May 22, 2006
Hello All
I caught a 6 hour bus ride from Pingyao to Xi'an and checked into the Ludao hotel and immediately signed up for a terracotta warrior tour for the next day. Terracotta warriors were constructed for the tomb of emperor Qin Shi Huang 2200 years ago where he wanted to bring 7-8,000 clay warriors with him into the afterlife and this emperor was the first to unite China as a nation and connect the great wall to other cities plus many other accomplishments (He seems like the Egyptian Pharoah Ramse 2nd when it comes to accomplishments).
On the tour I met Tom from Ireland and Matt from the United States. On one of our stops on the tour I had a couple different chinese people come up to me to ask if they or their family members can get their pictures taken with me which I have become fairly accustomed to by now since they seem to have a fascination with my height and size or my blonde hair and blue eyes. I will just say that I am in a lot of Chinese photo albums (Probably about 1/2 a billion photo albums altogether, give or take a few ;)). We went to the tomb of Qin Shi Huang which is just a mound on top of a small hill but tourists aren't allowed down into his tomb.
At the gift shop was a very old Chinese peasant man who is now famous for finding the Terracotta warriors in 1974 when he was digging a well and now spends his days signing autographs in over priced Terracotta warrior books they sell to the tourists at the site. The last stop was at the site of the terracotta warriors which has 3 different sites close to each other but the biggest one was the size of an ice arena with a huge roof covering it. Each of the 8,000 terracotta warrior faces are different from the next and they all originally were painted in detail and holding sharp weapons.
Lonely planet talks about a friendly chinese guy at the Ludao hotel whose name is Mr Bean who is the guy to talk to for any travel arrangements etc... Well this guy is super friendly and always goes the extra mile for the customers at the hotel. Matt and I were having a few beers in the lobby and we gave Mr Bean a few suggestions to make the place have a more backpacker friendly atmosphere and then he grabs his camera and wants us to pose all over the hotel so he can put our photos up on the internet to advertise for the hotel (Matt and I thought a few women would be a better way to sell the hotel on the internet but Mr Bean insisted on dragging us around to various places for photo sessions). We had a few beers in us so we didn't mind.
I don't know if I mentioned this before but chinese are constantly horking and spitting out mucus wether it is on the street or on a store floor. It is very gross but you can't help it and I find other backpackers including myself constantly doing it. I am sure it is because of the pollution and they say 8 of the 10 top polluted cities in the world are in China. Another pet peeve is that they will never tell you that they don't know the answer to your inquiry, so many times I will show them my map that is in mandarin and point to the road I want to go and ask which way and then proceed to walk that way for 50 steps until I ask another chinese person at which point they will point be back in the direction in which I came. I had this happen 6-8 times one time going back and forth constantly until I was beginning to lose my patience with these people and began to just trust my intuition which works great. I hate walking down a long street that someone has directed you down to reach your destination and your inside is telliing you the exact opposite.
I have noticed so many backpackers reading Dan Browns "The Da Vinci Code" that I decided to buy it to give it a read and read it all in one day. It is basically a story built around facts to do with secret societies like the Priory of Sion and I enjoyed it very much and recommend anyone that hasn't to give it a read. Of course the movie comes out next month with Tom Hanks and Ian McKellan (Gandolf from Lord of the rings) so you can always watch it.
On Thursday May 18 I grabbed an early flight from Xi'an to Chengdu since it wasn't that much more expensive than the 18 hour train ride. You can see the smog in Chengdu which is like a heavy fog in front of you. The next day I grabbed a bus out to Leshan to see the biggest buddha in the world carved from a mountain in the 8th century. On the bus I met Tal and Tzuvia from Israel and they used their student cards to get them and myself into the Great buddha site for half price. It was a bit of a hike up a mountain to get to the big buddha that stands 71 meters tall. There are rails around the top of the head of the Big Buddha and then you walk down narrow steps to the bottom where the feet are and there were so many chinese tourists packed at the site you could hardly move. Another pet peeve is the chinese will wait a few minutes to get the right photo without giving a shit if there are 100 people waiting behind them for their turn.
The next day I go out to the panda research center where the chinese are trying in increase the panda population since pandas are very sensitive and going extinct and usually live alone and only eat certain types of bamboo. The pandas life is basically eat and sleep and nothing else. Saw red pandas at the center which look exactly like raccoons but are red. After I got back I went out to Wong Jians tomb who was a 9th century general that ruled around the chengdu area at the end of the Tang dynasty. After that I headed over to computer street where it is a mall that sells only things related to computers or electronics in general and found everyone in the mall basically staring and pointing at the big white blonde haired blue eyed monster trolling around the mall to the different counters as I priced laptop computers. I found a place selling DVD's for $5 Yuan (75 cents cdn) so I ended up buying 13 DVD movies so I can watch them at various places I stay at on my trip since many have DVD machines. The chinese seem to be masters at copying other products and making it for a tenth of the price.
On Saturday May 20th I got up at 5am and headed out to the airport for my flight to Lhasa, Tibet. The meal they served on the plane was the worst meal I have ever had in my life and couldn't eat anything except for the bun. Their rice porridge is rice that has been sitting in water for a couple days. Behind me on the plane were 5 Germans and none of them even touched their meal. At the Lhasa airport a guide picked up 10 of us to bring us 95km back to Lhasa. The guide had recommended that we don't do very much for the first few days since we just flew from Chengdu 500 meters to Lhasa at 3700 meters and that it would take a few days to acclimatize to the higher altitude. We all noticed that the air was much thinner here in Lhasa and that our lungs were working harder to take in the same amount of oxygen. As we got dropped off downtown I was heading to the Kirey hotel since it was recommended to me and had Veer from England and Juerg from Germany join me. We decided to share the costs and grab a 3 bed room. We checked in then went for food at the local restaurant where I ran into another guy named Chris from England who I met at the airport and the 4 of us basically walked around Lhasa where we see Tibetans doing the Koras which is basically a pilgrimage in a clockwise direction around certain streets in the old section of Lhasa with their little prayer wheels in their hands spinning in a clockwise direction. We stopped in at a rooftop restaurant where I had a yak burger and a coffee and had a rooftop view of Lhasa and the surrounding snow capped mountains. Met a couple from Kamloops, BC up there and we shared a few tips. Tibet is so different from China and looks more like Nepal. The people have a very harsh look on their faces from tough living conditions and since tourists have started coming here there are now lots of beggars of all ages coming up to you asking for money. I was shocked to see monks begging with their dark red robes but someone had told me later that many beggars will use the monks robe to beg for money.
Lhasa at 3700 meters really is the "Rooftop of the world". We all got altitude sickness that night since we didn't take out guides advice since we decided to do to much to fast. I am pretty impatient when I travel and like to see as much as possible with the least amount of time and I basically scoffed at the idea of taking it easy for a couple days. Well the three of us suffered all night and knew that the other person was not sleeping either no matter how quiet they were. In the morning we all had throbbing headaches and no energy to move. We shared out pain killers and medicine and after a few more hours of rest decided to head out again. Veer is a very cheerful englishman and always joking and laughing and a well seasoned traveler at 46 years of age and has lived all over so we got along great and decided to head out to Potalo palace which was first constructed in the 7th century by King Sangsten Gampo but most of it was built around the 17th century and the home of most of the Dalai Lamas until 1959 when the chinese took over and exiled the present Dalai Lama. There is even a big chinese flag right in front of the Potalo palace just in case you forget who is running the show here in Tibet. It was the afternoon so Veer and I decided not to waste our $100 yuan entrance fee for that day and decided to walk around the outside walls of the palace that has prayer wheels all around it so Tibetan pilgrims walk around the palace clockwise spinning all the prayer wheels. I tried it and was bored after a minute of spinning the prayer wheels. The bathrooms here in Lhasa are shitty (sorry about the pun) but they are dirty and you have to squat which is not so much of a problem but many times there is no divider between you and the guy taking a crap beside you. You are basically sharing a room with a few holes in the floor. Tibetans are used to this but being a westerner I just can't do it. Veer was amazed that I was able to hold for another 24 hours until I found a suitable bathroom.
Veer just finished Burma (Myanmar) and has a month in Tibet and the German fellow Juerg is heading to Nepal like myself and I signed up for a 5 day trip to the Nepal border upon arrival in Lhasa and today both of them said they would also do it since you need 4 people to share the costs of a landcruiser and another Brazilian had signed up before me so tonight we are meeting up with this Brazilian guy to see if our route is ok with him. If it isn't then he will have to wait for 3 more people which isn't going to happen quick here in Lhasa. We have decided on the 5 day route from Lhasa to Yamdok lake- Gyantse- Shigatse- Lhaze- Rongbuk- and then on to Everest base camp where Veer wants to stay two nights since he is a photographer and loves nature and landscapes and wants a good blue sky day to take photos which we are more than happy to do. After Everest we go to old Tingri and then to the Nepal border where I grab a 7 hour bus to Katmandu and Veer then heads back to Lhasa.
So in a few hours we meet this Brazilian to see if he likes our route and we either go tomorrow or the next day so once I am on the road I won't be emailing until I get to Katmandu. I haven't had enough time (Or energy) to find a CD burning shop since I have many photos of China I want to send out.
Kevin
Hello All
I caught a 6 hour bus ride from Pingyao to Xi'an and checked into the Ludao hotel and immediately signed up for a terracotta warrior tour for the next day. Terracotta warriors were constructed for the tomb of emperor Qin Shi Huang 2200 years ago where he wanted to bring 7-8,000 clay warriors with him into the afterlife and this emperor was the first to unite China as a nation and connect the great wall to other cities plus many other accomplishments (He seems like the Egyptian Pharoah Ramse 2nd when it comes to accomplishments).
On the tour I met Tom from Ireland and Matt from the United States. On one of our stops on the tour I had a couple different chinese people come up to me to ask if they or their family members can get their pictures taken with me which I have become fairly accustomed to by now since they seem to have a fascination with my height and size or my blonde hair and blue eyes. I will just say that I am in a lot of Chinese photo albums (Probably about 1/2 a billion photo albums altogether, give or take a few ;)). We went to the tomb of Qin Shi Huang which is just a mound on top of a small hill but tourists aren't allowed down into his tomb.
At the gift shop was a very old Chinese peasant man who is now famous for finding the Terracotta warriors in 1974 when he was digging a well and now spends his days signing autographs in over priced Terracotta warrior books they sell to the tourists at the site. The last stop was at the site of the terracotta warriors which has 3 different sites close to each other but the biggest one was the size of an ice arena with a huge roof covering it. Each of the 8,000 terracotta warrior faces are different from the next and they all originally were painted in detail and holding sharp weapons.
Lonely planet talks about a friendly chinese guy at the Ludao hotel whose name is Mr Bean who is the guy to talk to for any travel arrangements etc... Well this guy is super friendly and always goes the extra mile for the customers at the hotel. Matt and I were having a few beers in the lobby and we gave Mr Bean a few suggestions to make the place have a more backpacker friendly atmosphere and then he grabs his camera and wants us to pose all over the hotel so he can put our photos up on the internet to advertise for the hotel (Matt and I thought a few women would be a better way to sell the hotel on the internet but Mr Bean insisted on dragging us around to various places for photo sessions). We had a few beers in us so we didn't mind.
I don't know if I mentioned this before but chinese are constantly horking and spitting out mucus wether it is on the street or on a store floor. It is very gross but you can't help it and I find other backpackers including myself constantly doing it. I am sure it is because of the pollution and they say 8 of the 10 top polluted cities in the world are in China. Another pet peeve is that they will never tell you that they don't know the answer to your inquiry, so many times I will show them my map that is in mandarin and point to the road I want to go and ask which way and then proceed to walk that way for 50 steps until I ask another chinese person at which point they will point be back in the direction in which I came. I had this happen 6-8 times one time going back and forth constantly until I was beginning to lose my patience with these people and began to just trust my intuition which works great. I hate walking down a long street that someone has directed you down to reach your destination and your inside is telliing you the exact opposite.
I have noticed so many backpackers reading Dan Browns "The Da Vinci Code" that I decided to buy it to give it a read and read it all in one day. It is basically a story built around facts to do with secret societies like the Priory of Sion and I enjoyed it very much and recommend anyone that hasn't to give it a read. Of course the movie comes out next month with Tom Hanks and Ian McKellan (Gandolf from Lord of the rings) so you can always watch it.
On Thursday May 18 I grabbed an early flight from Xi'an to Chengdu since it wasn't that much more expensive than the 18 hour train ride. You can see the smog in Chengdu which is like a heavy fog in front of you. The next day I grabbed a bus out to Leshan to see the biggest buddha in the world carved from a mountain in the 8th century. On the bus I met Tal and Tzuvia from Israel and they used their student cards to get them and myself into the Great buddha site for half price. It was a bit of a hike up a mountain to get to the big buddha that stands 71 meters tall. There are rails around the top of the head of the Big Buddha and then you walk down narrow steps to the bottom where the feet are and there were so many chinese tourists packed at the site you could hardly move. Another pet peeve is the chinese will wait a few minutes to get the right photo without giving a shit if there are 100 people waiting behind them for their turn.
The next day I go out to the panda research center where the chinese are trying in increase the panda population since pandas are very sensitive and going extinct and usually live alone and only eat certain types of bamboo. The pandas life is basically eat and sleep and nothing else. Saw red pandas at the center which look exactly like raccoons but are red. After I got back I went out to Wong Jians tomb who was a 9th century general that ruled around the chengdu area at the end of the Tang dynasty. After that I headed over to computer street where it is a mall that sells only things related to computers or electronics in general and found everyone in the mall basically staring and pointing at the big white blonde haired blue eyed monster trolling around the mall to the different counters as I priced laptop computers. I found a place selling DVD's for $5 Yuan (75 cents cdn) so I ended up buying 13 DVD movies so I can watch them at various places I stay at on my trip since many have DVD machines. The chinese seem to be masters at copying other products and making it for a tenth of the price.
On Saturday May 20th I got up at 5am and headed out to the airport for my flight to Lhasa, Tibet. The meal they served on the plane was the worst meal I have ever had in my life and couldn't eat anything except for the bun. Their rice porridge is rice that has been sitting in water for a couple days. Behind me on the plane were 5 Germans and none of them even touched their meal. At the Lhasa airport a guide picked up 10 of us to bring us 95km back to Lhasa. The guide had recommended that we don't do very much for the first few days since we just flew from Chengdu 500 meters to Lhasa at 3700 meters and that it would take a few days to acclimatize to the higher altitude. We all noticed that the air was much thinner here in Lhasa and that our lungs were working harder to take in the same amount of oxygen. As we got dropped off downtown I was heading to the Kirey hotel since it was recommended to me and had Veer from England and Juerg from Germany join me. We decided to share the costs and grab a 3 bed room. We checked in then went for food at the local restaurant where I ran into another guy named Chris from England who I met at the airport and the 4 of us basically walked around Lhasa where we see Tibetans doing the Koras which is basically a pilgrimage in a clockwise direction around certain streets in the old section of Lhasa with their little prayer wheels in their hands spinning in a clockwise direction. We stopped in at a rooftop restaurant where I had a yak burger and a coffee and had a rooftop view of Lhasa and the surrounding snow capped mountains. Met a couple from Kamloops, BC up there and we shared a few tips. Tibet is so different from China and looks more like Nepal. The people have a very harsh look on their faces from tough living conditions and since tourists have started coming here there are now lots of beggars of all ages coming up to you asking for money. I was shocked to see monks begging with their dark red robes but someone had told me later that many beggars will use the monks robe to beg for money.
Lhasa at 3700 meters really is the "Rooftop of the world". We all got altitude sickness that night since we didn't take out guides advice since we decided to do to much to fast. I am pretty impatient when I travel and like to see as much as possible with the least amount of time and I basically scoffed at the idea of taking it easy for a couple days. Well the three of us suffered all night and knew that the other person was not sleeping either no matter how quiet they were. In the morning we all had throbbing headaches and no energy to move. We shared out pain killers and medicine and after a few more hours of rest decided to head out again. Veer is a very cheerful englishman and always joking and laughing and a well seasoned traveler at 46 years of age and has lived all over so we got along great and decided to head out to Potalo palace which was first constructed in the 7th century by King Sangsten Gampo but most of it was built around the 17th century and the home of most of the Dalai Lamas until 1959 when the chinese took over and exiled the present Dalai Lama. There is even a big chinese flag right in front of the Potalo palace just in case you forget who is running the show here in Tibet. It was the afternoon so Veer and I decided not to waste our $100 yuan entrance fee for that day and decided to walk around the outside walls of the palace that has prayer wheels all around it so Tibetan pilgrims walk around the palace clockwise spinning all the prayer wheels. I tried it and was bored after a minute of spinning the prayer wheels. The bathrooms here in Lhasa are shitty (sorry about the pun) but they are dirty and you have to squat which is not so much of a problem but many times there is no divider between you and the guy taking a crap beside you. You are basically sharing a room with a few holes in the floor. Tibetans are used to this but being a westerner I just can't do it. Veer was amazed that I was able to hold for another 24 hours until I found a suitable bathroom.
Veer just finished Burma (Myanmar) and has a month in Tibet and the German fellow Juerg is heading to Nepal like myself and I signed up for a 5 day trip to the Nepal border upon arrival in Lhasa and today both of them said they would also do it since you need 4 people to share the costs of a landcruiser and another Brazilian had signed up before me so tonight we are meeting up with this Brazilian guy to see if our route is ok with him. If it isn't then he will have to wait for 3 more people which isn't going to happen quick here in Lhasa. We have decided on the 5 day route from Lhasa to Yamdok lake- Gyantse- Shigatse- Lhaze- Rongbuk- and then on to Everest base camp where Veer wants to stay two nights since he is a photographer and loves nature and landscapes and wants a good blue sky day to take photos which we are more than happy to do. After Everest we go to old Tingri and then to the Nepal border where I grab a 7 hour bus to Katmandu and Veer then heads back to Lhasa.
So in a few hours we meet this Brazilian to see if he likes our route and we either go tomorrow or the next day so once I am on the road I won't be emailing until I get to Katmandu. I haven't had enough time (Or energy) to find a CD burning shop since I have many photos of China I want to send out.
Kevin
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