Roof of the world Part VII

Its just kind of weird that when you want to set your alarm clock to wake you up at the designated time, you can have problems trying to wake up. Then when you choose not to set, then you will wake up earlier than you wish to. Now I wonder what is wrong. Why am I getting up earlier than I want to?

Seems like the meals in western China are all very similar stuffs. Fried potatoes. Green vegetables soup (with tomatoes or cucumber sometimes). Green eggplant. Hard boiled egg. Fried noodles seems non-existence here, only soup noodle.

We get to know your new guide during breakfast. Young chubby looking lady. The driver, a handsome man that the representative describe as handsome and look like La Ting minus the beard. We call Osama for short but here they call La Ting. We have to think so hard who the hell is La Ting.

So now we are in Lhasa, so travelling is within the city. Finally no more long mountainous road to each an attaction. We first head for Da Zhao Shi (Jokhang Temple). Bladie smoky and crowded place. Got what buddha, use for what, forgotten liao. One way in, one way out. Its some grand temple and you can see the long queue of people going in to pray. Tourists another lawless queue. No polite, no give way, else you can be forever standing there and no one gives way to you. From 8 years old to 80 years old (plus minus 10 years) bash their way in and out.

The temple is surround by this Octagon Street (Ba Jiao Jie). Great shopping hunting ground to shop hunt for whatever you want and practice your bargaining skill. Most All the things displayed by the street vendors are counterfeit. Lotsa jewelry stuffs for bargaining.

We The ladies plan to change the itinerary on the initla plan, to bring forward our visit to Norbulingka (Lou Bu Lin Ka) to before lunch. So they can do some shopping in the evening.

KNN! When the word shopping enter the itinerary list, all other plans can be shelved. More than 2 hours spent walking and buying and bargaining along this street, which is only like 500m only. Their bags are filled with their loots.

As usual we break for lunch, at a restaurant near Potala Palace (Bu Ta La Gong) since our next attrraction is the palace. While we are having our lunch, the guide go about getting our tickets for our entrance to the palace. The palace limit about 800 visitors a day and there are time slots allocated for entry.

While eating halfway, the guide calls to inform us that she only manage to get us 1 ticket for 1pm entry and 5 tickets for 2 pm entry. So I stop lunch, offer to go in earlier and wait for them inside. Some kind of screw up lor.

For outside, its really great. Tall. Bright color. Grand. Mystic. Religious. We ascend and ascend. We walk and walk. We climb and climb. We squeeze and squeeze. In and out. In and out. Totally lost track of which chamber is which buddha. Listen to the story till I'm lost. Who was what, who done what, who why what.

There are 5 types of burial for the tibetan. Sky, water, earth, fire and pagoda. Pagoda burials are only given to very high ranking monk, like Dalai Lama. Think of the Pope in the Christian world. The 5th Dalai Lama's pagoda is made of 3721 of gold and countless priceless gems. Its valued at 1 billion RMB. Some of the other padodas that we can see are made of few hundreds of kg of gold and countless priceless gems as well. The Potala Palace is estimated to be worth the construction of 7 Shanghai. No shitting me. See, I always know religion makes good moolah.

Next is Norbulingka, which reside inside a very big park. Tibetan like to bring their families to the park and enjoy the weekend. Norbulingka is Dalai Lama's summer palace. There is quite a number of century old trees.

During dinner, the ladies discussed about shopping place and ask teh guide and driver for suggestions. The driver suggest a night market to shop. Things are cheap according to him. And leaves room for your bargaining skill again. My roommate suggest massage since we done a lot of walking today. The driver recommend this quite reputable massage palour which is very near the night market. Neat!

The driver drop us at the night market. So my buddy and I roam the place for a while since its still early for massage, we just had a filling dinner. We are done with the night market within 20 minutes, then head on to the nearby internet cafe to surf for something.

The parlour is actually 3 stories high. 1st floor is for your hair, 2nd floor is the beauty salon while the 3rd floor is for massage. We decide to do foot instead of body massage. Even foot massage comes in several favours. See until blur. Dunno what herbs for dunno what purposes. Read also read till sian. Just random choose their newest flavour. I find it cheap and good. I'm already thinking of going back again when I'm back from Nyingchi (Lin Zhi) if I can afford the time.

The ladies can seriously shop. Then again, I think this must be a stupid and idiot statement. Everyone knows that. Oh well. Think they shop for a few hours. Heard one of them bought as much as 7 pairs of shoes. Why? Cause they say very cheap. The shoes price cost her only a good pair of socks in Sillypore. You say cheap anot?