To Dunhuang and Mingsha Mountain

I had a front row seat right behind the safest bus driver I've yet experienced in China. The bus was a medium sized long distance number with reasonably comfortable seats and it seems a no smoking policy.
Sitting next to me is a Chinese bloke taking a couple of days off to see the sights in Dunhuang before he goes to Guazhou for work. On the map Guazhou is marked as Anxi (Placid West) but along with Hami not so far away it is a major melon producing center and so has been renamed from what I thought was a rather delightful name to Melon City. The guy sitting next to me is Zhang Yun Feng, his English is patchy but miles ahead on my Chinese so we've had some interesting if somewhat tiring conversation along the way. The scenery, to me at least, is just fantastic, the left side window displays a very rugged range of low lying hills close by that present the illusion of a huge mountain range in the far off distance. Contrasting this out of the right side windows is a flat as a billiard table to the horizon, without a tree to be seen in either direction. The infrastructure in this country never ceases to amaze me, we traveled on a duel tollway almost the entire distance with another free single lane sealed road running alongside. Keep in mind that this area is relatively sparsely populated and is also serviced by rail. The trip took about five hours with two stops; one in Melon City, along the way.
Managed to get some pics of crumbling ancient signaling towers along the way and would have loved to stop for closer examination but no chance of that. The only blemish on an otherwise perfect trip was the two old farts behind me competing for the national championship on noisy eating of boiled eggs.
Have decided to split the cost of a hotel room with Zhang in this so far delightful little city in a no star place on the main road and close to the city center. There are plenty of cheap hotels here in the main street and close to the bus station. By the way, the train station is a long way out of town.
We took the No.3 bus 1Y to Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Lake. This is one of the major draw cards for the city and just 10 minutes bus ride. Foreigners will be hounded by taxi drivers as soon as they appear on the street but it's a waste of money when the bus is so frequent. Be warned though that not all fare collectors on the buses are honest, the one on the bus to the attraction wanted to charge me 5Yuan until Zhang set him straight. No problem on the return bus. Ticket cost for Mingsha Mountain is 60 Yuan and in my opinion it's worth it. Sure you can see the dunes without going through the gate but you can't see Crescent Lake. A bit on that subject; it's absolutely beautiful and must have been a real sight in it's original incarnation, the lake forms a perfect crescent in a valley between towering sand dunes and has a delightful looking pagoda and temple structure on it's shores. The lake and buildings we see today have been there since about 1986. It seems the lake dried out and the original buildings fell down many years previous so the government to their credit had the whole lot reconstructed. See some of the pics in the slideshow to see the restoration work. Incredibly, I ran into two Japanese guys; Atsushi and Toru, at Mingsha who I'd spent some time with in Xian, the last I'd heard they were on their way to Lhasa.
I've had a great day climbing sand dunes and taking lots of pics and then a very nice feed in a nearby restaurant; it's so handy having a native to do the ordering.