Day 434 - Returning to our Xinjiang home

As the train rolled into Urumqi station 20 minutes late (after sitting just out of town for 20 minutes!) we were waiting anxiously by the exit to be one of the first travellers out. Usually we sit in our seats and laugh at the Chinese people so keen to get off the train that they line up for 10 minutes before the train gets in, but today we were first off! The reason we were in such a hurry was that we had to buy our Saturday tickets to Kazakhstan (now that it's a Thursday, this is permitted) - so we ran, drawing even more attention to ourselves, and made it just in time to stop the curtain closing at the ticket office. The guard at the hotel entrance wasn't even concerned when Adam dropped the bags at the entrance to run to the office window - lately we have had to open our bags everywhere we go, but today Adam didn't have time to stop while they search for something (we're not sure what, and we're not sure they even know what)!

Tickets in hand (whoop! whoop!), the butterflies increased upon the realisation that we are leaving China in 2 days time and going to a place where we can't speak the language, where everything is 5-times as expensive as China, the cops are corrupt, but at least we can write anything on the blog with out fear of being completely blocked and censored.

We made it back to the Maitian Hostel, whose welcoming sign inside proclaims it as 'your home in Xinjiang', and considering we'll stay here for over a week in total, it kinda does feel like that! We had left our huge packs here and only taken a day bag to Kashgar, so it was almost like walking into your bedroom and seeing all your things there.

We spent another hour of our lives at the always incredibly slowly-serviced China Post, but were lucky to get a friendly worker helping us out. Another box sent home, a little more room in our packs ...

After lunch / dinner of noodle and chuanr, we chilled out on the net, and hung at our hostel home doing what most of China is doing at the moment - watching the Olympics. We have been shocked at the behaviour of many Chinese spectators on the tv who are clearly boo-ing any non-Chinese athlete - it kind of surprised us that the usually welcoming and friendly Chinese could act in such a non-sportsman-like way.

Adlibing it at Maitian.