Mike: It turns out that China is a lot harder to leave than it is to get into. When we applied for our Chinese visas in Bangkok, filling out forms in triplicate and then waiting around for days before forking over a hundred dollars each to have our passports adorned with the official stamp, we thought we were getting the hard part out of the way. Little did we know.
After exploring China's little known (but REALLY big) Xinjiang Province, we decided to take the train from Urumqi accross the border to Almaty, Kazakhstan. It sounded simple enough, but booking cross-border train tickets in China ain't easy for us foreign imperialist types. Rejected at the train station ticket window and several travel agencies, we eventually found ourselves in a hotel suite on the outskirts of town negotiating for tickets with a hulking Russian guy and his beanpole Uigur sidekick. After a frenzy of cacaphonic tri-lingual communication, we finally managed a breakthrough: they couldn't sell us tickets, either.
Finally, it was a small counter in the lobby of yet another hotel that saw us through. Tickets in hand, we triumphantly boarded an old Russian railcar for the two-day journey to Almaty. The other two berths in our compartment were taken by a Mongolian woman and a Chinese guy. We passed the miles in good spirits, exchanging stories (Tower of Babel, take two) and the food we'd packed. All was right with the world. Then, like that famous piece of refuse colliding with that famous fan, we trundled up to the Chinese border post.
We didn't expect trouble - we were leaving the country, after all, not trying to get in. Still, we should have known better. As the train ground to a halt, Chinese soldiers immediately climbed aboard, collected passports, and herded every European and North American aboard off the train and into a seperate building. There weren't many, just your faithful correspondents, three New Zealanders and a Norweigan. Good thing, because the soldiers brought each of us into a small room individually, with our luggage, and interviewed us for a minimum of 15 minutes each while they rifled through our bags.
Mike had an especially good time, since the Chinese were somehow aware of his checkered past as an imperialist military officer. It took over an hour for him to clear. He passed the time evading bizarre questions about his military service and watching a squad of the People's Liberation Army's finest look for secret documents sewn into his boxer shorts. If there's a transcript out there, part of it reads like this:
Chinese Officer: "You in army before, we know this. Yes?"
Mike: "Yes."
China: "Where in army you fight?"
Mike: "I fought with my sister sometimes, when I was a kid, but we get along great now."
(faint but audible rustle as socks are held up to the light by a teenage soldier, breathing loudly through his mouth)
China (after long silence): "You in army, yes? We know you in army."
After such hospitality, the Kazakh border was a glorious sight. We were also questioned by Kazakh officers - but all they wanted to know was why their Chinese counterparts kept giving westerners so much trouble, and they stopped by our compartment to ask their questions instead of confining us. Finally, after engineers changed the wheel guage on our train to accomodate the old Soviet-laid track to the north, we were on our way into Kazakhstan.
If Sasha Cohen's character Borat is your image of modern Kazakhstan, think again. Almaty's wide and leafy avenues, mountain vistas and European sensibilities felt cleansing after China's industrial, desert interior. As we arranged visas and plotted our onward journey to the Caspian Sea, and Istanbul beyond, we strolled through parks with locals decked out in western fashions bought with new petro-dollars and visited resplendant Russian Orthodox Churches.
At the famous Green Bazaar, we gawked at mountains of fresh meat and produce and indulged in heaping portions of laghman, the national dish of pulled noodles, vegetable sauce and meat.
Kazakhstan's largest city was the most vibrant place we'd visited since Shanghai. Still, despite the Italian fashions and French restaurants, we couldn't help singing a few lines from Borat's ficticious national anthem, written to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner:
"Kazakhstan is the Number One
Exporter of Potassium,
All other countries
Export inferior potassium!"
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