October 18th - 15:00pm
On a bus from Turpan to Hami

Sorry, no pictures today, as my time was spent mostly on a bus.

Today is pretty much about getting from Turpan to Hami. I woke up (after a cockroach-less night), packed up my backpacks, and walked to the bus station. When I wear both my backpacks at once – The large one on my back, and my daypack on my front – I find I draw even more attention than normal. I guess I can kind of understand why, but not completely. Is it that I have a backpack at all, or that just that one of them is backwards? I’m not sure. Anyway, I ran into Osman, who in gratitude for the tip I gave him yesterday, had brought me a bag full of raisins grown at his house by his family. I hadn’t bought any yet, despite the ubiquitous raisin-sellers, because I was always afraid of being overcharged, and I don’t really *need* raisins. I like them, but in some ways it’s just a lot of sugar for me to eat. But since these came from Osman’s home, I was MORE than happy to have them. I bought some boiled eggs, and home baked bread from a street merchant for breakfast and got on the bus. The thicker bread they have here is called “Nang”, and I’m told the name has something to do with Indian “Naan”, though the bread is quite different – Nang is a few centimeters thick, and I’m pretty sure it has yeast and has risen.

He’s an Uyghur guy, maybe around 25 years old, and pretty tall. His entire body, especially his hands are dirty, but that’s not the biggest issue affecting his smell production. As he was sitting there, he did something completely surprising to me. He pulled a slightly grayish, but mostly white pigeon out of his right coat pocket. It had been placed in there headfirst and had been quietly enduring the whole time. He held it such that it’s wings and legs were always pinned down by his fingers. He looked at it, examining its legs and wings and neck rather closely, poking and pulling and prodding, putting his fingers around its head and neck a couple of times. I almost thought he was going to kill it, which I very much did NOT want to witness, but that fear subsided when he stopped the examination, and started vaguely petting or stroking the pigeon’s head. With every stroke, the pigeon would blink, blank and empty. This bird has clearly led a clueless life of being in a pocket most of the day and night, every once in a while being brought out and manhandled for a bit. Pigeons are intensely stupid creatures (and filthy in most cases), so it’s possible that it was happy with it’s life and how it was going. I couldn’t tell from its dull, blinking stare.

Now, anyone who reads this will probably start to wonder, “What happens when the pigeon goes to the bathroom?” - Just as I did when I saw it come out of his pocket. Well, I got to witness that, too. At one point, while the pigeon was back in the pocket, I noticed him pull his hand out of his pocket and look at it. I looked at it too, which in retrospect may have been a poor choice on my part. There were pigeon feces covering his right thumb. He sort of looked around then unapologetically wiped his thumb off on the front of the seat cushion he was sitting on. Then, more carefully than before, he pulled the bird out of his pocket, and turned it over, revealing a good amount of feces, still on the bird’s rear half. He glanced around at the floor, bent down, found a twig or stick of some sort, and scraped the feces, as well as he could, off the pigeon onto the floor of the bus. After cleaning the pigeon to his satisfaction, he reorganized some of the things in his coat pockets with a free hand (I think the non-contaminated one), and then moved the bird to his left inner coat pocket. Once again, he placed it in head first, so that the tail feathers pointed straight up, and the head pointed straight down. What a life.

You probably think that putting the feces on the floor of the bus is terrifying. I certainly do. My daypack is on the floor of the bus, between my feet, and I now really feel I should have looked carefully before placing it there. But, using the floor for whatever you please seems to be what’s done. We’re now nearing the end of the bus ride, and spread all along the floor are: spittle, plastic bottles and wrappers of all sorts, phlegm, grape peels and stems, pigeon crap, and vomit. Sorry to be graphic, but that’s really how it is. You’re reading this because you want to know about my experience, right? Well, I’m experiencing the heck out of these things right now. Be thankful you only have to read about it.

- 21:00 PM – At the Hami Hotel

After arriving in Hami at about 16:30, I took a look at the bus station timetable to plan the next leg of my trip – the one to Dunhuang. The only bus to Dunhuang leaves daily at 8:30 AM. Therefore my choices were to leave the next morning (and probably not get to see anything in Hami), or stay 2 nights. I chose to stay only 1 night, and here’s why: According to all that I’ve read, Hami has little character, and the sights here are not very interesting or well taken care of. Now, I agree that limited is the experience of someone who doesn’t find things out for himself, but it’s a matter of gambling on which could be more interesting: a day in Hami or a day in Dunhuang. Every piece of evidence I have says Dunhuang.

I checked into the nicest hotel I’ve stayed in yet. Despite the fact that I chose their cheapest grade of room, which I bargained for the same price as the other places (120 RMB), it is definitely the nicest room so far. The water was hot and had good water pressure, the blankets are thick and warm, and there is actually heat coming from the radiator.

I also ate my most expensive meal of the trip – 54 RMB. This was mostly on accident. I was looking for some street food (hopefully liver skewers) when I saw a restaurant and just walked in, as I saw they sold lamb dishes. It turned out to be a hotpot place, and by the time I realized how much it was going to cost, they’d already served me tea, and I felt bad leaving after that. For the some of you who might not know what hotpot is: It’s a style of eating where there’s a bowl of boiling soup in the center of the table, you order raw ingredients, and cook them in the soup as you eat. So I ordered some cheaper things such as veggies with some chicken. The soup base came full of spices, and around 35-45 garlic cloves floating around the top. I made the mistake of eating almost all of them. Seriously. They had been boiling for a while and I know that garlic is less potent when cooked. I am naïve though, and was going overboard trying to reap the benefits of garlic’s anti-bacterial and immune-boosting properties, especially in light of my recent traveler’s intestines. I should have realized that eating THAT much garlic, even cooked, would have some kind of extreme effect. My whole digestive system is living in a strange new world I’ve never encountered before.

After my garlic meal, I went to a net café to try and update the weblog, but something was blocking me from getting to certain websites, so I could only check email.

Oh – an update on my skin situation – my face is almost back to normal. My nose and upper cheeks are still peeling, but I bought some face lotion that contains some aloe at a store last night, and it is actually doing a very good job. My hands and fingers are not really doing any better, unfortunately. With all the cracks and dryness, it can be quite painful to do simple things like buttoning my pants. But once again, I can do nothing about it, but hope that I heal soon.

What a way for me to end my entry for the day. Sheesh.