Day 163: Dunhuang – Day 2
We woke up to a rare, overcast morning in the desert. After a quick breakfast, we hopped back on to our camels and rode back to the road, where our transfer car was waiting to take us to our hotel for the next night. Lili had called the hotel the day before to see if we could get an early check-in, which was awesome, as we desperately needed a shower. Once we were clean, we met up with Lili in the lobby an hour later and headed out to the Singing Sands Mountain Park – a Disneyland-esque desert park with tons of activities for the hords of Chinese tourists: ATV rides, camel-rides, sand sliding, paragliding, etc.
Igor unfortunately had his heart set on sand-boarding (riding a snowboard down the dune), as we had skipped this in Namibia. We paid for the ATV ride to the dune (which was super unpleasant as we weren’t allowed to ride the buggies alone – we had to sit behind guides and hold on to the back of the ATV while they sped across the sand at top speed), only to find out the park only offered tubing or sledding. We were feeling cranky and ripped off by the end of the activity, especially when we discovered that the only English words our drivers understood was, “Tips! Tips!”
Waking up in our tent in the desert outside Dunhuang. Our outhouse may be prettily painted on the outside, but inside is still full of shit and flies.
Lindsay tries milk tea for breakfast (she really likes the little gummies inside!), then everyone hops back on our camels to ride back to the paved road
Checking in to our hotel – The Silk Road Hotel – at 9AM so that we can take a much needed shower before our final activities of the tour
Entering the desert-Disneyland of the Singing Sands Mountain
The entire town of Dunhuang has been gearing up for a major travel industry convention – The 1st Silk Road International Cultural Expo. Tour guides are practicing their English nonstop (Lili was teaching herself new vocabulary words each day) and the Singing Sands Mountain park was building a series of elaborate sand sculptures to impress the delegates
Igor had his heart set on sand boarding down a dune, and was super disappointed to find out all they offered was sand sliding (which we did the night before on a plastic sled) or sand tubing. He was even more disappointed when he climbed all the way to the top of the dune only to find out he had to share a tube with a stranger – he wasn’t allowed to tube down alone! NOT recommended
We walked the rest of the park, which was actually not that crowded (for China), which rose our spirits a bit. Igor convinced Lindsay to climb the dune to see the bird’s eye view of the famous Crescent Lake, and she was really glad she slogged to the top. The 2,000+ year old natural spring is pretty cool, especially when you imagine what it must have been like to discover it hundreds of years ago on the Silk Road. Its unique positioning between the dunes protects it from getting covered by sand, so this little pond had been an oasis of freshwater in the desert for centuries. Up until a few decades ago, the depth of the lake stayed constant around 21ft, however when the water level started to decline in the last few decades, the local government had to artificially fill it to maintain its original level. So it’s a semi-real natural attraction – still pretty.
Tucked within two dunes is a fertile oasis, lush with flowers and tall grasses, blowing in the wind
WHERE’S WALDO? We give up on trying to get a clear shot of the Crescent Lake pagoda – there are just too many people. As we look at the nearby plaque, we are amused to see even the Chinese Tourist Board can’t even get a clear shot without someone photo-bombing their picture!
A traditional pagoda next to the lake
Views of the Crescent Lake Pagoda
Climbing to the top of the dunes to admire the view
From the top of the dunes we can see the Crescent Lake to the left and the oasis to the right
Running down the dune on our way out of the park. Since we had overcast skies that morning, the sand was cool enough for Lindsay to run down barefoot (trying to keep sand out of her socks & boots)
Walking back through the oasis where we find a mother dog and a litter of days-old puppies hiding in the grass! We would have LOVED to pick them up and cuddle them, but as we didn’t pay the $700pp fee for rabies shots before leaving the US, the risk isn’t worth it. So cute tho.
For lunch, Lili gave us the option of either going to another restaurant, or exploring the various food stalls in the marketplace. We chose the latter and felt like Anthony Bourdain, sampling all sorts of exotic goodies. Hours later, unfortunately, Lindsay paid a bit of a price for her culinary adventures, so we decided to stop experimenting in China – even with a guide bringing you to reputable places, we still get food poisoning!
Lili takes us for a foodie tour through the market, introducing us to the various street foods of the area. Igor falls in love with “Chinese hamburgers” – wok-fried, chopped up pork and bell peppers in a traditional flatbread. I swear, this could be the next hipster food-craze, if we could just bring it to NYC!
Sweet potato-fries and apricot juice (tasted like peach-iced tea) were big hits. However, Lindsay regretted trying the dumpling soup when she got her second bout of traveler’s diarrhea later that night. We are learning that experimenting with food in China can be dangerous! Especially when we are running out of Imodium…
For our last evening in Dunhuang, Lili convinced us to get tickets to the desert cultural show, which was held in a theater just behind the hotel. She recommended it very highly, so we decided to splurge. It was…interesting. If we could do it again, we’d spend the money on a better quality show (one with acrobatics!), but there were aspects of the show that were pretty cool to watch. The special effects were undeniably top-notch – the show was performed outside on 5 different stages and the entire audience platform rotated during the show to face each new stage. There were cool lighting effects and fireworks – too bad the plot of the show was lame (some kind of love story, but the lovers are separated in the end in the name of duty, I dunno…) and the dancing was piss-poor. And DON’T get me started on the manners of our neighbors in the audience…
Walking behind the hotel to the theater for our evening desert show
It’s a spectacle of lights and real camels onstage!
Light projects onto some mist to create a “holy vision” of a buddha, before real fireworks explode to change the scene
Sadly, there weren’t many acrobatics – just some poorly sychronized dancing. There was a short aerial silk performance, which was the most talent we saw all night
The audience was TERRIBLE. Mobile phones constantly taking photos, and the guy behind Igor kept hitting him in the head with his telephoto lense. One couple allowed their BABY to cry and scream for a good 20min before *finally* getting up and leaving the show. And no less than 3 people not only let their phones ring, but THEY ACTUALLY TOOK THE CALL during the show!
The grand finale – so glad this thing is finally over – what a waste of USD $100
As soon as the show was over, the crowd ran out of their seats and onto the stage to take pictures with all the actors
Chinese theater. Now that we’ve experienced it once, NEVER AGAIN