Dreams of travel and aquiring pets

Photos

Friday night was good fun with my first taste of Xinjiang culture for Naomi's birthday bash. Xinjiang is China's largest province, located in North-W China, and somewhere I really hope to go and explore because of its rich culture and history. Xinjiang borders eight countries such as Russia, Mongolia, India and the '-stan' countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan) and holds a large section of the infamous Silk Road. Anyway, we all went to reputably the best Xinjiang restaurant in Beijing, with awesome live music and dancing. A few drinks afterwards at the trendy little bar next door and I was feeling quite the cool Beijingite!

Bordering Xinjiang on the South-East side is a little-known province called Ningxia and a few friends are heading up that way, off the beaten track, for "Golden Week". There are three week-long holidays in China; May Day holidays (first week of May), National Day holidays (first week of October) and Chinese New Year (sometime in Feb). I wasn't going to go away for "Golden Week" in October as we call it, because that's when China's entire 1.3 billion people pack their bags and travel anywhere from the next town over to the other side of the Middle Kingdom. Imagine all the madness of summer and school holidays combined and packed into one week. They are the most expensive times of year to travel as well, and because I thought my parents were coming to visit straight afterwards I was going to just stay and check out all the events on in Beijing (which will still be mad as it will host a large proportion of the 1.3 billion people, but at least I have my bike and own flat). But now they aren't coming until the 17th, so I decided I will join my friends on their trip. I think I really need to get out of Beijing and start to explore, but it's so hard with so many great things on that I want to do here in the big city.

Saturday, I met up with Tash to explore a new shopping street, grabbed a Mango "Sand Ice" (shaved ice with mango puréed into it, so refreshing and delicious) at my favourite Taiwanese restaurant, met up with my new friend Meike whose from Germany here on an university exchange for 4 months, and we all went to see Vinny's slideshow presentation on his work in Bosnia. It was at a new art space simply called "The Hutong". It's on old courtyard house bought and refurbished to a more modern style of traditional house by an expat couple who run workshops and a little exhibition space there. It was there open day for people to come and have a look and they invited Vinny to give his slideshow for everyone there. The photos were amazing, Bosnia-Herzegovina is now definitely on my list of places to go. There are so many amazing places I want to see, and I've joined the Couch Surfing community which I highly recommend everyone who plans to travel to look at. I will definitely be using it in my travels around Europe next year and if you join up, make sure you add me as a contact so we can vouch for each other.

Sunday was my ritual brunch at Grandma's Kitchen, then took myself to a completely local market I'd been told about that sells fish tanks. It was awesome and, well, I should know better than to go shopping by myself. I went a little crazy, but luckily Andrea turned up to halt my rapid slide to bankruptcy (though she did lend me Y100 to buy a very funky green and purple jacket. It's not as hideous as it sounds. I think). I had only just found the aquarium section when she arrived, so she curbed my over-zealousness enough that I did do a recon in all the stores.

I was actually close to not buying one as I couldn't decide who to go with, which brand or size to buy and they weren't as cheap as I thought. I actually wanted a bigger one than would fit on my bike so I thought I would come back another time in a taxi but then I found my lady! She was great, her starting price was half that of everywhere else for a better brand. She was knowledgeable, never pushed me into buying anything I didn't need, never tried to sell me the most expensive of anything (I even asked for a better heater than she initially showed me), and gave me an awesome deal.

So I now have a fish tank! It's so cool, it has the filter and light built in, and I got everything I need (heater, filter medium, water purifier and nutrients, gravel cleaner, thermometer, fish food and net) for Y300 (AUS$50) which is exactly what it should be. Getting home was interesting though, as you can see from the photos it was quite a load to carry. I had a bit of momentum going so I became a bit of a tank in manoeuvrability! I couldn't really stop in a hurry and when people meandered around in front of me I had to try and dodge them. It was the first time I actually found riding around quite frustrating, and "Shopping Trolley Syndrome" as I like to call it, made it so much worse.

Shopping Trolley Syndrome, or STS, is what I've named the phenomena that no one here can walk, cycle or drive in a straight line: like everyone has a wobbly back wheel. Dodging people who are all over the path is a lot harder when you've got some weight behind you. But as Andrea and I were marvelling at how big the tank looked on my bike, a man rode passed with a flat bed bicycle and the contents of an entire house on the back, which put it all in perspective for us. We were just amateurs.

So, I got the thing home with no worries and set it up and left it for a week. It's always best to have a tank running for a week before you put fish in but boy was it hard to resist getting some straight away. The fish available in China are so beautiful. They have species of Rainbowfish (my favourite fish) I've never seen for sale in aquariums before, and the colours are stunning. Rainbows are a little bigger than I should probably have in my tank and I was thinking I should probably make it a normal tropical tank with smaller fish but that went out the window when I went fish shopping the next weekend, in between my rocking out at the Beijing Pop Festival. But that's in the next episode...