Sleeper Bus to Dunhuang

Well after successfully wasting yesterday we boarded our sleeper bus at 6pm from Golmud bus station. Sara and I had bought upper bunks, as they were more expensive we assumed there was a reason for that. Not sure we figured out why... The bus had 32 bunks, three across two deep slip by two isles. Sara had the window berth 22, I had the middle bunk 20. Golmud is an industry town, supported by Potash. The road leaving town looked indentical to the road through the tailing ponds around Syncrude, and weren't any smoother than the haul roads. People pay good money to go for a ride like that, we paid 95 Yuan per person for 11 hours. After taking an hour long dinner break at 10 pm, the lights went out, we strapped ourselves into the berths and tried to go to sleep. The guy below me smoked like a chimmey, but how could I complain even if it was a non-smoking bus, I don't speak Chinese and more importantly the driver would light up every hour or so. At 4:30 we were awoken to the buses audio system blarring out some chinese rendition of cats in a bag being hit with a bat. We just looked at each other and laughed, the rest of the bus occupants at that point knew for sure we were crazy. At 5:00am we arrived at the bus station, and after mixing up north and south, we drove in from the south, but entered the city from the north, go figure... Found a hotel and feel asleep till noon. Dunhaung is a nice quiet city, with a large tame market and lots of kids and families out shopping and enjoying the nice warm with a slight breeze Saturday afternoon. So for the rest of today we relax try and get a better price at our hotel for a couple of more nights, and figure out if we want to sled down 300 foot sand dunes or look at some very old buddhist artwork in caves tomorrow.

(sara) mom i prayed the whole time that we would finally get off that bus and make it to Dunhaung.. Tyson says it "wasn't that bad" he also said that about the dog who almost ate us, i think he just tricks himself into thinking that way... when deep down he knows he was scared!!! But we all know who brings reality into this adventure so i think we will be safe, no worries :). The bus i guess wasn't that bad, but it was definently going off the beaten path.. haha.. really all we could do was laugh because it was pretty ridiculous, i should have taken a picture. At least we take trains the rest of the ways.

Tyson and Sara