Well, I ran into a quasi-serious problem today, not even counting the fact that all my toiletries exploded in my suitcase because of the altitude. It would seem I left my voltage converter in the last hotel, and now I am dangerously close to losing all communication with the outside world. As it is, my present hotel room actually has a computer in it, but it is all in Chinese so its much harder than it sounds. So we'll see what tomorrow brings, but don't panic if you don't hear from me. My Blackberry is just about done.
Today was a great city, but kind of a bust for a tour guide. Her english was marginally understandable when she was doing the tour stuff, but if you got her off script it was hard going. And we kind of ran through the tours and were done by 2, and she basically dropped me off back at the hotel. I was wondering how I was going to see Lhasa in just one day, and turns out it was more like half a day. So I took a taxi into town and cruised around by myself. More shopping, everything is dirt cheap but the market is just brutal. They think it is OK to grab your wrist and hold on to you. "lookie, lookie." I had my waiter last night teach me some Tibetan, so I knew how to say "no, let go." When they grabbed me I would say "min du, to chi cha" and make sure they saw my tattoos (which no one has here), and they would let go of me like I was on fire.
I saw that the place my guide took me to for lunch had pizza on the menu, so I ventured back there tonight and actually had some pizza. It wasn't great, but at this point who's gonna complain.
The Palace was an amazing place, and it has been around longer than our whole country. Our White House would about be their garage.
I will keep my political commentary to a minimum, because Charlie is on the wire. But Lhasa is a step back at least 50 years in time, they still have wooden fruit carts and they wear wool jackets and hats like I have seen in pictures of my great-grandfather. They live a very simple life. They are very dark-skinned, so I can't imagine any chinese coming here to mate. The Buddhists are deeply religious, and that is most everyone, and for them the delta lima is jesus christ. Monks are everywhere. They could care less about material belongings, and could not be more different from Charlie. I don't see Charlie ever winning this one, and I'm not sure why they want to. Tibet's only product is yak butter, I don't know why Charlie risks its place on the world stage for a battle of hearts and minds it will never win. But that's just my opinion.
Sorry, no photos today since I have no idea how to get them into this Chinese computer...
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