URUMQI, CHINA: THE GRAND BAZAAR AND THE DIWOPU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

We didn't have a lot of time left in Urumqi after we visited the museum because we had to catch a plane to Kazakhstan, but there was enough time to spend an hour in the "International Grand Bazaar Urumqi." Opened in 2003, it has lots of booths and stalls selling clothing, jewelry, pottery, nuts, fruit, local cuisine, rugs, musical instruments, and just about everything you can imagine, so an hour was not nearly enough time, especially because Bob was On A Mission to find and eat some horse meat.

There are some very distinct things about this market that set it apart from other Asian markets we've been to. The first and most obvious is the Islamic architecture.

There is a grand entrance that includes a huge tower and a mosque.

First, the mosque. It was beautiful and extremely photogenic, but unfortunately we didn't have time to go inside:

The tower near the entrance looks like some of the centuries-old minarets we had seen in other places, but it's only fourteen years old. Tourists can pay $7-$8 to climb the stairs to the observation deck at the top, but unfortunately we didn't have time to go inside:

There is an elaborately carved band near the base of the tower:

Another unique feature of this market is this lovely, huge pomegranate sculpture at the base of the tower:

It is popular with the locals as a photo backdrop:

The market looked pretty busy on the Wednesday afternoon we were there:

Bob had arranged with AJ, our local Uyghur guide, to go shopping for horse meat, a specialty of the area. We passed by all of the outdoor stalls . . . 

. . . and made our way into a building that had a large, modern escalator leading to, of all places, a Carrefour grocery store, not exactly what we expected to see. Who expects a French grocery store in the most remote city in the world?

Bob was expecting a restaurant with a pile of warm horse meat over a plate of noodles, but what AJ led him to was the refrigerator section, where he pointed out several different kinds of cooked horse meat. Bob's disappointment in not having a hot dish did not stop him from buying two different brands of the refrigerated meat:

He opened the first package on the bus on our way to the airport. It was fatty and tender and reminded me of corned beef.

He opened the second package a few days later. As it had not been refrigerated for those two days, there was no way I was taking a bite. The time lapse didn't stop my husband, however. For some reason he didn't think this package of horse meat was as good as the first one.

And by the way, I love foreign grocery stores too, and I wasn't going to pass up a chance to buy something unique for myself. I think Coke Zero and Dove chocolate covered with Chinese characters is pretty unique, don't you?

I was a little disappointed that we didn't have much time to explore the market, but honestly, after a quick walk through, we weren't that impressed, and it turned out that there were a lot of markets ahead on our journey across the Stans.

We made our way to the Diwopu International Airport for our flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan:

We had some pretty intense experiences at this airport. The airport security there was the tightest we have ever experienced. The pat downs (yes, more than one) were incredibly invasive. Our carry on bags got x-rayed THREE TIMES. I had forgotten I had a water bottle in my backpack, and instead of having me dump it out, they asked me to take a drink--a brutal thing if it had been anything other than water.

We finally got through immigration, but then I got a text from someone else in our group saying Bob was wanted back at the check-in. When he went back through immigration, the agent kept his passport. I waited and waited and waited for Bob to return, but he didn't come back. Tension was high in China because of an upcoming national summit, and we'd been warned to keep a low profile. I started to get worried.

It turns out they'd mixed up Bob's suitcase with someone else's, and they let him go. However, when he tried to return through immigration, the security wouldn't let him through because he didn't have his passport. He tried to explain it had been kept by immigration at the other end of the hallway, but they didn't listen. They asked him if he was traveling with someone, and he said, yes, his wife, and they told him to call me, but he didn't have a cell phone with him. They told him to go get me and bring me back. 

Like Bob, I had to surrender my passport when going out through immigration. I found Bob, but the guy was mad that I didn't have my passport! I explained, and he eventually walked us both back to immigration, checked our passports, and let us go. 

We boarded the plane about 10 minutes later.