No, really, I'm laughing, I swear

Well, things got off to a poor start for traveling to the Southern Silk Road in Xianjiang. I went to the bus station today to buy my ticket to Charklik and was shocked to find out I was in Galmud, not Dashaidan. Galmud is about twice the distance from where I traveled from yesterday than Dashaidan. This isn't actually suprising seeing how yesterday played out and what I've learned about Chinese people. When I reached Dashaidan yesterday I saw some signs which looked like the Chinese characters for the town. I asked the bus driver, who wouldn't give me a straight answer except that it wasn't my stop. I showed my ticket and said repeatedly I wanted to go to Dashaidian, but he litterally pushed me back on the bus saying that this wasn't where I was going. This is something that has happend a number of times in China. Often people decide what I want, and then will not listen to me no matter how hard I try to communicate with them. I guess every foriegner he had seen on the bus was headed towards Galmud which is the stop you make when your headed to Lhasa in Tibet, of course I am headed to a completely different province so he was wrong. So, while on the bus, I decided I must have been mistaken and stayed the course until I hit what I thought must be Dashaidan. It turned out to be Golmud. This wouldn't be a probelm in most places, but I'm in China. The area I passed through between Dashaidan and Golmud turns out to be off limits to foriegners. So I can't just head back up to Dashaidan without a permit. So, I have to go to the PSB in golmud and get a permit to travel back to Dashaidan so that I can then travel to Charklik. Again this could be easier but the PSB is only open early in the morning on weekdays so I have to stick around for another day while I wait for it to open. Its possible the permit could take days, or more likely be denied to me meaning that I would have to travel all the way back to Lanzhou and then back to Dunhaung. This would eat up a good chunk of my time in China meaning that I would then have to rush to get to Kashgar before my visa runs out.

I think its all pretty funny. The good side is that police didn't catch me between Dashaidan and Golmud and fine me for being in a no-foriegner-zone. Anyways, I'll post again tommarow when I know whats going on. Zaijian.