.: January 2008

From Sost, a boarder town in Pakistan we set off to China. That time we didn't know it would take about 14 hours to get to Kashgar, the only big town in the North - West part of China. The distance between Pakistani and Chinese check points is 200km and the boarder itself is located on the altitude 5000m!
We didn't prepare ourselves for such a long journey we even didn't change money to Yuans. When we got to the Chinese boarder, we felt cold (it was November and everything was already white), hungry and hopeless as we didn't have the money to buy food. We looked and felt very miserable when suddenly four Pakistani guys came and invited us for dinner. Shahid, Saleem, Ali and Blackbat (it's how they called him) took care of us as if we were their family or friends - they bought us food, gave a blanket in a cold bus and once we got to Kashgar, in the middle of the night, they took us with them to a hotel, where as old clients they got a bargain price for really nice rooms. I don't know what would have happened if we hadn't met them? It turned out they were Pakistani businessmen that travel to China regularly to buy stuff extremely cheap and sell it Pakistan, of course with a big profit.
We spent with them almost 2 weeks and they were still treating us as their guests. At the beginning it was quite awkward situation for us as they didn't let us pay for anything and that time it was difficult for us to accept a simple fact that people can just give without expecting anything in return. We made friends with them and spent great time in Kashgar and Urumqi. Unfortunately the time to say 'good bye' had come and we were left again on our own.

Then we learnt how difficult the communication with Chinese was. They don't speak English at all, they don't even understand basic, international words like 'hotel', 'internet' or 'WC'... so we thought we'd better learn some Chinese in order to make our traveling in China a bit easier. During the whole stay we had the communication problem, even with those few people who could speak English we couldn't find any connection.

We have visited a few major cities like Lanzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. We have visited beautiful Chinese temples in Lanzhou, have experienced some of Guangzhou night life and also some of their local famous dumplings. Shenzhen is known for its gigantic bargain markets so we did some shopping there. Hong Kong was full of concrete and brands, we didn't fell comfortable there. It's like a country inside a country and even has its own currency - HK dollar. When we entered Hong Kong we didn't know that our Chinese visa would automatically expire. We had to get a new one, which was unnecessary hassle.

Our last destination in China was ancient town Dali, which is situated near the foothills of the Himalayas, in Yunnan province, south of Tibet. It had a really backpacker atmosphere, we stayed in 'Green Lodge' guesthouse run by a fantastic couple of Chinese hippies. We planned to spend there 2 days, we stayed 9.

Immortal Mao, Kashgar