hotel :: perfect location, beautiful room. ‘lost the key’ for the cheap 80 kuai rooms (something about not having a number that all chinese people have) so they bumped me to the 200 rooms for 100. tv gets the english channel.
Local map :: never found but never really looked
taxis :: available but not always familiar with where you want to go. ~20 km round trip to the mountain caves with two hour wait, 80 kuai
language :: insane dialect here, do not expect easy communication even if you have excellent putonghua.
food :: south from the drum tower a few blocks on the left is a little ‘muslim lanzhou beef noodles’ shop run by a wonderful family, three generations. stop in and say hello, the noodles are excellent too. snack row is about a block north and east from the drum tower, everything I tried was great.

Zhangye

Hotel :: excellent location next to the food market. most of the hotels are circled around, then on the block east of, the drum tower and almost all are cheap, varying only in cleanliness and possession/lack of nocturnal hairdressers. 70 kuai for a nice room, 24 hour hot water (a bit slow to warm up, just let it run a bit) and a/c. zhangye binguan looks pleasant, clean, and is in the quieter southern end of town, but its outer gates were locked when I arrived at a bit after noon.
Local map :: never looked
taxis :: never took
food :: street food just east of dico’s off the drum tower square. the local specialty mien was excellent. a lot of good small places with outdoor just south of the stuppa.
other :: sitting in the square, three grandmothers discovered I could speak chinese and within minutes I was surrounded in a crowd of at least 50, all trying to decide which of their relatives I should marry. they do not get a lot of foreigners here.

Mati

I decided against mati, but talks with the locals yielded the following information. they all swear that it’s day trips to mati only, no hotels. as the guide books promise accomidation I’m thinking that mati has become more touristy over the years and most people do the day trip to the temple. minibusses leave ~7:30 am and return at 5, it’s about an hour and a half I’m told. my other assumption is that, like xiahe and some other borderland tibetan areas, the locals are likely a bit fed up with tourists coming in and gawking at them. I wouldn’t go expecting the guide-book-promised crowd of curious locals offering tea and leading you around for the price of good conversation.

Wuwei

Hotel :: I started at the vaguely falling apart but quite friendly-staffed ** for 90 kuai. not too noisy, good location, but bizarre hot water routines even though they claim 24 hours and the toilet took about three hours to refill. on returning I splurged at the luxurious * at one end of walk street. very worth the extra 20 at 110 discounted.
Local map :: available, chinese only
moto taxis :: available, good knowledge of city
taxis :: available
food :: night market/snack row is down an alley off walk street (to the north, almost across from the big shopping center with outside tables for drinks and yogurt). fourth row on the left, first place on the right had the best fried baozi and soup I’ve had in china.

Minqin

no one in minqin could seem to understand why I was visiting minqin. locals friendly, though the occasional male seemed to possess a different set of rules of propriety towards females than the average chinese man. a very sweet three wheeled moto taxi driver took me around to the historical bits and through the old neighborhoods, including a very cool old city guardhouse/landlord estate. after of course driving past almost every other three wheeler in town to point out his foreign passenger. about two hours, maybe 15 km, 35 kuai. the caretaker, btw, was so happy to have someone show up that he told me more than I could ever comprehend about the history of the area, and was incredibly patient with my combination of poor chinese and boundless curiosity. there were a few hotels in town, including the minqin binguan which looked pleasant enough from the outside and was near the center of town.

a note about guide book maps ::

most of these cities are growing at an astounding rate. the central parts of the map will still put temples and such in the right places, but things like the bus stations are often not where the map says they are because the city has grown outwards and the stations follow. so getting off the bus and walking in what you think is the right direction isn’t always a wise move. though I have to say the outskirts of zhangye are lovely ;-)