day 377: [乌鲁木齐 (Ürümqi)] = 0 km

My friends 王婵 (Wang Chan) and 丁波 (Ding Bo) from 奎屯 (Kuytun) invited me to their pediatric counseling center today.

It was awesome:

I really needed some counseling actually, because I was being constantly worried about my passport problem: the stupid visa was about to expire within two days! And even though I wasn’t going to walk anymore for now, I still had some other plans in store.

So I needed to rush back to 乌鲁木齐 (Ürümqi), the provincial administrative center.

辉辉 (Huihui) took this picture of me trying to get on a train:

Inside of the train, everything was all pink, which was pretty awesome:

Once I got to 乌鲁木齐, I felt a bit lonely:

I walked around the Northern part of the city for about two hours, looking for a hotel to spend the next few days, but most places were either too expensive or wouldn’t host foreigners.

When I finally found a place to stay, my old friend 申叔叔 (Uncle Shen) turned up out of nowhere to take me out to eat.

He listened to my police stories, laughed, and poured a glass of 白酒 (baijiu – Chinese liquor).

“Shit like this happens every once in a while.” he said, “you must learn to keep your cool, young man!”

Then he told me about his plans to ride his bike all the way down to 海南 (Hainan) in the South of the country. He would be leaving tomorrow.

I knew I would miss him, too.

Soundtrack: Grace Jones – “La Vie En Rose”

—total: 4927,5km