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Published: September 1st 2006
Sunday August 20th
Another way-too early morning bus. We said goodbye to Fany and went outside as we heard the bus honking like crazy to warn travellers that he was about to leave (in 30 minutes! better hurry) and wake up the whole town. Our next destination was Xiahe, a town with the biggest tibetan monastery outside Lhasa. Most people who come to Langmusi went to Xiahe before so we knew somewhat what to expect. Most people prefered Langmusi but we decided to give Xiahe a shot anyway. The bus didn't go directly to Xiahe though so we had to transfer in Hezuo about 2 hours and a half into the trip. We weren't too sure where to get the transfer but we were told the bus to Xiahe was leaving from the other bus station in town and we'd have to get a ride there. A friendly chinese girl told us to get into this minivan who would get us at an interesection where we could hail a bus to Xiahe. Sounds fishy but we went for it especially as it was leaving now. I bought some sort of cake at the station before as I hadn't had breakfast yet.
I offered one of my cake to Aisling which she accepted until she realized it was Moon Cake which she said tasted like shit. Well we'll have to disagree there because this stuff is awesome. Give it a shot if you're in Hezuo someday. The bus dropped us at an interesection and about 3 seconds later a bus pulled over and we were on our way to Xiahe. Not bad. We arrived in Xiahe 4 hours after leaving Langmusi, pretty good considering the guidebook said 6 hours and we had 2 transfers. Sometimes things just work out well (most often they don't).
We got 2 beds in Tara's guesthouse which has been described to us as "ok" by Fany and indeed it was nothing exceptional. We talked with the 2 israeli girls who were staying in the dorm and had been in Xiahe for a few days. We got recommendation for a few places to eat and things to see. Weather was still shit so we were freezing and didn't feel like walking to the tibetan temple for now. To be honest I'm pretty much templed out now and seeing yet another identical (maybe slightly bigger) temple doesn't
excite me, especially when I know that it is 5 years old (you can thank the Cultural Revolution for that).
I had given Aisling some money in Langmusi becuase she was running out and there was no bank there so we went to a bank so that she could take money. It turned out to be a bit longer than planned because even though there were signs of "Agricultural Bank of China" everywhere the actual bank was 20-25 minutes walk away. After going to the Bank Aisling decided it was too cold and she wanted to buy a North Face coat so we went in one of those shop that was selling it and she found one. We also shopped for a mobile phone for her because she had lost her old a few days ago but the one we found looked crap and we were getting quite hungry by that point. So we went to Tsewong Cafe, which had been recommended by the israeli, to fill our stomach. We had a pizza with tomato/onion/mushroom that was simply delicious. It is a bit out of my budget but sometimes you have to splurge a bit and that pizza was
worth it. There was a bit of confusion over the price which left us with a bad taste in the mouth so we decided not to go back to this evil, evil place (great pizza though).
After that pizza we decided to check our emails at an internet cafe and we found one close to our guesthouse. The place was packed with monks and other kids. You know you're in a tibetan area when you find monks playing Counter-Strike or any other very violent game. My computer was alright at the beginning but it because so slow after 10 minutes. When I tried to get help, I showed the guy that it took 20 seconds to open a window and it was almost impossible to load any webpage he just said "Sorry no english" and went back behind his computer. Fucking asshole. I left the internet cafe promising myself not to go back. Before leaving I told Aisling I'd be wandering around and we could meet at the guesthouse later.
I walked around town a bit but for some reason I was really tired so I went back in the dorm, read a bit and then fell asleep.
I woke up at some point because there was some irish-british blonde girl talking on his cellphone close to me. We were hungry by that point but decided to get something cheap so as to feel less guilty about the fact that we had blown our budget with the pizza. We walked on the street a bit until we hit his Hui (chinese muslim) restaurant that had good noodle soup for 2RMB (what I had) and fried noodles for 5RMB (what Aisling had, pfft expansive taste). Xiahe's street are fun, they're full of odd people like these old commies selling strings, old bearded Hui men sitting around and Tibetan cuties.
We decided to visit the muslim district and the Mosque as we had heard it was quite cool. Actually no that's not true because no one ever go there. We just thought hey a Mosque let's have a look. The Muslim quarter is really not like what you'll see on the main street. It's all small-alley and old (often made out of mud) buildings. Finding the Mosque wasn't too hard as you just have to look for the Minaret. We took a few pictures of the entrance then asked
if we could go in and was told by a passerby that we could. We climbed the Minaret and took picture of Xiahe and the Old City. While we were on top we noticed this wierd temple like building that was being built farther in the Old City. Since we're adventurous we decided: let's find out what it is!
We walked some more in the Old City and it was really lovely with kids playing with tires, old women looking at us as if we were the devil, dogs barking as if we were thieves and teenagers saying to us all the word"s" they know in english (I put the "s" there for politeness only). Finding your way into these small alleys isn't always easy but we eventually found it. A local men showed us the way for the last few alleys and we finally arrived at that thing. It turns out it is a Buddhist Temple in construction. There were a few men worker there as carpenter. They didn't want to take picture of them so we just took pictures of the wooden structures which were quite cool.
We said goodbye and thanks and left the Old
City. On the way out Aisling tried to have some sneak peak into people's courtyard but not too succesfully. We walked back to the hostel but Aisling stopped to talk to a rickshaw driver in front of it and within minutes we had a crowd. Cars were stopping and people would come out to talk to us (well, her) and people were stopping to look. I wasn't too sure what was going but they seemed to want to bring us for a ride somewhere. A little kid dressed in "traditional" costume was more insistent than the other. Turns out he was offering to bring us to the grasslands where the kids were having a "dance celebration" which we could watch. Fake traditional dancing for tourists! I'm so excited (please note the sarcasm).
We walked toward a little hill overlooking the tibetan quarter to have a good view of the quarter since the sunset appeared to be quite good. The pictures weren't too awesome but it was nice to be sitting there looking at the tibetans and relaxing. When we decided to go back down Aisling ran the last part of the hill because her shoes didn't have a good
Xiahe 2
The poorer part of Xiahe.enough grip to go down the sleep slope slowly. An old men stopped her and said something which I didn't understand but made her laugh hard. Turns out he said: "You shouldn't run down hills! I'm 75 and I have no teeth, my son is 40 and he has no teeth so you should listen to me!!!". As Aisling said, this guy should be on stage!
We went back to the hostel and we chilled on a table drinking Nescafe (it tastes soooo good after months of not horrible but not great chinese tea). Aisling was reading but I had nothing to do so I decided to do something which, I think, illustrate clearly that I'm intellectually deprived. I'm keeping a budget of my trip so for each day I have a breakdown of how much it costed me to eat bf, lunch, dinner, accomodation, transport etc so I decided to do some fun statistics. I decided to calculate how much it cost me per day on average, then how much it cost for accomodation, food, transport, entrance fees etc. Fun stuff but hey I'll publish it and it might be useful for someone somewhere to have a detailed
account of how much they should expect to pay in China if the number of post asking this question on Thorn Tree Forum is any indication.
At around 9PM we decided to be a bit social so we bought a beer at the cornerstore in front of the hostel and went upstairs to the lounge. There was a french girl that had been working in Xian for a few months and 2 american girls, a westcoaster and an eastcoaster. The westcoaster has been teaching english in Suzhou but the eastcoaster has been in China for only 2 weeks. Soon enough we were joined by an israeli guy we had seen the day before in Langmusi. He was quite cool and we talked for a while. He told me that I should go to Israel after I'm done with the Middle East but that I should expect a thourough inspection at the frontier, including internal inspection if you know what I mean. I must admit that this is not something I'd like to experience so please if you know someone who has been to israel with iran, syria or pakistan stamps on their passport can you please reassure me that
Buddhist temple in construction
Workers were working on this as we were passing throught they're still anal virgin (or if they aren't for hedonistic reasons, please leave this information out). We were all a bit tired so we decided to head to bed after about 2 hours. Adi (the israeli guy) invited me to israel and gave me his email. Well I'd be glad to see him again but that'll depend on a few things...
Monday August 21th
The plan for the day was to ride the Sangke Grassland (where that little kid wanted to take us yesterday) and bike around in the supposedly majestic landscape. I guess a few too many early morning buses took it's toll on us because we woke up fairly late at around 8. We also had to do some laundry and the machine wasn't working so we washed it ourselves. We went to eat lunch at Everest Cafe and I had a delicious and humongous Club Sandwhich with not-so-delicious fries (I just get really sicks of the usual breakfast they serve and I wouldn't touch chinese breakfast again with a sterile 12 foot long pole).
We rented bikes from the guesthouse and started cycling to the grasslands, about 15km from the town, through the tibetan quarter.
The road was quite easy and lovely. We spotted a wierd little temple on the side of a mountain and decided to get off-the-beaten track to see what it was. Turns out it is some industrial plant. Ah well you can't win them all.
We paid the 5RMB admission fee to the grassland (yeah, admission fee for grassland!) and continued cycling through the fields. The place really was lovely. There were beehives on the side of the road with Hui selling honey in old Coke/water plastic bottle. We had to be careful biking around them because bees were constantly hitting us (but not bitting). Aisling bought some honey from them for 5RMB for a small bottle. We cycled to town, stopping here and there to take pictures and then continued straight for 5 minutes until we hit that fake-nomad tourist crap with bunch of tour groups. We of course decided not to go there and headed back ot the village and took a side road that went closer to the mountains that seemed to have a few villages.
Looks like we're not the only tourists who try to avoid the boring touristy places because there was a small
girl that wanted to sell us horse treks. I made the mistake of waiting for Aisling where they were so that by the time Aisling caught up they were probably thinking we were into their horse trek (hey I've been standing there for 30 seconds so of course I'm interested). She was a bit too insistent so we told her to fuck off but she didn't until we started biking away.
A few minutes later we finally hit those villages we had seen before. We went through one just to see how it was but soon enough this old lady came and told us to go in her house. I was a bit reluctant but Aisling really wanted to go so I went also. Her house was really beautiful. Very colored and very tibetan. Not big but it seemed quite comfy and they seemed to want to beat the World's Record for the highest number of blanket in a house.
They brought us yak butter tea, tsompa with butter/sugar that was actually good and yogurt with sugar that was delicious (notice how I'm not commenting the yak butter tea). I always feel akward in those kind of situation
because you never know if they expect payment, and you don't want to ask because it might insult them so you never know how much they'll ask in the end. The father of the house came in and he talked with Aisling in mandarin. I was just standing here waiting for Aisling's translation. After a few seconds of silence we decided it was time to leave so we stood up. As we got outside, the mother told us to go back in and we saw her put Yak meat in the wok and that she had potatoes ready. The father was also telling us something about horse treks. We weren't too sure what to do but went back inside because she had already put the meat on the fire.
By that point I knew they were into it for financial reasons. I totally understand their point but I still felt akward because I didn't know how much they'd ask at the end and they wouldn't shut up about the horse trek. They brought the meat/potato that was served in some kind of stew. It wasn't as good as the tsompa/yogurt but still allright. The mother joined us for conversation
Aisling in trekking gear
Just after the old man told her she shouldn't run off mountains because "I'm 75 and I have no teeth, my son is 40 and he has no teeth so you should listen to me" at that point. We decided to leave after the meal and had to be firm about not wanting horse trek because they seemed to have forgotten of "don't want". Before we left the mother asked for 20RMB each for the meal which is way overpriced. We settled for 20 for both and left.
It was an interesting experience but I would've enjoyed it much more if it had been clear from the start what we should pay and if they had stopped telling us to do a horse trek. Beautiful house though. If you go in Tibet try to do something like that just to see the inside of the house. It looks like nothing from outside but amazing from the inside. Sorry for the lack of pictures of the inside it just felt a bit akward to ask someone if we could take pictures of hte inside of their house and then publish it on the net...
The weather was getting worse by this point so we cycled fast back to Xiahe as our clothes was hanging on the roof. The road back was much easier as it goes down (very slowly, but it does go down)
most of the way. We got into Xiahe mid-afternoon and removed our (dry) clothes from the line. Aisling's breaks on her bike were really bad. She had forgotten to check in the morning before we left so she told Tara about the problem. She was a real bitch about it. She told us that all her bikes are in perfect conditions and if they're not working now it must be our fault or that it "subconsciously" happened while we were biking. Aisling took another bike and we departed toward the tibetan monastery. This time the bike was too small for her and the seat kept falling. So much for perfect conditions.
I took over her (pink) bike and we reached the Monastery shortly after. We walked around for a bit but we weren't too impressed as we knew that contrary to what the sign up front says, that monastery wasn't built in the 2nd millenium BC (yeah right, before Buddha was born... What the Chinese Tourist Industry will invent next? That the Great Wall that you see on pictures was built in 2nd century BC? Nowadays you really have to be an idiot to believe what they say) but
in 1995.
We had a long discussion on tibetan government and the chinese invasion of tibet. The point I was trying to make was that even if the chinese invasion was a very bloody and disgusting affair, we shouldn't refrain from criticism to tibetan government prior to the Communist takeover. If you look at it from an objective perspective, there is very little difference between the Taliban and the dalai-lama prior to the takeover (or the Bhutan king). Theocracy? Check. Force people to dress a certain way? Check. Keep people poor? Check. Keep people uneducated? Check. Keep all the power for the one-party government? Check. Keep people isolated from the rest of the world to ensure that they're easier to control? Check. This might shock the people who listen to Dalai Lama's cool speech in Time Square and think he is the embodiement of all thing holy but the fact is, according to our western standard, the tibetan government pre-communist had a really bad track record in actually helping their people. That, of course, doesn't make the communist invasion good or correct but it shouldn't be something that we hide. If we do that would make us as bad
as the communists who try to revise history. Unfortunately, no one but history buff will know anything about this because everybody is too busy trying to find the nicest adjectives to describe the dalai-lama.
Of course it is never gonna happen, but I'd be really interested to know what would happen in Tibet if it suddenly became independant and the Dalai-lama reinstated his theocratic rule. Surely all those years in India and around the world made him more amenable to western ideas (he is certainly a master to sound fashionable) but still I wonder what he'd do. It's one of those historical what-if question that we'll never find out.
At some point during our conversation Aisling got a call form her mom. She had to do some Western Union transfert so we took the bike and headed to the Post Office. It took about 45 minutes to do the transfert (something that usually takes 5) because it was the first time the lady did that. Please, if you're reading this and planning to go ot China don't rely on Western Union in small cities unless you speak mandarin. You'll starve to death. An old frenchmen came by to
ask for stamps and we talked for a while because the lady was too busy with Aisling. He was quite an interesting old man. He's been visiting some pretty interesting countries in the past few years in South America, Africa and Central Asia and had a few interesting stories to tell including how he met this italian man in a wheelchair that has been driving from Rome to Bishkek in Kyrgystan.
After the Post Office we headed to the bus station to get tickets to Lanzhou next morning which wasn't a problem. After that we went to a supermarket to buy some stuff to eat. Then we went to a beauty shop for me as I was running out of suncream. I managed to find one without whitening stuff added but I ended up opting not for the one that was "man-approved" and took the cheaper and stronger one that wasn't. If I turn into a female in the next few weeks you'll know why.
We decided to hit a tibetan restaurant before leaving so we went to Nomad's in front of the hostel. I had some momos dumpling that weren't quite as nice as in Daocheng but
were still allright as well as yogurt that was delicious. Aisling had some tibetan noodle soup that she had been raving about the last few days that turned out to be a big disapointment. She had another kind of dumpling that was really good though. We took a little shot of "our corner" near the guesthouse. By the time we finished eating it was quite late so we just took it easy at the table outside the dorm: reading, drinking coffee and talking with the american/french and israeli girls from the day before.
So did I find Xiahe? It was pretty cool. I wouldn't rank it above Langmusi but I'd rank it as a "Don't miss". Sure there are lots of shops on the main streets but the vast majority don't cater to tourists and even though you'll see some of them, the place isn't that touristy. Aisling disagree here and she ranked Xiahe above Langmusi. Maybe it is because we didn't do the touristy thing (tour of the temple) but we both loved the place.
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