Through the mountains to Yining

Shorter day on the road today, with just 3 hours driving. Before leaving, we found a nice spot and played with the drone for a bit. We headed through the mountains and stopped for a couple of photos, admiring the much greener grass in the valley with the backdrop of the snow capped mountains.

We then made our way out of the mountains and into Yining. We had a very late lunch at about 4pm (remembering the clocks are a bit weird as they run on Beijing time, so are at least 2 hours out from what we'd expect based on the sun). Lunch consisted of these little lamb filled pastries called Samsa, which were amazing and reminded us a little of an NZ meat pie or sausage roll. We had these with a side of lamb soup.

We then checked into our hotel, which is quite a famous hotel which was originally for diplomats from the old USSR back in the day. The room we had was right at the top on the 12th floor, and was a suite split over two levels with far more space than we could ever need. It cost about 600 yuan ($150nzd), so was quite a steal.

We headed back out into town for some Majiang. We upped the stakes but Nathan and Vela couldn't find their luck, while Sunny outplayed everyone - the only player who won any money. After getting a bit carried away with the Majiang we had dinner at about midnight, BBQ lamb and beef. Yum!Read more