Faithless

"I can't get no sleep."

I seem to be suffering from insomnia at the moment. My body clock is entirely screwed up, and even when I have done loads and should be about ready to drop off the face of the earth with tiredness, I can't. Or not for long anyway.

Yesterday, following my nap in the afternoon, I did very little - I think I managed a trip to one of the local corner stores (part of a chain called Buddies, which is displayed in bright pink signing), a bit like a Co-op in the UK, and picked up a couple of bready-looking items and a can of "milky coffee" ... yes, a can. I took a picture to prove it but I've yet to upload the photo to my laptop, and in turn work out where I am going to store all the images for this year abroad. And how to put them into my blog if needs be. I came back to the hostel, and set myself up on the floor with my two bread things and my can of coffee, while I chatted with one of my roommates. I'm in a room with three other people, all of them girls about a year or two older than me, at various stages in their post-graduate education or travels. There's Anna (Polish), Ieva (pronounced Yay-vah, she's from Lithuania), and Marcia (Brazilian) - I don't think I need to change any of their names because I'm not about to say anything nasty about them ;)

Anyway, I chatted with Anna while I tucked into my sugary "lunch" at about 1600, not quite refreshed from my afternoon kip, but then not deathly tired either. After about half an hour she left to go explore the city while there was still light (good luck, it seems to get dark here very early despite it being summer - by 1900 the sun has gone completely), and I cotched on my bed, doing nothing very much in particular until the others came in and we formed some kind of cliquey laptop-using room, sitting on our beds tapping away. Anna came back from the pagoda she had been trying to see (unsuccessful, the light was too bad to take photos anyway she said), and we tentatively said that as a room we should go out to supper together, but a bit later of course, when we were all hungry ...

Around 2000 we set off, letting Anna lead - she's been staying here for a few weeks now, while she does an internship in the Polish embassy, so she knows roughly where good places to eat might be ... and about a ten minute walk later we wound up at a restaurant. It was clean, air conditioned (though annoyingly they turned off the AC unit halfway through our meal!) and the service very efficient - a little English here or there but for the most part a good chance to practice my Chinese (and for us all to have a giggle over some of the translations on the menu). Eventually we ordered - veggie dumplings for Marcia, and chicken dumplings with a beef stew for the rest of us to share. Suffice to say it was all very tasty and I'm still here with no ill effects the following morning!

We left around 2230, having paid Y74 between us, about Y18 (£1.50ish) each including drinks, with some change leftover to stop off at the Buddies on the way home and buy a couple of bottles of beer to pass round when we got in. We stayed up chatting until about 0100, at which point we were all quite drained and plonked ourselves into bed ... and this takes me back to the sleep issue. I had slept for about 3 hours in the afternoon, not long enough (I thought) to disrupt any nightly pattern, and certainly not if I went to bed late. I fully expected to sleep through til 0600 at the very least. But no, at 0230 I woke up. It couldnt have been noise, I had earplugs in, kindly donated by Marcia ... it was a combination of hunger (what? after the meal we had?) and needing the toilet (despite having been before going to bed??) ... the latter was easy to fix, the former less so, not having any food to hand. So I was well and truly awake. By 0330 I was in the same situation as last night, sitting up in bed reading a novel, hoping it would send me to the land of nod.

At 0700 I took a shower, despite my hunger being overriding - after all, I had neglected to have a wash the night before and I was beginning to pong somewhat. My ablutions complete (the shampoo I picked up didnt smell of coconut, much to my disappointment, it was a generic shampoo smell), I went out for breakfast, my hunger by now having peaked and fallen somewhat. I wanted to try steamed buns from the local place I ate at yesterday, and ordered 5 with meat fillings ... They turned out to be huge and the fillings less than desirable. Guess I won't be ordering them again ... oh well. Picked up a coffee-in-a-can from the Buddies next door, chatted in Chinese with one of the workers there, who recognised me from yesterday, and came back to the hostel. The air, even at this time of morning is heavy and the temperature hotter than I would like. Not to mention that as I walked back to the hostel the stench from the road really got to me, just as I had taken a bite from one of the buns ... I half wanted to vomit. Honestly, I will be happy to leave here - the company is great and the accommodation more than fine, but the city is just disgusting.

The plan for today is to try and stay awake until I am on the train this evening and then to curl up in a (hopefully air-conditioned) ball and sleep soundly until sometime in the morning. I think buying some snacks is prudent, especially given my tendency to wake up at 2 and want to eat, and I may think about getting postcards and a sewing kit to keep myself busy on the train - I have big plans for a pair of socks and an iPod cover in the making ... the train leaves at 2048 and arrives 42 hours later but there's some difference in the official time of arrival (centralised to Beijing's clocks, some 3 timezones East) and the (real) local time, so I have no idea what time I actually get in, nor how this will affect my already-screwed body rhythm.

Next post probably from Urumqi!