yining

(while working on closing the time gap i've produced here, i'll start writing about china in real-time. that way i can throw in some fresh impressions. multiple timelines make for a better plot anyways)

i saw a good couple of buses at the terminal on my last morning in kazakhstan, but mine wasn't among them. after a couple of minutes of "oh it'll turn up in a sec"; a guy came up to check my tickets. turns out my bus had somehow already left long before it should've. i couldn't believe it.

but it got worse. at the ticket counter, they treated me as if had simply missed the bus and wanted me to pay half for a bus to the border and then for a taxi to cover the rest of the way. i wasn't having it. they didn't really speak english, but understood when i started raising my voice. after i threw in some more italian type hand gestures, they finally gave me the ticket to the border for free and promised to find me a free bus ride there. hallelujah.

i had three hours of sleep, so i spent a good portion of the ride trying to sleep. there wasn't all that much to miss outside, just endlessly stretching kazakh steppe. after about five hours, we reached customs. at both the kazakh and the chinese checkpoint, the officers greeted me in german upon seeing my passport. i really haven't experienced the horrible xinjiang treatment everyone is talking about, so far, the chinese have all been super sweet.

the bus guy actually sticked to his promise and waved down another bus for me and it wasn't before long that i could see yining ahead of me. i was pretty excited, but still had to get to my hostel without internet and with western navigation of course being useless in china. i just had a screen recording of me zooming into a place on a chinese nav app, but to my own surprise, i made it.

i get a lot more attention walking down the street again, and even at the hostel, everyone is chinese. as soon as one person starts talking to you, all the others come in as well. it seems as though they all kept a genuine childlike curiosity, but they're always super respectful, which makes those encounters much more enjoyable than in some other countries.

the next day, i made some plans for the rest of china and found out that the ferry to japan that i wanted to take is suspended. also, i booked a train, but due to some rainfall and flooding on the way, it was canceled. booked another one the next day, but i really can't lose much time. the no-visa policy for china only applies for 14 days, so if i haven't made it out of the country by then, i'm fucked. some people have recommended mongolia, but it doesn't really attract me right now. instead, i'll try the ferry to korea instead.

anyways, yining turned out to be much nicer than i'd thought. it's somewhat walkable and there's a sort of spiderweb park area in the middle. it's stuffed with domestic tourists, but super beautiful nonetheless, with lots of little traditional shops and restaurants. the food is also great, but i always have to look for a place that has pictures of the food with prices so i can just point to what i want and spare the hassle. you can get a nice big noodle soup for as low as 10 yen (~1,30€) and supermarkets are expensive, so i eat outside twice a day.

life's good here, china is really growing on me :)Read more