trip of the GIP -- XINJIANG 新疆！

WELCOME TO XIN JIANG EVERYBODY!

LET'S START THE BLOG ENTRY WITH THE GREETINGS FROM OUR NEW XINJIANG FRIEND!

Before we start the entry, let me tell you a little more on the place that we chose for our GIP major trip. (:

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is located in the west side of China. It is a really really large region that it took up one-sixth of the whole China mainland. The approximate land area of the whole xinjiang is 1.6million sq km (which is around 2263 Singapores! and there are more than 10airports in the whole Xinjaing, can you imagine how big it is now??). Xinjiang borders Russia, Mongolia, India and several Middle East Countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; which explains its multi cultural society with many many ethic groups, its either 37 or47 altogether.

The majority of Xinjiang is made up of the Uyghur Ethic Group, from which its full name suggests too. The uyghur people takes up around 45% of its total population. In Xinjiang, you do not feel that you are in China anymore as the people you see on the streets are not purely chinese, they usually has the tinge of middle east features on them, like how uyghur people look like; and moreover, you get to see Kazakhs and Russians around as well, mostly doing tradings, agricultures or setting up food stalls in night markets etc.

Besides, when you stepped into Xinjiang, you seldom see Chinese Temples and Monuments around. It is really different from other parts of China. Instead, the architecture of Xinjiang s very much influenced by middle east, round roof, flat roof, single story squarish white houses etc. Besides the Architecture, the religion of the xinjiang people are also very much under the influence of the middle east. Majority, which includes almost all the uyghur people are Muslims, that also explains the us seeing Halal signs (清真 in Chinese) outside almost every restaurant, road signs are written in Chinese and Uyghur, which is Xinjiang's official language,also; mosques are located in the middle of no where an almost every single town we went, pretty amazing, its really so un-china.

Moreover, we had also taken much consideration on deciding the location of our GIP tour trip is because there had been 3 or 4 bombing incidents in the City of Kashgar in Xinjiang, policemen and students were killed during the bombings and it was done by the terrorists, something like suicide bomber if i am not wrong, and it just happened back some time back in early or mid August. Freaking recent. but after looking at the tourist attractions and knowing that the places we gonna go are no where near Kashgar, we dicided to go ahead to explore Xinjiang, as u know Xinjiang is freaking big. hahah.

Xinjiang is also famous of its 烤羊肉 and 烤全羊 as the Uyghur favourite dishes, also, the fruits in Xinjiang is fantastic especially their Rock Melon, it was too sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet to be true, the climate in Xinjiang are really suitable for growing different kinds of sweet melons, grapes etc.

Oh and another interesting yet scary fact about xinjiang is that it has the highest AID/HIV infection number in the whole of China(it took up one tenth of the whole China infections), in which, there are 60,000 infections out of its 20 million population.

Okay i guess with this short summary on Xinjiang, we can now move on to our 7 days of adventurous yet enriching experience!

First Photo in Xinjiang, i am holding the strips which my name was written on it, the tourguide had fetch us from the airport in Urumqi.



Freaking Excited, 9 of us altogether,

From Left to Right : JianMing, ZiMing, ShouZi, Ler, PeiYu, Dominic, SernSiang, Hazel and Me. (:

After putting out luggage at the hotel, we dash out to one of the night market there. ahaha. the weather was shiok, prolly aroubd 20 degree celsius, windy icy yet not too chilly.

哈密瓜！

烤全羊！

the uyghur and their stalls!

YUMMY!

lets move on to the first tourist attraction of the trip! Heavenly Mountain and Lake. 天山天池。

It was so cold, like 9 degrees, we hurry hurry put on our big big coats!





WAH VERY NICE HOR!















thats Hazel and I, can u see us?

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

told ya, the words and languages on the road signs!

SPLENDID!

After 天山天池，we set off to this place called KANAS, 喀纳斯！This is the nicest place that we had ever been too! its so beautiful, i swear the photos below still do not do the place justice! and before reaching KANAS, we saw snow! we were so excited! for many of us, it was the very first time seeing snow, taking photo with snow and playing with snow!

lying down on the wet icy wet icy snow.


SNOW BALL FIGHTING!

LOOK WHO's LER trying to attack! WAH PEH! AND THATS SERNSIANG SLIDING AND ALMOST FALLING DOWN ON THE RIGHT WAHHAHA!

THE GUYS

THE GIRLS

tiny little peiyu





shouzi's snowball was in the air!

hahaha the guys running down the slope, pretty amazing! it was so slippery and cold and we were all dressed up like penguins and they can still run around freely. MAD COWS!

APPROACHING KANAS!


MORE MORE!


HERE WE ARE!
The hotel we stayed in KANAS was in actual fact a big big bungalow with many many rooms. its cosy and comfy besides the fact that it does not have my favourite winter electric appliance HEATER!!!!



FOG covering the mountains!



trying to take a people with the cold air from our lungs, whatever it is. so cold there, prolly around 4 degrees in the morning.

this is not china man..



happy dog, according to peiyu. ziming and ler touched it and never wash their hand and then after that they took buns and eat.

debating if inner mongolia is still a better choice than Xinjiang after looking at the beautiful magnificent KANAS!

sernsiang trying to push MR BUMBERBEE down the slope!



so we took a shuttle bus to the mountain area or highland area of KANAS.

and suddenly, postcard-photos-like-sceneries are everywhere!







it does not even need a single effort to capture a nice postcard photo, thats how nice KANAS is!









月亮湾，look like moon as u can see.

then we went to this place to have buffet lunch, quite horrible as usual and after that we stole from butter cookies for snacks and we were very full so we had to do some exercises.




this is funneh.

More photos of KANAS.

can you see the rainbow? there are actually 2 appearing at the same time, long and clear. after the rain.





see the 2 rainbows!

哈哈




horse riding sessions! 40rmb for one hour but in the end only half an hour like that.









白马王子。 （sarcasm intended WAHHAHA )

call me 肉粽！

nice one babe!

ziming and Ler's horse SHIFU brought them so far away into the forrest full of yellow trees! so jealous! we only gallop at the grassland but we never had a chance to go into the forrest!

WAH PEH LIKE PHOTOSHOP ONE! so jealous!

then we took a boat ride to the KANAS river in which all of us fell asleep in the 100yuan halfan hour ferry ride.

Ler looking stunned.

呵呵

EVENING SETS IN.

LIKE EUROPE HOR!

NOT LIKE CHINA AT ALL HOR!

HEAVENLY MANN.



we went for campfire at night with the Russians dancing their traditional dance and in their traditional costumes!

Jian Ming and his favourite, not pretty lor!

wah scary man.

SERNSIANG and his favourite. it was negative 2 to 4 degrees and can you believe it, they were wearing so little!

哈哈哈

Last day in KANAS, we love the place so much that despite of the cold weather, we still took a stroll at the jungle area to get more photos.








we are in AMERICA. GEORGIA. (LIKEREAL) (OH MY GOD IT RHYMES) wahaha!

Jianming and Sernsiang are gonna get me killed.




Aikhong, this is for u! KUNGFU PANDA in KANAS.

Thats about all for KANAS. we took like 2 gb worth of 2230 pictures in 7days, cant expect me to upload more.

On the side note, i took 1 week to complete this entry because of some shitty things happen in the middle.

and thats only half of xinjiang, look forward to the next entry where the brand new experience reveal. i promise, you will see a total different XinJiang.

Take care people, miss me.