Warsaw to Bangkok

The Sleeper Bus
For the uninitiated, the Chinese have a clever invention called the sleeper bus. Essentially, it has beds instead of seats. There are three columns of bunk beds, so each row has six beds. There are six rows. The beds are quite narrow, and six feet long. So it’s a squeeze, but not a huge one. As with any bus, it’s all about your fellow passengers. I expect people to stink after a 24-30 hour ride, but the guy next to me was rank when we left. That was fantastic.

Interestingly, there are no toilets on these buses. This got me wondering precisely how many pit stops we’d be making.

Leaving the station was an ordeal. The passengers were mostly Uyghur. While the Chinese and I lay quietly in our beds, the Uyghurs fussed and fidgeted like little children. They ran on. They ran off. They changed beds. They carried on conversations with people outside. It took twenty minutes just to pull out the station. And when we did, six or seven more passengers decided to show up. With huge bags that we didn’t really have room for. Then we finally got rolling…all the way to the gas station. I guess having the entire morning to fill up the tank wasn’t quite enough time for our driver.

The ride took 25 hours and was largely uneventful. The scenery ranged between desert and semi-desert; flat rockiness and tall rockiness. When morning light broke the view out the window looked exactly as it did when the sun set.

Arrival in Urumqi
One truth for me when backpacking is that if I have my pack on, I’m definitely on a short fuse. Get me lost and I’ll get upset at nothing. I’m such a grouch with that heavy thing on.

It’s actually not that heavy for the first half hour, which is why getting me lost makes me grouchy. It started with the guidebook. Ulitmately, getting around a place like China requires one. For example, many hotels here don’t take foreigners. (That’s government policy). This is especially true in Urumqi, so it’s good to have a guidebook to know where a backpacker can go for a cheap bed. But sometimes you end up wasting a lot of time anyway.

Let me get to the point. At the bus station, I skipped the taxi because he refused to talk money. I don’t get into a cab without setting a price first. So I decided to walk. However, the bus station is not on the map in the guidebook. That is not very helpful. But it says in what direction the station lies, and I had a compass. That was sufficient in Kazan, so I gave it a shot. The difference is that Russians actually have street signs, where the Chinese are just warming up to the concept. Some kids came to help. They “saved face” by pretending they knew the answer to my question when they clearly did not. So they told me yes, of course the present cross-street was the one I was looking for. I got hopelessly lost.

Fortunately, I wandered past the School of Foreign Languages and a helpful lad restored my faith in the Chinese and in teenagers in general by packing me onto a bus with full instructions for the driver.

Aggravation
So there I was at the train station. I left my bags and the luggage and with the help of my phrasebook constructed my order for the ticket lady. I can’t draw to save my life, so writing Chinese is very difficult for me. It took a while, but in that time the massive lines dissipated. Cool.

Ticket in hand, I had to find a place to stay for the night. Nobody near the train station would have me. I took a taxi and discovered the meter. That would have saved me a lot of time and frustration earlier! I’d forgotten those things existed.

But it didn’t save me further aggravation this time, however. The driver told me the place I wanted was closed. I went white. That was the only budget place in town to take foreigners. So he took me to find a hotel. We went to some decent-looking places, but they wouldn’t take me. I couldn’t make him understand. I knew they wouldn’t and could he please just take me to my place so I can see for myself that it’s closed!

Instead, he took me to the Ramada. They’ll take me, no worries. It’s not the swankiest chain in the world, but far beyond backpacker standards, and budget. I start staying at the Ramada I may as well just book a ticket to Beijing and fly home because my money will be gone just like that. It’s hospitality, I thought. There’s no backpacking tradition here and they assume that the rich foreigner wants the best. Anyway, I explained my situation to the duty manager and he called my hotel and confirmed they were open.

Now could my driver take me there? No, but he knew another place much cheaper than the Ramada. That’s when it dawned on me - he gets paid by the hotel to drop off customers and my hotel wasn’t going to pay him, so he wouldn’t take me there even for a paying fare. I ended up walking.

Bogeda Binguan is not only open but huge. It’s a three-star hotel but has backpacker dorms for $2.50 a night. That’s why you need a guidebook - you’d never know this from looking at the place.

So at this point, I was exasperated. But I’d had some time to think lately about why I was so burnt out on Central Asia. Some folks travel to immerse themselves in a culture. They spend forever in each place and hang out with locals, learn the language and generally “go native”. Other folks have a checklist of sites, museums and events and mostly just spend their time ticking things off that list. I travel to experience new things. Some of my favourite things in the world are food and drink, and in that regard I’d tapped Central Asia out. Uyghur culture didn’t seem too much different than Uzbek, so I wasn’t getting that many new experiences. But Urumqi, though still part of Central Asia, is much more Chinese. So I had some new things for me there.

Hamburgers
In Russia and associated countries, they do have hamburgers, but mainly at McDonald’s. The also have, however, the local version, which is a gamburger. Russians often replace ‘h’ with ‘g’, as in ‘alkogol’ and ‘Gamburg’. I’d avoided these as far as Bishkek, but out of curiosity decided to give one a go. It is not a hamburger at all, but rather a Haligonian-style donair, of dubious quality. Instead of donair sauce (that most hideous of condiments), they use Russian ketchup. Russian ketchup may as well be made by Aunt Jemima it’s so syrupy. In short, gamburgers are just a nasty fringe food.

This is unlike in North America where the hamburger (or in nice restaurants, steak) plays a very important role. It is the fallback food. Nothing else looks good - have a burger. Prices seem a little steep - the burger will be reasonable. Don’t really know what you want - it’s burger time. You can always rely on the hamburger.

Naturally, one of the first things I learned how to say in Mandarin was hamburger. Or at least, the Chinese equivalent, which is gongbao jiding. The the Western tongue, this is kung pao chicken and pretty much every restaurant in the country either serves it, or can whip it up on demand. It sure is a problem-solver. No English menu? Gongbao jiding. Nothing tasty-looking on other tables? Gongbao jiding. Can’t find a buffet? Forgot your phrasebook? All of the above came together for me so guess what I had on my first night in Urumqi? But oh, was it good! So many of my favourite ingredients - garlic, chiles, huajiao (Sichuan peppercorns), onion, ginger. I had a dryish lager from the Wusu brewery to go with it. (The other local brewer, Xinjiang, makes rather sweet beers, which are useless with hot food). I was a very happy guy.

I also grabbed some street food. In Urumqi, they have portable deep-dry carts that carry a variety of items on sticks, which are fried up and coated in hot sauce for no more than 1 yuan ($0.125 USD). I particularly enjoyed the Uyghur flatbread.

Leaving Xinjiang
Urumqi is the main city in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Prefecture, yet you’d hardly find a Uyghur person there - it is very Chinese. It is laid-back, with tree-lined streets and its a pretty easy place to relax, at least once you’ve got your room situation straightened out.

That China has great wealth is evident in the downtown area. Glass towers and designer shops abound. Unlike middle-class Russia, middle-class Chinese have style. Not everybody can afford this, of course, and you can see that on the south side of town.

Urumqi has a north-south wealth divide like that of Chicago. The south is all dilapidated slums and decrepit shantytowns. You even have people living in tents, illegally siphoning electricity from the power lines above.

The train ride out of town provides ample views of the south side. I was headed for Lanzhou. The second-class carriage is a little different from what you get in Europe or in Russia. You get open compartments with three beds stacked to the ceiling on either side. The atmosphere is very sociable, with lots of food, conversation and poker-playing. In the first couple of hours you get more scenery changes than on the entire Kashgar-Urumqi ride. Flat rocks to start, then tall rocks, giving way to the sweeping sands of the Taklamakan. Darkness fell way too soon.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2005 at 1:15 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The Sleeper Bus
For the uninitiated, the Chinese have a clever invention called the sleeper bus. Essentially, it has beds instead of seats. There are three columns of bunk beds, so each row has six beds. There are six rows. The beds are quite narrow, and six feet long. So it’s a squeeze, but not a huge one. As with any bus, it’s all about your fellow passengers. I expect people to stink after a 24-30 hour ride, but the guy next to me was rank when we left. That was fantastic.

Interestingly, there are no toilets on these buses. This got me wondering precisely how many pit stops we’d be making.

Leaving the station was an ordeal. The passengers were mostly Uyghur. While the Chinese and I lay quietly in our beds, the Uyghurs fussed and fidgeted like little children. They ran on. They ran off. They changed beds. They carried on conversations with people outside. It took twenty minutes just to pull out the station. And when we did, six or seven more passengers decided to show up. With huge bags that we didn’t really have room for. Then we finally got rolling…all the way to the gas station. I guess having the entire morning to fill up the tank wasn’t quite enough time for our driver.

The ride took 25 hours and was largely uneventful. The scenery ranged between desert and semi-desert; flat rockiness and tall rockiness. When morning light broke the view out the window looked exactly as it did when the sun set.

Arrival in Urumqi
One truth for me when backpacking is that if I have my pack on, I’m definitely on a short fuse. Get me lost and I’ll get upset at nothing. I’m such a grouch with that heavy thing on.

It’s actually not that heavy for the first half hour, which is why getting me lost makes me grouchy. It started with the guidebook. Ulitmately, getting around a place like China requires one. For example, many hotels here don’t take foreigners. (That’s government policy). This is especially true in Urumqi, so it’s good to have a guidebook to know where a backpacker can go for a cheap bed. But sometimes you end up wasting a lot of time anyway.

Let me get to the point. At the bus station, I skipped the taxi because he refused to talk money. I don’t get into a cab without setting a price first. So I decided to walk. However, the bus station is not on the map in the guidebook. That is not very helpful. But it says in what direction the station lies, and I had a compass. That was sufficient in Kazan, so I gave it a shot. The difference is that Russians actually have street signs, where the Chinese are just warming up to the concept. Some kids came to help. They “saved face” by pretending they knew the answer to my question when they clearly did not. So they told me yes, of course the present cross-street was the one I was looking for. I got hopelessly lost.

Fortunately, I wandered past the School of Foreign Languages and a helpful lad restored my faith in the Chinese and in teenagers in general by packing me onto a bus with full instructions for the driver.

Aggravation
So there I was at the train station. I left my bags and the luggage and with the help of my phrasebook constructed my order for the ticket lady. I can’t draw to save my life, so writing Chinese is very difficult for me. It took a while, but in that time the massive lines dissipated. Cool.

Ticket in hand, I had to find a place to stay for the night. Nobody near the train station would have me. I took a taxi and discovered the meter. That would have saved me a lot of time and frustration earlier! I’d forgotten those things existed.

But it didn’t save me further aggravation this time, however. The driver told me the place I wanted was closed. I went white. That was the only budget place in town to take foreigners. So he took me to find a hotel. We went to some decent-looking places, but they wouldn’t take me. I couldn’t make him understand. I knew they wouldn’t and could he please just take me to my place so I can see for myself that it’s closed!

Instead, he took me to the Ramada. They’ll take me, no worries. It’s not the swankiest chain in the world, but far beyond backpacker standards, and budget. I start staying at the Ramada I may as well just book a ticket to Beijing and fly home because my money will be gone just like that. It’s hospitality, I thought. There’s no backpacking tradition here and they assume that the rich foreigner wants the best. Anyway, I explained my situation to the duty manager and he called my hotel and confirmed they were open.

Now could my driver take me there? No, but he knew another place much cheaper than the Ramada. That’s when it dawned on me - he gets paid by the hotel to drop off customers and my hotel wasn’t going to pay him, so he wouldn’t take me there even for a paying fare. I ended up walking.

Bogeda Binguan is not only open but huge. It’s a three-star hotel but has backpacker dorms for $2.50 a night. That’s why you need a guidebook - you’d never know this from looking at the place.

So at this point, I was exasperated. But I’d had some time to think lately about why I was so burnt out on Central Asia. Some folks travel to immerse themselves in a culture. They spend forever in each place and hang out with locals, learn the language and generally “go native”. Other folks have a checklist of sites, museums and events and mostly just spend their time ticking things off that list. I travel to experience new things. Some of my favourite things in the world are food and drink, and in that regard I’d tapped Central Asia out. Uyghur culture didn’t seem too much different than Uzbek, so I wasn’t getting that many new experiences. But Urumqi, though still part of Central Asia, is much more Chinese. So I had some new things for me there.

Hamburgers
In Russia and associated countries, they do have hamburgers, but mainly at McDonald’s. The also have, however, the local version, which is a gamburger. Russians often replace ‘h’ with ‘g’, as in ‘alkogol’ and ‘Gamburg’. I’d avoided these as far as Bishkek, but out of curiosity decided to give one a go. It is not a hamburger at all, but rather a Haligonian-style donair, of dubious quality. Instead of donair sauce (that most hideous of condiments), they use Russian ketchup. Russian ketchup may as well be made by Aunt Jemima it’s so syrupy. In short, gamburgers are just a nasty fringe food.

This is unlike in North America where the hamburger (or in nice restaurants, steak) plays a very important role. It is the fallback food. Nothing else looks good - have a burger. Prices seem a little steep - the burger will be reasonable. Don’t really know what you want - it’s burger time. You can always rely on the hamburger.

Naturally, one of the first things I learned how to say in Mandarin was hamburger. Or at least, the Chinese equivalent, which is gongbao jiding. The the Western tongue, this is kung pao chicken and pretty much every restaurant in the country either serves it, or can whip it up on demand. It sure is a problem-solver. No English menu? Gongbao jiding. Nothing tasty-looking on other tables? Gongbao jiding. Can’t find a buffet? Forgot your phrasebook? All of the above came together for me so guess what I had on my first night in Urumqi? But oh, was it good! So many of my favourite ingredients - garlic, chiles, huajiao (Sichuan peppercorns), onion, ginger. I had a dryish lager from the Wusu brewery to go with it. (The other local brewer, Xinjiang, makes rather sweet beers, which are useless with hot food). I was a very happy guy.

I also grabbed some street food. In Urumqi, they have portable deep-dry carts that carry a variety of items on sticks, which are fried up and coated in hot sauce for no more than 1 yuan ($0.125 USD). I particularly enjoyed the Uyghur flatbread.

Leaving Xinjiang
Urumqi is the main city in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Prefecture, yet you’d hardly find a Uyghur person there - it is very Chinese. It is laid-back, with tree-lined streets and its a pretty easy place to relax, at least once you’ve got your room situation straightened out.

That China has great wealth is evident in the downtown area. Glass towers and designer shops abound. Unlike middle-class Russia, middle-class Chinese have style. Not everybody can afford this, of course, and you can see that on the south side of town.

Urumqi has a north-south wealth divide like that of Chicago. The south is all dilapidated slums and decrepit shantytowns. You even have people living in tents, illegally siphoning electricity from the power lines above.

The train ride out of town provides ample views of the south side. I was headed for Lanzhou. The second-class carriage is a little different from what you get in Europe or in Russia. You get open compartments with three beds stacked to the ceiling on either side. The atmosphere is very sociable, with lots of food, conversation and poker-playing. In the first couple of hours you get more scenery changes than on the entire Kashgar-Urumqi ride. Flat rocks to start, then tall rocks, giving way to the sweeping sands of the Taklamakan. Darkness fell way too soon.

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2005 at 1:14 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.