Back in Urumqi

Yesterday, we decided to do some exploring around town, Urumqi is a fairly big city with many different sections of town; Uygher, Han Chinese, Chinese Muslim Hui, and Russian are the biggest sections. We stuck mainly to the Uygher area because we were given suggestions of what to do by Uygher people. We first visited the Red Mountain, which is a park and has rides and games similar to a county fair. Since is was Sunday, it was packed full of people just napping, fishing, and playing games. We walked to the top where there is an old pagoda and paid to go in to see it. On the top level we had a great view of the entire city! On our way down to the bottom of the mountain, we stopped and watched some games, looked at some man-made waterfalls and got some ice cream. We also came across a Chinese roller coaster, which was not so much a roller coaster as a big bike. You had to actually peddle yourself up and down these hills in a great big circle, we thought it looked totally lame, but there were a lot of people riding it so apparently people thought it was a lot of fun.

After the mountain we headed toward People's Park. This park is an enormous park in the middle of the city with ponds and games and music. Again, there were a ton of people just hanging out relaxing, playing instruments and singing. There was also this pond where kids could rent these giant plastic bubbles and run on the water, it was hilarious to see them run and bump into each other, falling down and spinning around in the bubble! We spent a couple hours here just relaxing and taking in the sites. We randomly found a ticket counter that was offering bus rides to Tian Chi (Heavenly Lake) the next day, so we decided that would be fun and bought tickets. We headed home early, knowing we had to get up early the next day.

So today we did wake up early and had some free hotel breakfast before heading to the bus stations for Tian Chi. We arrived to the bus on time and settled in for the 2 hour ride. Now, normally Chinese transportation is quite timely and organized, but not today. We took the bus for like 15 minutes and then pulled into a parking lot where we had to transfer buses. About an hour after our scheduled time to leave, we were on the road. Only speaking English is usually not a problem on tour buses but, today we wished we had known some more Chinese. Although we had bought an all-inclusive ticket the day before, the tour guide tried to sell us another ticket on the bus, she couldn't explain what it was so we didn't buy it, but were left confused as to whether we should buy it or not. After being on the bus for 1 hour, we pulled off to a tourist trap area where they were selling roots, herbs, and other Chinese medicine. Here we met Fried, a German guys, and his Chinese girlfriend. Since we were the only English speaking people on the tour, we quickly made friends. When we finally made it to the mountain we had to take another 1/2 way up where we got lunch. After lunch, our group took another bus to the top, but Nate and I, tired of the bus thing decided to hike it, which only took 15 minutes! We had planned on 5-6 hours at the lake but only ended up having 3 so we decided to hike around on our own. For all the hassled that the bus trip had been, it was worth it because the lake was beautiful! It is a long narrow lake surrounded by mountains, with many paths and trails around it. We started hiking and just explored, wading in the water for a bit and relaxing on a big boulder at the tip of a bay.

Our German friend and his girlfriend were spending the night here and in hindsight, we should have done the same thing because the lake was just that beautiful. Instead we walked nearly to the other tip of the lake and then headed back. While waiting for the bus, we explored some of the terrible man-made waterfalls at the bottom of the mountain, the Chinese people loved these even though they were obviously fake, but we are not sure if anyone but us was aware of that.

The bus ride home was also a bit annoying, stopping at tourist shops and overall just taking a really long time, so when we got near the city, we hopped in a cab and went back to the hotel on our own. We went out to a nice dinner and then stopped at a bar called Fubar, the only foreign owned establishment in Xinjiang. Here, we had a couple drinks and chatted with the owner then headed home. Overall, we had mixed feelings about the day, the travel had been long and annoying but the Lake was wonderful, we decided that if we went there again, we would probably just hire a driver, which would have solved all our problems.