Hannoyi Ruins and Moer Pagoda

Today we hired a taxi to drive us out to some ruins. It was a looong, hot, dusty ride. I felt bad for the driver, because I am sure it did a number on his car! He seemed really happy though, so I am sure we paid him too much. :) The ruins were nothing much...I sort of feel like it was a waste of money and time, but how would you know until you got there? Alot of "attractions" in China are like this I have noticed. It was really cool to drive through the Uyghur neighborhoods. They live in these brown colored houses with flat roofs. They look pretty plain from the outside, but they have the mast beautiful doors. Some are carved, so are painted...they are all different but very decorative. From what I can tell, the houses are built around a central courtyard, and all you can see from the road is an exterior wall that surrounds everything. In the Uyghur neightborhoods they had planted a ton of trees (they look like Aspens to me, but i am not sure what they really were) and also in their courtyards you could see trellises covered with grap vines. Some parts of the road had grape vine trellises covering it. It made for a very peaceful and calm area!

The best part of the day was lunch...I asked the driver to stop at a small roadside stand in the Uyghur neighborhood. We had a simple lunch of noodles and shredded cucumber in a spicy sauce. As we sat there, we attracted a few old Uyghur men, who sat and tried not to stare at us. Everyone was very friendly and it was a lot of fun. I got some good pictures too, which I will post when I am back in the US.

Tonight we had a delicious meal of lagman...Matt had hs with lamb and I had mine without. The reason I mention this is because I have become a firm believer in hand made noodles. That is all you get here, and they are SO good, infinitely better than packaged or dried noodles. They are soft and slightly chewy, plus I love how they are not uniform in size. I pick out the fattest noodles and eat them first. Yes, I know, I am weird!