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Our OE

April - August 2024
We're off again! This time travelling by more conventional means.
All things going well we will visit; Japan, China, Singapore, Doha, UK, Spain, Germany, Turkey and the Philippines. Read more
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  • Our OE
    Day 48

    Welcome to China!

    May 19 in China ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C

    After a "quiet" day yesterday (only a Chinese wedding, meeting up with three groups of Vela's mates, and about 10 hours of Majiang) today was an exciting one! Nathan's parents arrived in China for the first time!

    We picked them up from the airport at about 10.30am and, after a quick refresh at the hotel, took them out for our favourite Chongqing style noodles. The noodle restaurant is quite famous for being owned by three brothers, who each work the restaurant for a year before taking two years off. Big thumbs up for the first meal in China.

    Afterwards we headed for Chongqing's famous monorail. We weren't the only ones having a gander at the famous line which goes right through the middle of a residential apartment building. We hopped on the monorail and rode a few stops with nice views of Chongqing over the Jialing River (smaller of the two rivers in Chongqing).

    We exited the monorail in the middle of the peninsula where the Jialing River meets the Yangtze. You could see where the green waters of the Jialing mixed into the browner colours of Yangtze. There is a famous tower complex (4 individual towers which are connected with a causeway 42 floors up) so we headed up to one of the bars for a spot of hydration and to enjoy the view.

    We then headed off to meet up with Vela's family. The restaurant put on an absolute feast, with dishes being stacked on top of each other in order to fit them on the table. Nathan's dad enjoyed having a taste of Baijiu with Vela's step dad, calling it "medicine" to help fight off any impending illness from the plane. Thank you to Vela's mum, Mei, for organising a fantastic welcoming dinner!    Read more

  • Our OE
    Day 45

    Marathon back to Urumqi

    May 16 in China ⋅ ☁️ 40 °C

    Today essentially marked the end of our time in Xinjiang. With our flights leaving Urumqi tomorrow, we had to make the 680km journey from Nalati, through mountains, valleys and deserts, back to Urumqi. Our GPS suggested about 10 and a half hours travel time, but with plenty of obstacles along the way it took closer to 12.

    The first obstacles we faced were livestock and construction vehicles. The livestock is pretty much par for the course in Xinjiang (we've never been stuck in so many sheep tornadoes) but the construction vehicles were quite interesting. They are currently building a massive new highway through this area - pretty much the whole way to Urumqi - expected to cut the travel time in half and set to be finished by the end of next year. The amount of tunneling and bridging required was on a completely different level to anything in NZ. There were trucks with massive concrete girders backing across the road, diggers and other construction items we had to wait for or dodge.

    The next obstacle was going over the mountain pass. Going up the hill it was very obvious why they need a new highway through here. It was utter chaos with potholes that might swallow a small child, and some parts being more pothole than road. This slowed the many freight trucks down to a crawl, and sometimes a complete stop. The traffic was forced to weave all over the road to try and navigate a path around some of the craters. Adding to this, cars (and trucks) were overtaking and undertaking left, right and centre.

    Vela did an amazing job getting us through this safely, and after about an hour of climbing this mountain, going high enough that there was snow on the sides of the road (and only about 12 degrees outside), we made it to the other side and were greeted with amazing views of the arid grasslands below, framed by the mountain ranges on both sides.

    Our next obstacle came shortly after descending onto the plains by way of a police checkpoint. Unbeknownst to us, we were about to enter a military area and foreigners are not allowed through... With no other roads we were faced with the possibility of having to backtrack over the mountains and back around the northern side of the Sky Mountains range - the way we had come. Fortunately the head police officer took pity on us and relented. After taking our details and photos of the vehicle etc, they allowed us to continue through. Phew!

    It was pretty easy going for the next few hours, apart from Vela earning a speeding ticket (bit ridiculous having 60km/h limits on flat, straight, wide roads), but we weren't the only ones getting fined. We started weaving through some valleys and encountered a short thunderstorm before finally popping out into a completely barren, alien landscape. It felt a bit like what you might imagine Mars might be like. Bare hard rock everywhere. Piled into hills and valleys. Almost no vegetation to speak of. We think that this area had been heavily mined in the past, and what we were seeing was whatever was left in the aftermath.

    The atmosphere had turned hazy, and a quick glance at the dashboard showed the temperature had leaped from 12 degrees as we crossed the mountains to 39 degrees! We drove through a heavy industrial area (wish we had taken some photos but we forgot) with massive power plants and what looked like concrete factories and oil refineries. With the haze and the temperature it was actually quite quite a spectacle.

    About an hour and a half out from Urumqi we stopped for a quick break (Sunny had done her driving stint and Vela was ready to hop back behind the wheel). The temperature was still baking outside, and the air was so dry to breathe it felt like the moisture was being sucked out of your body. Everything, everywhere, was flat. The sun was barely poking through the haze - but obviously still had plenty of potency.

    About 12 hours after leaving Nalati, we finally made it to Urumqi! The atmosphere had cleared up and we were glad to have made it in one piece. No hotel for us tonight, instead we had booked an overnight Chinese "foot" massage (it's more of a full body thing). We had a rather rude lady at the front desk and we thought about turning around - but it was too difficult as we'd handed back the keys to our Orange Tank. So we persevered. Fortunately the massage more than made up for the rudeness. The masseuses were lovely and Vela (whose voice was starting to return) enjoyed chatting with them.

    After the massage we managed to negotiate our way onto a Majiang table, and played until 4.30am. Sunny and Clara stayed up and headed to the airport at 5.30, while Nathan, Vela and Mei managed to get a few hours of sleep as they had a midday flight booked.

    Xinjiang has been amazing! The epic scenery and landscapes. The friendly people. The completely different cuisine. And although we only saw a fraction of this province, we highly recommend!    Read more

  • Our OE
    Day 44

    Nalati National Scenic Area

    May 15 in China ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    Today we returned to Nalati National Scenic area and this time drove to the highland meadow area. After arriving we took a short bus trip near the top of the mountains to an area that still had snow (although it was meeting rapidly in the spring heat). Nice little area with a couple of hawks/eagles circling around in the updraft.

    After taking some photos we headed back down and had a little picnic in the grass. A couple of short stops for some more photos with the sheep/cows/horses before we left the area. Getting a bit fatigued by all the grasslands and mountain views and starting to look forward to some different tourist activities once we leave Xinjiang.

    We had a Chinese BBQ for dinner. The first place we looked at has an awesome display of food, but on closer inspection it looked like some of the heat was old and had been sitting out for a while so we moved on to another vendor with fresher looking food (which was 100% the right call). When looking around the streets and listening to the music, you would be excused for thinking you had left China and ended up in the Middle East.

    At the end of our meal (about 10pm) we enjoyed watching a pretty little sunset. Back to the hotel for some rest with a long (at least 10h) drive back to Urumqi tomorrow.    Read more

  • Our OE
    Day 41–43

    Kurdnin Scenic Reserve & Skyhawk Mesa

    May 12 in China ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    After having a blast exploring Kalajun Scenic Farms Reserve, Vela caught some sort of bug, causing a mild fever and sore throat. This meant a couple of slightly quieter days. We did spend one night glamping in Kurdnin scenic reserve. Fortunately there was a heater in our tent but we still didn't get the best sleep. Our luck also ran out and while in Kurdnin we had drenching, misty rain - not ideal for camping. We made the best we could of the situation.

    After Kurdnin we headed for another little town - Nalati - nearby to another scenic reserve. After a good night's sleep with a solid roof over our heads, it was time to get some fresh air and stretch our legs. So we hit the Skyhawk Mesa hiking trail. 2777 steps taking us from 1500m to 1800m - it was a reasonably demanding hike.

    Vela still wasn't 100% but managed to get about halfway before turning back with Sunny and Clara. Nathan and Mei continued on to the top and were greeted with some pretty epic views of the mountains and valleys. While they were busy getting their photos, there was some movement in the ground nearby. A little video showed this busy little guy, beavering away conducting earthworks. We think it was a vole.

    On the way back down Mei taught Nathan some new Mandarin - Wo Men Hui Lai Liao, meaning "we made it back!" There were also some interesting/funny motivational signposts on the trail, too focused on making it to the top on the way up, Nathan stopped to have a read of them on the way down and took photos of the best ones.

    Ready for a nice hot shower to recover from that one!    Read more

  • Our OE
    Day 40

    Exploring Kalajun

    May 11 in China ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    We woke up this morning to find that our host was telling us the truth about the mountains. It was still quite hazy though so they didn't photograph very well (hence very heavily edited images to try and show what we could actually see). We were treated to a delicious little breakfast by our hosts, who were absolutely amazing, before we set out to explore more of Kalajun.

    On our way we saw fields full of yellow flowers, and our brains were thoroughly messed with as there was snow on the roadside, even though it was close to 30 degrees outside... We headed to a spot called "Flying Falcons Scenic Outlook" which had a great view of the mountains. Song the way we were overtaken by a herd of noisy sheep being driven to new fields. We saw a couple of birds of prey in the sky, soaring on the air currents.

    After we'd had enough of the scenery, we tried to head to a nearby canyon which is full of adventure tourism activities, but the wind has really got up by this point (struggling to open the car does), and Vela even joked "how did we end up back in Wellington?" Because of the wind, the gondola was closed, so we took a couple of photos before leaving Kalajun and heading to our accommodation. We were lucky to find our accommodation had a hot tub, so we made use of that, Nathan a little gingerly due to his sunburn (maybe a result of the geomagnetic storm causing all the crazy lights in the night sky?)    Read more

  • Our OE
    Day 39

    The road to Kalajun

    May 10 in China ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    A slow morning today. After such delicious samsa yesterday we returned to the same little shop and were treated to watching the process of making the samsa. Today they were making them in a slightly different shape called Palmoudan (I think that's what he was saying) which basically meant it was pressed using your hand. Once they were further, the samsa are stuck to the inside of a clay oven to bake before being scraped off to eat. Vela's mum even had a little dance with the kitchen team to some local Xinjiang music!

    After lunch we made a quick stop at a little town called Tekesi famous for its layout of an 8-diagram which is essentially 4 ring roads in the shape of an Octagon with roads segmenting them through their points. The shape is significant in Buddhist culture. Vela flew the drone to capture some of the shape, but the drone is limited to about 120m so we couldn't quite show the whole layout - but I'm sure you get the idea. Before leaving we made sure to sample some locally made ice cream.

    Then it was onwards to our main destination - Kalajun. Kalajun is kind of difficult to describe, it felt like we were staying on a farm (which I guess we were) but it was also a scenic park with tourist activities. The best label I could put on it would be a "scenic farm reserve." On our way in we drove up steep cliffs to where the landscape turned into Highland meadows with rolling hills. We passed herds of sheep, cattle and horses, and there were plenty of marmots doing their thing in the fields too. We arrived at our Mongol Bao camp for the evening, we got much better vibes here than in Sayram Lake. Apparently there is a view of snowy mountains from the Mongol Bao, but we couldn't see anything due to the haze.

    Our host offered us to head on a short horse ride, about 2 hours, which we quickly accepted. It was great fun walking the horses over to the forest and back, although they might have needed a bigger horse for Nathan...

    After our mini trek, we returned to our Mongol Bao and had a lamb hotpot for dinner before settling down for some much needed rest.    Read more

  • Our OE
    Day 38

    Through the mountains to Yining

    May 9 in China ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    Shorter day on the road today, with just 3 hours driving. Before leaving, wet find a 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 didn't quite get the rub of the green, but Sunny outdid 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

  • Our OE
    1
    Day 37

    Mongol Bao (Yurt)

    May 8 in China ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    After we'd had enough sightseeing, we headed for tonight's accommodation. We were booked to stay in a "Mongol Bao" - literally meaning Mongolian steamed bun, but known to most of us as a Yurt. We approached the spot where we were told to go, and just as we turned to go off road we were stopped by a police car.

    After a bit of discussion, it turns out that none of the yurts in the area are legal due to fire safety and licensing issues. The police told us that they'd shut this particular site down recently, and that even though we could see the Mongol Bao's on the hillside, they were empty. They also warned us against staying in them as there had been cases of theft by local farmers, leaving tourists with no phones and no way of contacting anyone for help.

    Following this discussion, Vela called the person we had booked with, and he said they had moved to another location. He said to come and have a look at the setup if we were concerned about safety. We had a look, and Nathan was very strongly against staying there, feeling that the police wouldn't warn us against it for no reason, however he was out voted 4-1 by the girls, so that was that.

    The site was very pretty, overlooking the lake with the snowy mountains behind. It was pretty cold by this point in the evening, but the fire inside the tent kept everything nice and toasty. However just as we were settling in for the night, the police showed up again. Their intent was to close the site down and kick everyone out as it was not a legal accommodation. Vela did some quick negotiations, saying it was booked through a big travel agency website and how were we to know that it wasn't legal? She also said it was too hard to find other accommodation at this point, and they relented and fortunately allowed us to stay the night. It did put a bit of a negative spin on what otherwise could have been an amazing experience.

    After a chilly nights sleep, we awoke again to an amazing blue sky. So we took advantage of the beautiful location before heading on our way again.    Read more

  • Our OE
    Day 37

    Sayram Lake

    May 8 in China ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    Big day today. We woke up and opened our curtains to see beautiful blue sky. We were very surprised to find that we had a view of the snowy "Sky Mountains" range, especially given it was already 23 degrees outside at 9am.

    After breakfast we set off, and we had endless views of plains all around us on the highway. More of the same cereal crop being farmed and also a cargo train crossing the landscape. A couple of wispy clouds also started to form, providing the sky with a bit of interest.

    After driving for a couple of hours, we could see what looked like a lake in the distance. It turned out to be a solar farm which stretched on and on. We drove for about 10 minutes and still couldn't see the end of it. This was then followed by a big wind farm, with towering turbines dotting the hills and plains. Really cool to see renewable energy sources being built, and the sheer scale of them was very impressive.

    After the wind farm we finally made it to Sayram Lake. The lake was stunning with barely a ripple on it, making for some fun photography with the snow dusted mountains reflecting in the lake's surface. We drove around the lake to an area where the snow came right down to the water. There was a boardwalk heading up through the pine trees so we hiked up the hills a little way. We found a nice little area for a picnic, so we stopped. Today is also Vela's mums (Mei) birthday, and the girls had prepared a couple of little sweet treats to celebrate. On our way back down, we briefly spied what we think was a Bobak Marmot, before it scurried underneath the walkway.

    Afterwards we hiked back down the path to the car and drove to tonight's accommodation.    Read more

  • Our OE
    22
    Day 35–36

    Bai Li Dan Xia (100 miles of canyons)

    May 6 in China ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

    Flying into Xinjiang was exceptionally scenic. After leaving the typical lush Chinese landscapes behind, we flew over snowy mountains and sandy deserts before landing ahead of time at Urumqi airport. We picked up our rental car, a bright orange "Tank" (Jeep/Hummer lookalike) and went to check in at our hotel.

    Arriving at the hotel we immediately faced a problem, the hotel couldn't cater to foreign guests. China is quite strict when it comes to certain rules, and one of them is they have a system so they know where foreigners are staying at all times. The hotel we had booked was not linked into the system, so if they provided Nathan with a room and the police found out, they risk being completely shut down by the government. Fortunately they offered us a full refund, and Vela quickly worked her magic and found a hotel nearby that could take foreigners.

    We took advantage of the free washing machines and dryer while we waited for Sunny & Clara's planes to arrive. With Sunny and Clara joining our party, we headed to dinner. Being in the very Northeast of China, Xinjiang's food, culture and even the appearance of some of the locals, is quite middle eastern. The cuisine is very lamb heavy, quite different to the many pork based dishes found elsewhere in China. By about 9.30, the sun was starting to set (all of China runs on Beijing time, so being so far east and north means late sunsets) so we decided to play a little Majiang before bed. Nathan managed to be top scorer again, more than making up for the money Vela lost...

    After a good night's sleep, it was time to hit the road. The landscape started out exceptionally flat, with fields of some unknown crop (maybe a grain of stone sort?) for miles and miles. We turned off the main highway, past a little power plant (we think it was nuclear) and headed to the hills. It was incredible how quickly the landscapes changed. Suddenly there were massive hills, rocky cliffs, and deep valleys around us. We stopped for a photo shoot (and bathroom break) before heading higher into the mountains to a viewpoint for more photos. We passed lots of farms with sheep, cows and goats, we even had to wait for a herd of cows using the road.

    We made our way back into civilization and headed to a town called Wusu, where Wusu beer is brewed. It was a bit of a nothing town, with many of the buildings looking abandoned, but we did find a bit of street art. Obviously the artist was a time traveller and knew Vela, Sunny and Clara would be visiting one day.

    We made it into Kuytun in time for dinner, and we had the most delicious meal of lamb any of us has ever tasted (think Nathan's face says it all). The meat was literally falling off the bone, and so full of flavour. Nathan managed to get his hands on the hock bone - very happy boy.

    Back to our hotel in time to watch the late sunset (sorry about the dirty windows), no issues this time!    Read more

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