Bye bye China farewell dinner, Beijing Duck

We walked to a nearby Chinese businessman's hotel for a farewell dinner of Peking (Beijing) Duck.  Delicious once we got it. 

The waitress understood no English, not even "water".  It took about 10 minutes of pidgin English slang mandarin and wild gestures to figure out if credit cards were useable. Using her iphone translator: "can we use credit card?" translated into mandarin $%^%^&*)()$#! and her answer is "yes and no".  Finally she shows up with a card reader and we have the light bulb come on... she will run the card to see if it will work. Eureka, it does.

The menu was on an ipad clone, and she flipped through pictures on the screen.  "duck" finally got through, but there was a $35 dinner and a $35 whole duck. Converting the whole duck into a dinner was hilarious.  What a hoot, us paging through pictures of the food, the waitress using her iphone translator that couldn't translate "vegetable" into Mandarin, and us gesturing and pointing.

Finally we got a duck, two varieties of Chinese soft taco, pork dumplings and for some strange reason or another, pork soup.  Another round of wild gestures got us some bottled water and a local brewed beer for Maureen.

The waitress came around and showed us the proper way to make duck tacos, and off we went, gobbling up the duck. 

 

We all enjoyed it, and it was a great evenings entertainment trying to order the dinner. Duck tacos are delicious, and the meal with the drinks was only $50, including the tip.

Things we didn't eat today

While geocaching, I came across this street food setup.  Things we didn't eat:

grubs
starfish
frogs
snakes
spiders
crickets
and ...............................................

 

Augie

Day 4, Tibet

Today we finally get to explore the rural areas outside of Lhasa. We drive a long winding road, stopping to see amazing displays of prayer flags strung across mountain peaks and over the highway.

The Lhasa valley is well developed, with mostly new construction. Thousands of greenhouses. Really nice highways and bridges. The Chinese have invested a lot of money here, and have turned Lhasa into a Disneyland for Chinese tourists. What once may have been an exotic destination is now a giant, and I mean giant shopping mall. The local "market" has over 3 miles of stalls. The streets are lined with typical mall stores. On and on.

Finally, we reach the Drak Yerpa Hermitage. There are more than 80 meditation caves where the founder of Tibet Buddhism first came to meditate in the 7th century. Only 8 of the 13 of us opted to climb the hills to visit the caves, but the climb was definitely worth the effort. It was so peaceful and quiet up there, and the views were spectacular.

We climbed as high as 14,800 feet where the air was crisp and clean, the sky was the bluest blue, and the snow peaked mountains around us seemed more like a painting from someone's imagination than anything real.

Inside the caves were the usual assortment of Bhuddhas and religious statutes, and we had to hike from temple to temple all at 14000 feet +. We got a look at the "air burial" hill, where bodies are chopped into small pieces and left for the buzzards. Saw no buzzards, but it was probably a slow day.

Got to meet monks, and ride (pose for pictures) a yak.

On the way back to Lhasa, we stopped along a river below the monastery to eat a picnic lunch and watch the yaks go by.

After returning to town, we went to the Tibet museum where the real Tibet is on display. Tibet has a long history and once out of Lhasa, it quickly returns to the way it's been for hundreds of years.
Our only taste of the real Tibet is the monasteries and nomads and farmers who show up in Lhasa dressed in traditional clothes. With all the modernity and everyone dressed in jeans, they do stand out.

 

Some of our group brought school supplies and gifts to take to an orphanage, but we were not able to go.  Instead, our guide took us to a typical school, where we were invited into a 1st grade classroom.  It was one of the smallest classrooms, with 30 children.  They would not let us take pictures of the children, but they were beautiful, and were very happy to see us. They sang the alphabet song in English, the Do Re Mi song, and a song in Chinese with hand gestures.  They showed us their primer, which was written in three languages -- English, Chinese, and Tibetan.  When we left, they all followed us to the door, smiling and waving and saying "bye".

Day 3, Tibet

Another day of visiting monasteries.  As usual, they aren't on the flatlands, they're up a hill. More and more stairs.  And more stairs.

 

Today we visited the Drepung Monastery which was once one of the world's largest monasteries with around 7000 resident monks. It is the largest in Tibet, and it had 10,000 monks resident at one time. The kitchen looks like it could barely feed 1000, but then monks aren't supposed to eat much. Tibetan monks on average look healthier and fatter than monks in Laos or Cambodia. This is a result of Tibet monasteries being major Buddhist pilgrimage locations. Some pilgrims actually crawl 1000's of kilometers, and I mean crawl, to get here. Nirvana is a serious business.

 

It was the home of the Dalai Lamas and the power center of Tibet until the 5th Dalai Lama built the Potala Palace. This was another long climb up the hill with beautiful views of the valley. It was like a maze inside and I kept following signs that said "This way" and ended up getting lost. I finally found Gil and we walked down the road that ran along side the monastery until we reached the bottom of the hill.

 

As we pass through the monasteries, we are constantly overrun by thousands of Buddhist worshipers whose main occupation is genuflecting to the statues, pouring oil on perpetual candles, and dropping paper money in front of every Buddha and other religious statue. Common offering is the equivalent of about 1.5 cents. There's a bustling exchange marked where you exchange a 15 cent note for 10 1.5 cent notes.  These notes are actually cheaper than toilet paper, and they are literally all over the place. On statues, on shelves, on the floor, on lamps -- just about anywhere you can jam a small piece of paper.  In addition there are offerings of fruit, used juice boxes, rice, and just about anything you can carry conveniently in your hand.

 

The kids run around with wads of the notes and especially love to push them into the offering box slots.

 

We were supposed to walk down the hill to the next monastery, but we opted to drive instead. This was the Nechung Monastery, which held the State Oracle until 1959. This is where the Dalai Lama went to gain insight before making any decision.

 

On the way out we watched an open air debate on Buddhism between monk novices and Mo bought a couple of flying saucers.

 

This evening, Augie and I rode a rick shaw down to see the Potala Palace at night. The square was full of Chinese tourists taking pictures, and as usual, they wanted pictures of them with Augie, who looks like Gengas Khan.  We decided to walk back to the hotel, as it was not as cold as I first thought, and it was only about a 15 minute walk.

 

 

Stairs

Lhasa is in a broad river valley, about 12000 feet above sea level. Nice and flat.  Everything that's on the to see list happens to be at 13000 feet, and can only be reached by stairs. Hundreds, thousands, up and down stairs.

1st day tibet

"In the time between the two wars, a British colonial officer said that with the invention of the airplane the world has no secrets left.  However, he said, there is one last mystery.  There is a large country on the Roof of the World, where strange things happen.  There are monks who have the ability to separate mind from body, shamans and oracles who make government decisions, and a God-King who lives in a skyscraper-like palace in the Forbidden City of Lhasa." - Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet

 

We arrived late in the afternoon and had a long drive from the airport to our hotel in Lhasa.  We drove thorough a mountain (3 mile tunnel) and made a stop along the way at the first of many monasteries.

 

Our hotel is right in the center of the busiest part of Lhasa, and very close to the oldest part of the city, dating back to the 7th century.  We had dinner in our hotel and retired early, as some of us were having difficulty adjusting to the altitude.