Friday has been a complete waste of time, but today seems better. The skies are clear, the sun's out. I get up early to go to the "desert". Resonant Sand Gorge is not really a desert, more like Mui Né's sand dunes but a bit bigger, both in size and height. We are on a budget - and adventure! - so no tour, no taxi, I'm going on my own. After finally finding the bus to Dáqí - bus 17 - south of the city I get on, but only to be ushered off fifteen minutes later. This can't be good, the ride is supposed to take about an hour. Thinking the driver just gave up on me and wants me to take a taxi I approach one, show him the name of the village* and he agrees to take me there for Y15. I find this a bit on the low side as the bus is supposed to take about Y9, but you never know. Not even two minutes later we pull into a gas station to refill and I write down the price again just to confirm my good luck. It figures; Y150. He, no thank you. I get out. And then I see it, the long-distance bus station. Ah, that's why I was supposed to get off the local bus.

I make my way through the overzealous taxi-drivers who insist on taking me to Dáqí, one after the other yanking the pen out of my hand to write down their price, but after drawing the bus, and the price they finally give up. And laugh. Don't know what about. My Chinese isn't that good. Get into the station, on the bus, sit down, pay for the ticket and arrive one hour later. From here I have to take a taxi and I have to bargain really hard to get a reasonable price. I finally end up only getting a ride there as a return - with waiting time - would be excessive. Even so it's Y70, while the guide book says 40-50. Oh well.

The Sand Gorge is...eh... something different than expected. There is a cable car going up the 90m high sand dunes, sand-buggies zip back and forth on the horizon, there are sand-toboggans, paragliders, camel tours and even a small "sightseeing" steam train. What the hell? Why are the Chinese so crazy? I walk up the dunes and go straight into the void.

I must say. I thought deserts were supposed to be scorching hot places where you die exhausted from the heat and as you lie there, unable to move the vultures zoom in and start picking at you. I am sorely mistaken. I even played with the idea of coming in sandals, leaving my sweater behind near the entrance. I am so glad I did not! It is damn cold! 12°C, and when the sun disappears behind the clouds and the wind picks up it's really freezing. Somehow I had the Sahara in mind, not the arctic. I walk around a bit, venture out where I see no tracks, find a few hapless tourists to take my photo and sit on the top of a dune to enjoy the view.

And then... f***ing f*** f***ed s***! f***! My camera! Hogy a jó édes.. baszd meg! 'Zoom Lens Error'. A büdös kurva életbe! Hogy nem ment bele a homok? Te hülye faszfej hát nem tudsz gondolkodni? Persze, milyen jó f***ing ötlet fényképezőgépet hozni a sivatagba, mi? És főleg kitalálni, hogy homok-közeli képet csinálsz. Istenem! There, feel much better now! Bottom line: camera broken. Go figure, there is sand in a desert! And it does get into the lens. Yaaay. I try to wash it, submerge it in water to get the sand out. It probably worked cause I see sand in the basin but now - at night, after it has dried - nothing works anymore. Doesn't even turn on. So that's it. No more pictures for the rest of my trip.

After this unfortunate accident I stroll around a bit more, but heart-broken. Nothing I can do anymore. But how to get back? I thought about hitching with any of the tourists visiting the dunes but the Chinese come in drones, every car filled with 5-6 of them. No space. No Europeans either. The tour busses I tried either don't understand or don't want to take me on. And all the taxi drivers who are standing at the parking lot are waiting for their client to return from the visit. Gaaah. You wanted adventure, right? You got it!

About to start panicking - a bit, as I need to leave tomorrow morning - a girl on a tour bus finds a taxi for me and I make the return trip to Dáqí for Y50. Phew. On the way we pick up two more people. At least they speak English and I make them promise to send me some of their photographs of the dunes. I hope he doesn't forget. I even catch the bus back to Bãotóu on time. Well, that was fun :)

Travelling in China alone - outside of the main tourist attractions - sucks. I have not seen a single white person for the past three days. There are no dorms to hook up with people, and the hotels are expensive if you are just on your own. Having dinner alone sucks again. I need some bloody tourists!!!

The only fun I have is the occasional chat I manage to have with the locals in some kind of primeval English. Someone coming up to you and asking really timidly: "Excuse me. Are you foreigner?" is great. But there must really not be any foreign tourists here. As I walk on the street people look at me. Then look up again, seeing something isn't right about this guy, look hard and then recognition hits. Most people's face turns into a big grin, others get a really confused, puzzled look. Small(er) children run ahead of you and steal a few quick looks, or just gape openly. I hear whispers then quick turns to look at this curiosity, giggles, and overly happy "Hello"-s.

Getting something done at hotels is pretty much impossible. Even after I say I don't speak/understand Chinese they say the same thing, just slower, or write down the characters. Once, twice, three times. I usually just guess what they want. This evening I even ordered blindly from the menu. No idea what it was.

Btw, what the hell's wrong with some people? Peeing on the street has already become acceptable to me after Vietnam, but the rest? In Beijing! at our hostel in the bathroom I saw a man hunched above a squat toilet with doors open, a phone in his hand. Just squatting there, s***ting at the same time for at least 10 minutes. I saw him, Nick saw him. For f***'s sake. In Hohhot a woman was holding a small buy at the front seat of the car, the doors open and just letting him pee outside. On the main street! But the top of it all! In Bãotóu. On the main street again, lined with trees a boy, I guess about 12-14, was openly taking a dump. On the street! You could see his... eh business, the toilet paper. And what's worse; nobody minds. Or they ignored him, donnu. For f***'s sake. What's up with you people?

[*] China has a strange sense of size. For them a small town is anything below two million people inside. Hohhot has 1.48mln, Bãotóu 2.3mln. Yes, they are small cities. And they act accordingly. There isn't too much to do in these places. I wonder how they would feel about Budapest or Amsterdam.