We arrived in Urumqi (pronounced in local Uygur language as Wulumuchi for some reason) at some ridiculously early hour of the morning after a long journey. We were tired and just wanted to find a nearby cheap hotel. We pointed to this phrase in our guidebook so that our taxi driver would understand. He nodded approval and drove off. We hadn't gone further than 100 yards when he suddenly stopped, turned his light on and decided to go back to our guidebook and start rereading all of the phrases. I kept pointing to the one we wanted him to read, but he just nodded and continued to leaf through the rest of the book. This wasn't he time to do so and getting visibly annoyed I grabbed the book back and told him to just drive on. He seemed to understand, though constantly would turn round and ask for the book.

When we finally found a hotel that had rooms, it was as though the receptionist had decided that she simply wouldn't co-operate. I pointed to the corect phrase and again she wanted to read the whole book! Half an hour later, we hadn't had any success and were back on the road scouting for another hotel. At last we found one and, too exhausted to barter, just paid up and headed to bed.

We got up late the next day and spent the rest of it wandering around the modern, high-rise streets of Urumqi. It was mildly pleasant and a good way to de-stress. The Chinese habits, general lack of logic and annoyance is getting to me in a way that I have felt in any of the countries I have so far visited. Maybe it's just one of those things that I will have to accept I can't do anything about.