Golmud and the Route to Huatugou

Arriving at 1am in the morning, I go to look for a hotel where I can spend the night. This proves more difficult than it seems. The first place tells me they have shared rooms, for 288 Yuan and they have no water running at the time (clearly either a miscommunication or they think foreigners really are cash cows).

The second place I visit, the woman is asleep at the reception (as in the previous hotel) and wakes up a little cranky (you would too if someone woke you at 1am and didn’t speak your language). She tells me I can have a bed for 40. I tell her 30. She says it’s 40. I disagree and say it’s 30, I know she wants to go back to sleep while I can stay awake for another few hours. Frustrated she caves (though I still pay an exorbitant price for the hovel I stay in).

She takes my passport to copy down the details, however with no command of English, she writes my name as my birth place (Moscow) and copies the wrong information for the passport number, leaving me technically unregistered for yet another night.

The following day is spent walking around Golmud (an incredibly boring city) and eventually I leave. Having missed the bus, I make my way to the town’s outskirts and start hitchhiking a lift.

Against my better judgement, I listen to some random idiot who says that the road I’m hitch-hiking on doesn’t lead to Huatugou, although my map clearly indicates that it does.

The skies gray, the rain falls and hell unleashes its fury in the form of gale force winds blowing sand and dust at me as I wait for a lift.

My day’s hitchhiking gets me less than 50km from the city to a real dump of a town.

The town where I spend the night.

I ask around for a hotel and am pointed in the direction of one. When I arrive, they tell me a room is 80 Yuan. I tell them there’s no way I’m paying this to stay here. They tell me Golmud prices are 100 Yuan. I tell them I paid 30 Yuan, they say something that I interpret to mean I’m a liar. Finally, it clicks with me, I’m sitting negotiating with the hotel owner, two girls are standing, smiling and waiting. They’re both wearing high heels, hot pants and makeup. I have some sort of sixth sense for stumbling upon these places.

Eventually the owner understands that when I say hotel and make the motion for sleep, I’m looking for somewhere to sleep, not someone to sleep with. He tells me he knows a place and drives me to the nearby cheap motel where he tries to get money from me upfront. No dice, I deal directly with the owner, get a reasonable price and in the process manage to piss him off as he expected money for the lift.

While eating dinner, the tea I drink tastes funny, then I realise it’s the water that tastes funny. I stop drinking but I know it’s too late, tomorrow I will regret stopping at this town.