travel suggestions

[Mr Nobody]

Yeah. Didn't you know?






















I got it George. I just wanted to say I nearly bought one, you know, to make me sound cooler than I really am. How many people get the opportunity to buy a genuine Dali?

[George61]

I didn't buy one for the very reason that his work is/was being churned out in great numbers by his publisher.
Prints, that is....Lithographs, etc.
No point having a signed and numbered litho, if the numbers keep increasing.

[Ruth]

There's a great Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. My son is a huge fan and we spent a day there.

I had a professor born into a monied family. [How do you spell 'monied'? Any way, she was mega-rich; taught one class a semester for fun and to keep her brain active, I guess.] She invited us (her philosophy of art students) to her home for a pot luck dinner and to look at her art collection. Literally hundreds of originals. She had a sketch done by Dali in one of her five bathrooms. It was one he'd done as prep for a larger picture. Amazing the stuff she had. I wouldn't mind living in her house, but it looked like a museum.

This is so way-off the thread, I'll bring it back. Glad you had a good vacation with your family, amewupp. Too bad about Xi'an. I haven't been there, although it's very high on my list of 'want to do' places.

[Lotus Eater]

Xi'an is a great city. I've lived here now for 18+ months - and still find new things to do. Yesterday took Aussie friend to Xingqing Gongyuan - lovely 52 hectare park, with lakes, 'natural' gardens (i.e. ones that are a bit neglected and so nice to sit peacefully in) + highly ornamental gardens, open-air mahjiangg, tea house, restuarants. Hadn't been to this garden before, so it's lovely to have another place to take people.

Had some locals singing and playing music - just for their own enjoyment. Decided to teach friend how to play mahjiangg. Sat down at one of the tables - within 2 minutes 2 locals joined us, so we could have a 4-handed game, and another came along as coach for my friend (so she won the first round didn't she!)

Stuff like this happens in Xi'an all of the time.

Then went to the 8 Immortals Temple - a Daoist temple. Wandered through, chatted to monks - they then directed us to the tea house, so we sat there, overlooking a tiny garden and the path the monks take to their living quarters drinking tea and smiling/chatting to the monks as they trotted past. Played in the nice little antiques market opposite afterwards, then went to a western cafe for dinner.

Xi'an caters for everything!

Going to the snake bar tonight!

Very interesting aside - during our wanders through Xingqing Gongyuan came across my first time in open space openly gay guys! Only other time I have seen gay Chinese guys in China being relatively open is in the gay bars. This couple were in a public garden, where all and sundry could see them.

China is achanging.

The food here is good - from all over China, and the Xinjiang food is almost as good as in Wulumuqi.

The locals are the coolest dancers - especially the Aussie ones - because they practise a lot!!

But Aussies also make good tour guides - and they speak totally unaccented English - proper they call it! Easily understood by all.
Although sometimes they tend to get a bit bossy and tell you which Terracotta Warrior Pits to visit in which order and where to buy stuff. But they do try to have good relationships with the stall owners they take people to! NO kickbacks either!

[Roger]

Last summer holiday I finally made a dream come true - no repeat visit to Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Zhongdian, Jinghong but a first to KASHGAR!
The hard part of it was that to get there by railway you have to put in around 5 to 7 days (during summer peak season, anyway!). From Guangzhou to Lanzhou: around 40 hours; then one night stay there due to train the same day being booked out;next day train to HAMI (the same tain continued on to URUMQI). I visited very good friends in Hami; to Urumqi it would have been one day and one night. The distance is around 1800 kms from Lanzhou; then another 24 hours by fast tain (a slower one that costs less and always is booked out several days ahead takes 33 hours) to KASHGAR.

What do YOU expect to see in Kashgar?
I recommend you read SILK DREAMS, TROUBLED ROAD by Jonny Bealby. This Englishman covered Pakistan-Caspian Sea with a female partner, mostly on horseback; in Kashgar they bought the horses for their journey into the former Soviet Central Asian republics. A thrilling tale!

But as for Kashgar, he mentions it only briefly, and I too cannot please your exaggerated expectations. It is a very Chinese-looking town albeit in a territory that often reminds one of Northern Africa.

I did find a typical Arab-style town centre (but rather by chance - you won't detect it on a tourist map!), and I visited the famous Ed Kah mosque (really worthwhile). Most impressive was the mausoleum for that Uygur woman who was given to a Manchu emperor as a minor wife. The mausoleum is outside town and its surroundings are marked by tall cypress trees, roads are lined by earth walls and houses are made of adobe - thus green and brown and blue (sky) dominate, and you can feel transported gback to the Near East; Uygurs in Kashgar look even more European than those you may have seen in China proper.

Anyway, you have to live in a guesthouse, and you have to do shopping; I visited an Internet bar and 3 out of the four I found were owned by Han-Chinese; they were as indifferent to me as they always are anywhere in China; the Uygurs in the fouth one were decidedly more cooperative.
Back to Urumqi/Turpan - across 1400 kms of desert. It's something you must have seen with your own eyes - mountains often materialising out of nowhere, then flat sand again, then a wadi, then a green patch, then yellow rocky desert again...

It was an insightful trip! I recommend you spend a few days at Turpan and visit its outlying areas such as the Grape Valley or ghost towns. Turpan itself is ugly.

[Raoul Duke]

Roger, please consider formalizing some of this good stuff up in the Cities Info area. I don't think we have anything from Xinjiang at all...