Kashgar - Yengisar -hand made knife - China

Last time I sort of ended with saying we had street food the night we came back form lake Karakul. Most of that street food is based on meat and most of it is some form of kebab. Well, people who know me also know that I like kebab. So I ate plenty. The next day I got my punishment however. I am still not quite sure if it were the kebabs or a some icecream I ate before, but my stomach didn't agree with it.The day after we came back from Karakul we decided to go to Yengisar, Yarkand and stay the night in a village near Yarkand. At first we had trouble finding the right bus station for getting there but after some asking around and a bit of luck we ended up in the right bus... well, minivan. The road was extremely bumpy so we jumped up and down from our seats most of the time. At the end of the 1.5 hour trip, we reached Yengisar and my stomach started to feel bad. I thought it would go better once I would be able to get out of the van but it didn't. At one point it was so bad I just walked in a random store and asked for a public toilet. Since most people here can't read or speak Chinese (I used a mandarin phrasebook to explain) somebody else was called to read it. At one point three people were dealing with my request for a toilet. In the meantime things couldn't get better. While I was striving to get rid of whatever I needed to get rid of, Jamie got stung by a wasp in her stomach. Of course she was in pain as well so there we sat, basically in a village that can be classified as in the middle of nowhere. After a little while they understood what I meant and one guy brought me to a toilet. Of course it was just a hole in the ground but it was not my time to be picky. I sat there for perhaps half an hour but afterwards I didn't feel better. I told Jamie we should take a bus to Yarkand and we went on our way to the bus station. But I kept feeling worse and worse and when we crossed a police station I went to ask for a toilet again. They agent said they didn't have one (right!) and put us in a cab that brought us to a hotel. There we decided to stay the night since it was of no use to continue our journey like this. After an hour or two I started to feel better and the stomach ache disappeared completely. We walked around a bit after that. Yengisar is a town that's famous in the region for their knife production. I decided that I wanted one for myself, and Jamie as well, so we visited some shops. There were two types of knives there, production models and hand made models. The hand made models are more expensive and most of the time not even on display but in a cupboard somewhere locked away. When we came however some shops showed us the handmade. In one particular one we saw two that looked rather the same but have different arabic carvings in them. We wanted those. After some bargaining we got them for a good price. Then Jamie surprised me with saying that this was her (early) birthday present for me. That came as a suprise and it's really nice of her. After that we headed back for the hotel and said good night...The next day we took the bus to Yarkand and decided to just take the bus back to Kashgar at the end of the day. On our way to there the road was again very bumpy. The tires felt like they were hitting the frame of the wheel all the time and yes, after a while we had a flat tire. The driver just put us out of the van, told us to walk a bit and just took off. Not really knowing what was happening of what would happen we just started walking. After about 20 minutes he came back with, luckily, a new tire and we could continue our journey. Yarkand was a good town to visit. Like most towns here it has a old Uyghur part and a new (always ugly) Chinese part. We had to search a bit but eventually we found the old town. Visiting that area is like going back in time. People transport themselves on wooden vehicles which is pulled by mules. Handicrafts are the biggest source of income in it's cool to see people working wood and iron and making pretty cool stuff without big machinery. The whole town had a high 'aladin' feel to it if you know what I mean. On the edge of the old town there is a bige mosque, a cemetary and a town of some lady that ment much to the region. Admission was 10 Yuan (1 euro). It was interesting to visit this although the mosque wasn't that special or anything. People where just praying and I felt (Jamie couldn't get in) a bit unwelcome. I can imagen though...We headed back to the bus after a couple hours of walking around and had a 3 hour trip back to Kashgar, where we arrived at 9 pm Beijing time. I was still a bit frightened to eat local meat so we decided to eat at John's.The next day was (is) sunday and this means big market day for Kashgar. The sunday market is devided into the lifestock market and well the other stuff market. We first visited the lifestock market which is an experience on its own. Where I said visiting the old town like going back in time, I guess time travelling didn't stop there. This lifestock market had a variaty of cows, sheep, goats, mules and other animals. It also had some foodstalls on the side where sheep where already waiting to be turned into kebabs. It's hard to explain what it looked like, I hope pictures will give some impression. After the lifestock market we headed over to the 'normal' market which was big and full of people. All kinds of stuff was sold there; carpets, knives, other fabrics, food and some touristy stuff. In total we spent a couple of hours on both markets before walking back to the hotel.And now I'm here again updating my website. Tomorrow we'll be doing our three day camel tour... really excited to be going. AFter that we have a day 'off' (my birthday) and then onto Shanghai where we should arrive on the 23rd. We have the train tickets by now so that's settled. I'll be uploading pictures after this, so check out my webalbum soon.thanks you, bye bye!