Entry tags:

orphans, shangri-la, temple, tibet, yunnan, zhongdian

Rest of Zhongdian

More Pictures




The altitude was being very unkind to me. That or I had a 24 hour flu thing. I was horrible.
The day started well though. We woke up and went to a monastery, I love going to monasteries, they are so peaceful. This one was a mini replication of Potala Palace in Lhasa, looked exactly like it! But well….smaller. I broke off from the group to go look at something out of the way and couldn’t find them for the entire rest of the day. I found a few other people that had gotten lost too, so we stuck together. I’m glad we broke off, it’s easier to enjoy places like that in small groups. The actual reason we lost the group? We got occupied by a pig that was walking around. *Shakes head* Pathetic, I know.
All of the buildings you could go into had stairs to reach the roof. Alex Ho and I were the first ones to head up to the top of the first building. The floor right below the roof had a couple rooms for monks, one of the was a prayer room. The whole floor was just plain wood, nothing too fancy, but we heard a monk chanting and decided to check it out. There was a small little room as beautifully decorated as the prayer hall with one monk sitting in it reciting scripture it looked like. We cautiously and quietly stepped in to look around, when we were leaving the monk gave us a huge smile. Which would make anyone happy. When we went back downstairs Alex was talking to some monks about random things, like the weather. All the monks were so ridiculously friendly and helpful, which, to be frank, isn’t always the case. I’ve run into a lot of monks that were less than friendly and less than happy. I always expects monks to be kind, and the ones here definitely were.
In the main prayer hall there was a monk that was blessing people and handing out prayer bracelets. He was on his cell phone when I walked up…Oh, China. I spent a lot of money donating to this place. I could have stayed there all day, just wandering around or sitting around, doing nothing. But, alas, TBC rushed us on out. Probably would have been a better idea to stay as my day took a nose-dive off a cliff after that.
We got back to town and did some shopping for the kids at the orphanage that we were going to visit later in the day. Lots of toys. I spent tons of money on toys for these kids. On the way back to the hotel after shopping and grabbing some lunch, people decided to stop at an internet café. I originally wasn’t going to, it was like, 4 days into the trip. But whatever, it was cheap, thought I would just check up on my mail. First e-mail I check was from Sharon telling me that one of my friends from high school had died in a car accident. I won’t even go into that, but I was slightly devastated and remained partially so for the remainder of the trip. It’s easy to push these things from your mind when you are out traveling like I was, so it didn’t really hit me hard until I got back to Beijing. But enough of that.
I wasn’t terribly interested in anything the rest of the day. The orphanage was fun, the kids did some dancing for us, we danced with them (I sat off to the side with a few other people who just weren’t feeling the dancing) and had some cake with them. The kids were adorable. I got a message from Gunpo saying that him and Tsebho wanted to go out to dinner. I wasn’t really feeling up to it, but how many times will I see them again? So I went anyway, brought Kat with me.
Before dinner, Kat, Alex Ho, Jia, and I went shopping and ended up buying Tibetan clothing. Aho bought an awesome jacket and Kat and I went ALL out and bought an entire Tibetan outfit. Shirt and dress, Jacket/overcoat thing, and a hat. Awesome. Cheap too, best ever. While we were walking around we ran into Gunpo and Tsebho, which was weird. Especially since I wasn’t supposed to let Peg (head staff) know that Gunpo was in town. Our current tour guide and Gunpo (a previous tour guide) used to be best friends but had a HUGE falling out. Peg was better friends with the current tour guide, so kept him along. Gunpo just said it was better not to let them know he was there. But Jia was there, who is also staff. Got a couple questions about how I knew them, but she thankfully dropped it after that and I don’t think mentioned it to Peg. It was great to see them again though, and I was happy about deciding to go to dinner.
So Kat and I went to dinner with them that night at a hot pot restaurant in old town. I wasn’t feeling well at the start of the day, and it just got worse during dinner. I had a great time though. I think we spent the entire time laughing at the stories of those crazy Tibetans. They went through a hole in the fence on the border of China and Burma because technically they aren’t allowed in there. They have some crazy stories. I love those guys. Haha, and Tsebho told the owner of the restaurant who they are friends with that I was his wife :) That made my day. Instead of going out afterwards, we decided to head back to the hotel because I felt like shit. I got really sick and passed out on my bed shivering and just feeling horrible. I don’t know what my problem was. Bad food couldn’t do that to you.
The next day was the “culture” day. If you chose to do the culture option you get to go to a sacred hill with a temple on the top and make your own prayer flags. It was really gorgeous once you get up there. Climb up to the top of the hill (harder than it sounds, bloody altitude) and it is completely covered in prayer flags. Some places you can’t even see through them. It was an amazing sight. We made our own prayer flags and sewed them onto a string to hang up. We were all supposed to dedicate them to people, so I made mine for Eric.
Kept my promise and went out with Gunpo and Tsebho that night. The beer on an empty stomach actually made me feel better, which is weird. We met them in old town, which is a renovated but really old part of the town, looks like it’s entirely for tourists, but I imagine people live there too. There is a square in the middle of it were people go to dance every single night. The rest is filled with shops and bars and restaurants. I had mentioned to some people that I was going to see them because I knew of some people that wanted to meet them. So they met up with us later. At the beginning it was just us, Kat and Reg. Tsebho brought up the wife thing with a straight face and Reg didn’t have a clue what was going on, it was hilarious. After that TONS of people show up, there had to be 15 of us there by the end of the night. Tons of different discussions going on at the same time. About everything; their crazy adventures, how to pick up girls in Tibetan, political topics, economics, history, etc. It was a good time. Everyone else loved Tsebho and Gunpo too. They were all freaking out on the way back to the hotel about how they had just hung out with Tibetans, etc, etc. It was hilarious, but I know I was like that when I first met them too.
Got into the elevator and got out on my floor. Peg was there and the people in the elevator, say ‘We just hung out with Tibetans!’ and Conor shouts out ‘Gunpo!’ The look of shock on Peg’s face was priceless, but I was scared nonetheless and bolted to my room. I couldn’t believe he actually said that *shakes head*
I was sad leaving and not knowing when I would ever see Gunpo and Tsebho again, if ever. One of those fleeting friendships in life or something. Veronica was right though, I felt pretty bad ass telling people I had Tibetan friends that I had known for a while and then getting to hang out with them. Plus sides of being a returning student ;)


What’s next, Lijiang I think? All right. I’m only a little behind O_O