Shopping and Praying

Yesterday we had the whole day off so we wandered around and shopped and took more pictures. This is probably the most religious place I have ever visited. The people are truly devoted to their beliefs. One of the things the religious people do in the morning is walk clockwise in a large circle around this temple and couple of blocks -(maybe a quarter mile in distance)  hard to explain unless you see this mass parade. A very few devote people do it by sort of "inch worming" along and standing up in between. There are lots of cops and armed soldiers that monitor this behavior. In front of the temple is a short wall by the edge of the large cemented square.  Cynthia was still in the picture taking mode (she has a new camera)  so I sat down (remember altitude problems) ... No more than 2 minutes later a cop comes up and tells me "do not sit" even though there are many people sitting on the wall on the other side of the square --- guess I looked dangerous with my purse and camera. A little more paranoia setting in.

Blind Massage

Good Blind massage in the early evening and Dicos (Chinese version of KFC) for dinner - we were home before 9 before a big thunderstorm hit)

Side Note - The Dicos was across the street from the Blind Massage place - They had soldiers posted on the roof - with cameras and telescopes. They had a direct view into the massage place. The soldiers came over after we were done to check on our activities. They asked questions of the massage people. Paranoia was starting to set in.....

Yak not Yuck

Lunch was on our own we had Yak meat which is great, yak tea which HORRIBLE is like drinking butter with milk in it and lots of beggars that walked thru the restaurant (i always have my right pocket full of small bills for them ) some even asked for food - sad - we figured they were foraging for the winter cause in a couple of months there wont be any tourists to harvest from.

Potala Palace

 All of my Tibet posts were removed from my blog sometime in 2013 - but I was lucky enough to have found my drafts in my old files. I will probably edit them a little differently - but at least they will be in my blog 

 Potala Palace - that climb was way more challenging than the lighthouse. I had started taking my altitude pills a couple of days before but it was really, really hard - But I MADE it. Beautiful and worth it.  Never knew that besides all the monks that live there there are lots of monks buried there - the tombs are unbelievable - the 5th thru the 13th head guys are entombed with lots of jewels and gold decorating their tombs.

Tibet & Military Presence

Arriving in the city center the first thing I noticed was the heavy military present. Soldiers were stationed on top of the buildings with cameras and telescopes. There was a soldier stationed at the corner of our hotel's street and we saw many more during our 4 days. It is rare to see a gun in China. Even at NUDT there were few guns visible. China always made me feel a little paranoid but this cranked up my paranoia a couple of notches. American Tourists were scarce- mostly European or Asian.

Our Lhasa Arrival

After my visa had been carefully checked at least 7 times we finally arrived at the Tibetan airport and could not find our guide. We waited about 30 minutes and finally figured out that quides are not allowed to come into the building. They are required to stay across the street (which the view of them was blocked by the city buses) during one of our trips outside to take pictures of the beautiful blue sky, mountain and clouds, I spotted lots of people across the street with Chinese signs. Cynthia went across the street to read them and found our guide and driver. The guide gave us both silk scarfs as a welcoming gift. It was a 40 minute ride into Lhasa and the scenery looked a lot like New Mexico - outcrop rocks and dry. The barley fields and blue blue sky were picture worthy.

Back in Changsha

I am back in Changsha - I had a great time at home, ate all my favorite American foods and saw most of the important people in my life. So with a jet lagged brain I am now getting ready for our big trip.

We accomplished a lot of our "trip chores" today. Cynthia helped me move my extra luggage over to my old apartment and up the 4 flights of stairs (rumor has it – that we will move to the new apartment sometime before the 15^th) (NUDT told us when we left that they would have already moved us BEFORE we got back- obviously not the case) I repacked my carryon for our 2 week adventure and then to the bank. That was the interesting part...

I needed to exchange dollars to Yuan so we actually did it with an illegal street deal with a 'Huang Niu Dang' person (word to word translation is Yellow Cow party - sort of like ticket scalpers) - We got a slightly better rate than what the bank was offering (12 Yuan - about 2 dollars extra for a 4000 dollar transaction) but the best part being that we didn't have to wait in a very long line, show lots of ID, fill out forms or pay any fee. The only negative was having to walk about 4 blocks to Cynthia's bank so that her bank could check out the Yuan in their fancy counter machines to make sure they were not counterfeit. It is strange how some things work here and even though the businesses are illegal they are fairly safe and widely used (The Huang Niu Dong people were boldly sitting on a ledge right in front of the bank with no one stopping them ) This same day we also encouraged another illegal activity. We used a Hei Che today - Hei Che translates to black car- which is an unlicensed cab. You agree on a price before hand and they take you where you need to go. If I am alone I can't use the "hei che" due to lack of language abilities. Of course there are many more – the DVD stores, knock off markets, and of course the well publicized “Apple Stores”.

Its Friday morning now - 4 am -- wide awake as per my usual "jet lag" symptoms- so that is why I am answering and writing emails at this time of the day. Today we are finishing packing and recharging all our electronic stuff. We need to head to town to shop in Watsons - sort of a version of a drug store without the drugs - mostly shampoos, facial masks, soaps, etc - I need to purchase some of my favorite travel size Japanese shampoo and conditioner- then we will lunch at Cynthia's parents house. We leave Changsha at 8 this evening. Sometime today when non-jet lagged Cynthia wakes up at a normal time - I will get her to translate our itinerary into English so I can send it to you - We stayed in an airport hotel before our flight to Tibet. We had to ration the toilet paper.

Side note I did get a great massage yesterday after a great lunch. Both were in a 5 star hotel. The lunch was what they called buffet style - but to me it was more 'cafeteria style' --you walked around looking at the sample displays of food and gave them your card with your table number on it - You picked what you wanted - they recorded it on the card, cooked it and then brought it to the table. There were four of us Cynthia and Cynthia's dad along with one of his PHd students (who treated us all) and myself. We ate most of 15 different dishes they brought ( How come they are all so thin and small...not fair...). Anyway we had fish, crab, beef, pork, 2 types of tofu, a mushroom salad, green beans, a really big white bean (looked like a lima bean on steroids), another vegatable dish, spicy noodles, one of my favorite pumpkin things, a "vegetable rollup", pear soup-like dish, a pineapple flavored pastry and of course they brought fruit for dessert. I feel full just listing it all - we both skipped dinner.