Brothels and Tibetan Buddhists

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After posting last night, we headed back to the hotel for an early night in our very basic hotel room in Tongren. We read our books, wrote in our journals, and shut out the lights for some much needed rest, after traveling basically the whole day...

About a half hour later, I was awoken by what sounded like some very drunk people in the hallway. After five minutes, the sound died down, and I thought nothing of it. However, about 15 minutes later, and probably every hour after that until about 4am, the same thing happened. I would first hear the same man start coming down the hall yelling REALLY loud. From what I could understand, he was walking down the hall, knocking on doors, telling people to come out. Twice in the night, he knocked on our door, and even tried to come in. Thankfully, we had bolted the door, but understandably I was a little freaked out! Each time this happened, I would then hear girls yelling in high pitched voices, and what sounded like men grumbling about something, leaving the room, and walking down the hall.

So I can't 100% garuntee that this is what was happening, but I really think our floor in the hotel was also acting as a brothel of some sort... I was annoyed to say the least, and also a little scared, since our hotel room was sketchy as it was.

So that said, we woke up this morning a little groggy and missing sleep, but were determined to make the best of our one day in Tongren (Rebkong in Tibetan). So we got up and headed out. We walked along the road for a little bit, and then headed into a side street where a very lively Sunday market was taking place. There was everything from furs to sunglasses, whole sheep (slaughtered and hanging, ready to be sold). We took some pictures, and had a good time being stared at. We were definitely the only foreigners in the whole city, which always adds to the adventure here.

After the market, we continued up the road to the monastary at the top of the hill. It was giant, and had prayer wheels all along the outside, with tibetan buddhist monks walking along, spinning and sending their prayers into the wind. We went in, and it was like stepping back in time. This monastary was full of monks going about their daily prayers, cleaning, and studying. There were lots of people walking around each of the different temples. We even got to see a part of the living quarters, and were invited in to a temple by a monk, who showed us some famous scripts and photos of the Dalai Lama. Witt knew a lot more than me about what we were seeing because he has studied tibetan buddhism a lot. So we were a great pair! I would translate from Chinese, and Witt would explain to me what everything was :-)

After visiting the monastary, we walked back down the road and started shopping! We both got a mala, prayer beads used by tibetan monks. Witt also got a tanga painting. They are very well known in the city, and some traditional winter robes. It was fun talking to the tibetans (I think my chinese is actually better than most of theirs!), and getting to know them better.

We headed back to Xining this afternoon. The trip to Tongren, which took 3 hours yesterday, took over 4 today! This was due to many more stops on the way to the capital, and a construction job which totally stopped us for about half an hour near the begining of our journey. So when we got back to Xining, we went directly to the hotel that we had found yesterday, and dropped our stuff. We headed to a simple dinner, and then decided to stop on the way back to the hotel for some special muslim tea outside looking over the mountains of Qinghai. A wonderful woman (we named her Mona) came and sat with us and we had a great conversation about her hometown, Qinghai's beauty, and the difference between muslims in China and muslims in the US. She was hui, which is one of the muslim minorities here in China, and she was so warm and welcoming... it made me miss my Mom (if you're reading this mom... I miss you!). We lazed about for a while, watching the sunset, until we had drunk enough that our bladders wouldn't let us stay any longer, so we headed home.

Tomorrow, we will head back to Lanzhou in the morning, and then take our first over-night train ride of the trip to Jiayuguan. Once we are back in Lanzhou with the rest of my luggage, I will be able to upload photos, so check back soon for that!

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." ~Lao Tzu

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