Hi ! This is from Michael again. Thanks for being faithful fans of the "Nin Hao Ma" series. (So far have not receive any "shut up" replies ... good)

Well, I am now in Kashgar. If you care to look up the atlas, it's the most south-western city of Xinjiang. And that means we are really far far away from the sea.

Arrived here after a 24-hour train journey from Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Tried the 'hard sitter' on the train... which means my buttock sat on a hard seat with a back-support which is 90 degrees from the seat... for 24 hours. That's the second cheapest ticket on the train. The cheapest ticket is called the 'standing ticket', which means you stand for the whole 24 hours on the train. So at night, you get to see people sleeping on the ground in all positions that you can imagine. Well, quite a bit of torture, the 'hard sitter', but it's kind of fun too ... very re4 nao4, with people chatting, squeezing one another. Had a bunch of young people sitting near me, so we had a nice chat and shared meals. Cool!

Kashgar was one of the most important city in the Silk Road. Today, it's still an important exit point to the Stan countries (e.g. Pakistan) around it. It is the stronghold of the Uyghur race, who are of central Asian origin. So the culture here is very different. We see Muslim men walking around in caps and robes, women with scarves and veils across their faces. Some ladies use a brown veil to cover their WHOLE head (remember Taliban?). Lots of very nice and shiny clothings too. Beautiful girls (sharp nose, deep eyes, sharp chin...). The books describe this place as "walking in the streets of Kashgar is as though walking in the story of the 1001 Arabian nights". This place really exudes that atmosphere.

This morning we had a new girl friend who became our guide and showed us around the bazaars of Kashgar. It's really God's blessing that we get to meet kind Xinjiang people at the places that we go to. It is also a struggle, to decide whether to always be on guard against people, and opening our hearts to friendly people. On the whole, we find Xinjiang people very kind and friendly, gladly helping us visitors from Malaysia.

Tomorrow we will go to see the Sunday Market, THE big event of Kashgar. We expect to see the whole place crowded with people, donkeys, chickens, goats, fruits, vegetables ... In Mandarin it's called gan3 ji2 (remember the song about riding the donkey to gan3 ji2 and falling down from the donkey ?).

Trying some funny funny food here too. Lots of melons around, can't even name them all. Watermelons cost only 25 sen per kilo. Hami melon going for RM 1 each. We ate lots of them. Kebabs and naans are also very cheap and popular. Lots of other Uyghur food that we have still yet to try out. Today while walking around the food street we saw again some goat heads, lungs and intestines... show you all when we get back lah. 

Will be going back to Urumqi and Turpan for our final tour, before taking the train to Shanghai to fly out. 

Oh, forgot to tell you all about the Sailimu Lake. The scenery was really great, like the Salem High Country advertisement, with ice peaks, alpine trees, wild flowers, blue lake, cool weather. Have to show you the photoes... words cannot describe. We stayed in a real yurt (bao1) with a Kazak family. Really great experience of the nomadic culture. We saw horses and goats going out to the grazing fields. We rode horses into the mountains. Whew !

Do pray for us. Thanks a lot.

Take care and God bless.

Cheers,

Michael
Count your blessings !