It seems like an age since it even entered my head to talk to our journal and this time it wasn’t the pressures of travel as I’ll explain later.
First to Xu, our taxi driver you met in my last post, he treated us right royally. On the first morning he arrived early and waited for us. We had come here with one objective - the aforementioned Mogao caves. A group of fourth century Buddhist caves, exquisitely painted and fantastically well-preserved. But Xu had worked up a whole itinerary for the next two days, involving the ‘eight major tourists sights’ of Dunhuang. It was a mixed bag, but it put in our two days nicely.
First day was, of course the Mogao caves, but on the way Xu stopped at a convenience store and appeared back with a big bag of bottled water for us. At the ticket counter for the caves, a moderate AliPay disaster was averted when he used his own Alipay to buy our tickets, just when I thought we might need to rush around looking for an ATM of which there were none on site.
After the caves he picked us up, and although he was keen to get on with his itinerary, he always asked what we we wanted to do first. Since we weren’t sure he decided we might like a rest and he could come for us again in the evening. What an amazing idea! In the evening, however, all we wanted to do after our rest was go out to a local bar and get some dinner. He dropped us off and picked us back up later that evening. True to his word our bill for the day was 120 yuan and no, the water had been his gift.
Next day he arrived with a big bag of local pastries and two cartons of the local speciality - ‘apricot peel tea’. There wasn’t too much of the stuff around Dunhuang to interest us, although we did get to see the last customs post on the silk route with it’s spectacular location at the very edge of the desert and the crescent lake and it’s spectacular sand dunes. On the last morning Xu picked us up to take us to the station.
After that everything just fell flat.
Our next stop was Xi’an, home of the Terra Cotta warriors. I had developed a bit of a cough during the train journey, which by the next morning had become a full-blown fever with every joint in my body aching. It was all I could do to drag myself around the emperor Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum site. Although the miserable sight I presented was only fit for a mausoleum.
Even as we wait to board our train to Hong Kong and our last day in China, I still only feel two steps away from miserable.
Sadly only one day in Hong Kong and we’ll have to try and find a post office to send back the stuff we feel sure will be confiscated if we try to take them into Australia, and maybe find a chemist where we can get some decongestant to deal with the after effects of this infection we’ve both succumbed to.
Happier tales next time!
