day: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 epilogue

28 May 2007

to Tibet - Day Ten: Lhasa and Palaces

It is a good thing to take a day off from the herd. To be the master of yourself and be with your own senses. However today we would fall under the yoke again for a special trip to the very special palace. It's what the city was buiilt for. Lhasa is much different than Xining. There is an amusement park feeling to the place. People know english catch phrases like "hello" and "how are you?" that they will try on you at many an opportunity to sell you something or even just to practice and get a kick out of your reaction. They are far more engaging in that respect as seen in the western pub that we visited again tonight and the night ladies. I find Lhasa very accommodating to foreigners. Plentiful Budweiser beer signs rivalled by Coors Lite ads. Their smaller less prominent brother, Carlsburg Chill sneaks in banners featuring sexy ladies straddling musical equipment and looking all the happier for it. All day you dodge around shoe shiners, trinket vendors and novelty bicycle rickshaws and then all night you get to dodge sexual advances in exchange for money. And the nights run late here. Where in Xining you'll find the lights blinking out at ten pm, here you can pick up some fresh fruit or baked goods after a haircut sometime past midnight.

All around Potala Palace pilgrims were prostrating themselves towards it and making prayers followed by sliding across on their bellies. Inside we had an hour to cruise the very big winding building but no photographs allowed. I'll make this description quick. Lots of statues of Buddha and Buddhist related mythological characters. Room after room of variations on a theme with incense and monks reading prayers. Big tombs coated in literal tonnes of gold and tens of thousands of precious stones. There was a small group of younger monks who asked a bunch of questions that fell outside the realm of "hello, how are you?" so we indulged in a breif history of our journey. Outside a group of dirty Tibetan characters in Canadian tuxedos wanted to borrow my camera to wear while getting their picture taken. I recalled seeing them praying inside and knocking their heads against various key beams. Nice dudes and i wish i could have heard their story because it looked like they came a long way for this.

There was a five minute wind storm this afternoon, I ate some more pizza. Packed my bags for tomorrow's bus ride to Gyantse. I passed the elevator lady again. This time she was with a much taller lady in a complementing green robe and they were standing outside a door a few rooms down from me. As i brushed my teeth i heard a light knocking. Got to admire their go get 'em attitude. I climbed into bed, told my dad to go back to sleep because it was just the massage ladies out there and then drifted off.

joel

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