Tibet!

So last we spoke I had given up on going to Tibet. And since then I had given up maybe 3 more times until it finally just came together. After I left Xian I headed to chengdu where I met a couple other people going to Tibet, or trying to go. With the politics the way they are you can only go with a group tour and guide, the chinese government won't let you just travel there alone so we (ryan from austrailia and Regis who is from belgium but lives in Austrailia and I) booked a tour with a driver and guide from our hostel in Chengdu. So I ended up spending 6 days or so in Chengdu just trying to work out the details. I met some pretty fun people in Chengdu so we just drank beer alot and chatted about nothing really so it made the Tibet rollercoaster bearable.

We ended up getting the train from Chengdu to Lhasa, which is a 45 hour train trip! It actually went bye really fast because the scenery was amazing.

from the train somewhere in tibet.

We got to Lhasa on a sunday and our guide met us and took us to our hotel then out to eat. So here is the Tibetian food section of the Tog... for all those vegetarians in the audiance you may want to skip ahead because Im about to talk about some delicious animals, well one in particular. Thats right Yak. The first meal we had was a rice, potato, yak, and pickled radish dish which was really tasty. I also had a yak burger, yak noodle soup, dumpling soup (no yak), momo bread (a dense tibetian bread very good). We also got the chance to stop at a friend of our guides house to see a traditional tibetian home and it was so much fun. The people in Tibet have this custom to force feed you drinks. Mostly it is sweet tea which is yak milk tea and sugar. So when they serve you a drink they motion to you to drink while they are holding the thermos then you drink and they fill it to the brim again then motion for you to drink again and fill it once more. This goes on and on until the meal is over. So when we were at our guides friends house it got a little out of control. At first we were just going to have tea then they brought out potatoes, then a barley mixed with milk rolled in a sheep bladder, then pickled cabbage,l then reaw meat that had been sitting out (and yes I ate it because its hard to say no). So at one point I had chopsticks and a hunk of barley in one hand, raw meat in the other and the lady was motioning at me to drink more tea so she could fill my glass again. It was a ball. We also had barley beer which tastes like cider sort of. The tibetian people are some of the nicest people Ive met so far.

Potala Palace Lhasa

Lhasa Bangkor square

Barley beer in the clear glass, yak butter tea in the saucer, potatoes, and barley mixed with milk on the brown plate.

So from Lhasa we went to shigaste then to Tingri then on to Everest base camp. Everest is so beautiful and COLD! We spent the night at the monestary near the base camp at 5200 meters high. It was pretty hard to breath even at the base camp. I didn't get altitude sickness very bad but I had a headache and trouble breathing a bit. All in all Tibet is amazing. I wish the chinese government would allow people to travel freely but not now. Well thats it for now Ill fill in more details later.

Everest!

Me, Ryan, Regis

So other mountain in tibet

camera back in business

I'll try adn post more later because people are waiting in line at the hostel to use the internet and my 30 minutes are up.

safety first (he has crutches if its too dark to see)

shanghai fireworks

terracotta warriors pit 3

terracotta warriors pit 2

terracotta warriors pit 1

Terracotta warriors pit 1

Terracotta warriors pit 1

chinese new years shanghai and some other stuff too

I had so much fun in Shanghai over chinese new years. I stayed with a friend from college and her family and it was great to see how they just live in china. It was also nice to finally commiserate about some of the little differences china throws at you. And Chinese new years was pretty crazy. They don't have any regulations about where you can set off fireworks, as far as I could tell, and they let you buy the big fun kind you can't get in the US (unless you have a permit i guess). We went up to the 30th floor of their building and it was a relentless sea of fireworks going on everywhere for hours...longer than you care to stand there and watch. They really know how to celebrate in china but I have to say its not very safety first at all but I guess most really fun stuff isn't.

I left shanghai a few days ago and am now in Xian. Its pretty fun for a city mostly because I met a guy from hong kong, who has been living here for a year and knows all the good places to eat and see. So here is the food section of the tog and I'm not a foodie so descriptions about the food are probably not easy to picture. So first day we went to the muslim quarter and had these sticky rice squares dipped in a syrup, a pork dish that was kind of the consistency of stuffing from inside the turkey, these fatty square noodles with a peanut kind of sauce (served cold), and a deep fried vegetable thing that was kind of crunchy on the outside and gooey sweet in the center. My favorite that day was the pork stuffing dish really good. The next day we went to get some noodles in a different part of town and they were green noodles made out of spinach I think that one was good too. I've also had a noodle soup with wide fat noodles, these boiled white balls that were gooey outside and peanut kind of on the inside, steamed buns with mutton inside, a chinese hamburger which was just a kind of big pretzel tasting bun and pork on the inside and last but surely not least I ate stinky tofu. It actually wasn't that bad really the outside was deep fried in what ever stinks most likely then they serve it in a dish and poor a sauce over it. I thought it was pretty good but I definitely won't seek it out to eat it again.

So as for where to next Its changed in the last few days. I did want to go to tibet then to nepal but it kind of sucks trying to go to tibet. Not that its hard just expensive because you have to book a tour and as far as I can understand you have to have a guide with you the whole time your there. Anyway there aren't many people wanting to go to tibet this time of year so I can't find a cheap tour to go on so my plan now is to head south and be in vietnam before my visa runs out. And I just dropped my camera and now I can't get the computer to read my pictures so sorry I can't post pictures now but I'll try and find a place to get it fixed today and hopefully post some soon.