tbaroundtheworld

My first attempt to visit Tibet started back in August 2009. Faced with a 5 day work holiday, I couldn’t think of a better place to spend it than on the fringe of the Himalayas so I went to my internet travel agency and booked the tickets. A half hour later, I received a frantic phone call from the travel agency asking if I had the necessary travel permits - it seems that despite the fact that Tibet is an Autonomous Region, you can’t just hop on a plane and go there. Unless you’re Chinese. This surprised me a bit because I had just had a conversation with our local “expert” and he’d told me nothing about that. I told the travel agency to book the tickets and that I’d deal with the rest. And I went off to re-visit our local expert who had apparently felt that recommending hotels and doctors for altitude sickness treatment qualified as “helping me out.” On this visit he confirmed the need for a travel permit and added that you can’t have a travel permit without booking a tour. I didn’t r...

I’ve not been to many places in China that I was sorry to leave. I love Xi’an for what it is, home to the Terracotta Warriors, ancient history and its magnificent City Wall that is unsurpassed for a nighttime stroll. Beijing grows on me more and more as I get to know its intimate details. Shanghai with its hustle and bustle and sophistication is a great place to go and feel as though you are at the center of the modern world. But Lijiang said something entirely different to me, it said, “You really ought to collect Your Lovely Wife and drag her out here. You could have breakfast in the restaurant, accompanied to your table by your private greeter. You could sit on the patio outside your room and spend the morning reading under the shade umbrella before heading into the ancient town for lunch at the Prague Café. You could roam the streets, shop a bit and have a nice dinner under red lanterns followed by a coffee stop at the bistro overlooking the Old Stone Bridge. You’d then wander back...

We had arranged for a car to pick us up around 9:30 for a trip out to the base of Jade Snow Dragon Mountain, an 18,000’ massif to the north of town. There is a system of cable cars that climb up to various spots on the peak and we wanted to have a look so after realizing that the hotel car was far too expensive we hired a local service. “Kevin” the concierge told me the day before that the driver’s name was Mr. He so you can imagine my surprise when he turned out to be a she. Women drivers are very uncommon in China so I was a bit excited to see how we’d fare with one. Her entire name was He Xiao Wen and trying to completely understand the three parts of it was the basis of us getting to know how we well we would be able to communicate. She having no English and my Chinese being, well, my Chinese. Leaving the parking lot we incredibly encountered a Smart Car convention that was basing a tour of the area out of my hotel. Miss He thought the cars were very intriguing and wanted to know m...

Having not particularly enjoyed being lost the night before I resolved on this morning that I would take the time to really understand the way back to the hotel. So bright and early I went out the back gate and began to determine the way back. I started by walking the same path as the day before but stopping when I reached any important intersection that required a significant change in direction. This time I found the obscure quick left turn and didn’t end up dead-ended in the school. One point for a good memory, at least in the daylight. I walked past the spot where the children were playing in the canal, they’d been replaced by a man who was washing some sort of animal entrails, carefully dipping and squeezing the water out. His dirty pile was lying on the stone walkway, his clean pile which was draped over his right arm. A few yards upstream another man stood on the path, smoking a cigarette and blowing his nose farmer style into the water. We saw a lot of food being washed in the ...