Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific B777-300ER Business Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific Lounge Review: The Cabin at HKG
Asian Adventure: Cathay Dragon A330-300 Business Class Hong Kong to Beijing
Asian Adventure: Regent Beijing Hotel
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Dongcheng District
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Great Wall
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Run-ze Jade Garden
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Legend of Kung Fu
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Tiananmen Square
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Forbidden City
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Hutong Tour via Rickshaw, Tea Tasting, Flying to Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Hotel Shangri-La Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Qing Dynasty Terra Cotta Warriors
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Tang Dynasty Dinner and Show
Asian Adventure: Xi’an Wrap-Up, Flying to Lhasa, Lhasa Home Visit
Asian Adventure: Shangri-La Hotel Lhasa
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Jokhang Temple and Barkhor Market
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Canggu Nunnery and Sera Monastery
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Potala Palace
Asian Adventure: Leaving Lhasa and Flying to Chongqing
Asian Adventure: Viking Emerald
Asian Adventure: Shibaozhai Temple
Asian Adventure: Cruising the Three Gorges
Asian Adventure: Three Gorges Dam
Asian Adventure: Jingzhou City Walls Tour
Asian Adventure: Wuhan - Hubei Bells Performance and Provincial Museum
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Shanghai Museum
Asian Adventure: Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Old Shanghai and Yuyan Gardens
Asian Adventure: The New Otani Tokyo Hotel
Asian Adventure: Tokyo - City Tour
Asian Adventure: Mt. Fuji and Hakone Tour Returning by Shinkansen
Asian Adventure: ANA Suites Lounge Review, Tokyo Narita
Asian Adventure: All Nippon Airways B777-300ER First Class Tokyo Narita to Houston
Xi'an Wrapup
This is a kind of catch-all post. We spent two nights in Xi'an but really only had the one day in the city. I'd only heard of the city in connection with their most famous tourist site but learned more after I got back.
It's been continuously inhabited since about 1100 BC, making it the third oldest city in China. Beijing is about 55 years younger as a city and Shanghai doesn't even make the top 25 list in this category. Xi'an is considered to be the starting point of the Silk Road and of the Four Great Ancient Capitals (the others are Beijing, Nanjiang and Luoyang) it is the oldest.
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| Map from Google Maps |
Yet it is a very modern city and is the most populous in Northwest China - though looking at the map there appears to be a great of area much further west. (It appears that much of the western part of the country is uninhabited or does not have cities of any size.) But this area is emerging as a hub for the country's space exploration program, national security and research and development.
It didn't take me very long as a passenger on a bus to realize that I would not want to drive in any of China's major cities but that especially holds true in Xi'an. Motorbikes dart between vehicles and there are often bicycles in the traffic flow as well. Miraculously we never saw a wreck while we were visiting. I attribute that to everyone being more willing to go with the flow and have all lanes shift over if something were blocking one lane, whereas in the US we seem to have more of a "this is my lane and I'm standing my ground and you can't come over into it" type of mentality on the roads. Or maybe that's just me.
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| Motorcycles and Bicycles everywhere! |
The Great Firewall is a very real thing in China. There are certain websites that are blocked by the government: Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo-owned sites, and any Google-owned site including Google.com and Gmail. But Microsoft sites are allowed so Hotmail is fine as is the Microsoft search engine, Bing. They've built their own versions of Facebook and Twitter, the latter is called Weibo, I believe. But for a country with all the technology, some things are still baffling. Take, for example, the wiring on these utility poles. We think that this is coaxial cable though it's hard to tell. We noticed this a little bit while visiting the hutong in Beijing but in Xi'an it was 100 times larger. These photos were taken from the bus so they're not great but it's just crazy.
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| Like a giant rat's nest! |
Flying to Lhasa
Those of us who'd gone to the Tang Dynasty dinner and show had been made aware that we'd be out fairly late and that we had an early flight the next morning. But while the show was going on our guide, Jack, received word that due to upcoming government meetings the military would be doing maneuvers near the Lhasa (Tibet) airport and so our flight would be delayed until the afternoon. At least we got to sleep in a bit!
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| Xian (XIY) to Lhasa (LXA) Map from gcmap.com |
It was another China Eastern all-economy flight so nothing exciting to report about the plane. We had our choice of beef or chicken hot meals and they were pretty good.
The more interesting part of the flight were the local passengers. While our group was spread throughout the plane many of us were seated towards the back, which was fine. But there were local folks who either were not aware of airplane etiquette or the rules they were following were very different from everywhere else I've flown in the world.
M and I were seated next to each other and a local young woman in her 20s had the window seat. All was fine during the roughly 3-hour flight. It was after we landed that things got interesting. Once our plane reached the gate, those of us in the back knew we weren't going to be able to deplane soon, so we just stayed seated though others near us did stand up in the aisle. The young woman kept indicating she wanted to get past us but I'm not sure where she was going to go since there was nowhere for her to stand. My knees nearly reached the back of the seat in front of me so I'm not sure how she though she was going to squeeze past either. When it was finally time for our row to exit, M and I just stood up and stepped into the row in front of our seats so she could grab her bag and storm out past us. It was just very bizarre. She couldn't have a connecting flight because there are no connecting flights at this airport so I don't know why her knickers were in a twist but it was strange.
As we left the plane the jet bridge was fairly long and extended upwards just a little. By the time I reached the terminal I was already reminded that we were at altitude now and this was only the first reminder.
About Lhasa
Until we were getting ready for this trip I hadn't realized that Tibet is no longer considered a country but is (according to the Chinese government) the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and its administrative capital is Lhasa. In recent months the Chinese government has sent notices to Marriott, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines that they need to stop listing Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet separately on their websites as all of those are part of China and they take this offense very seriously. When a social media employee of Marriott "liked" a tweet by a group wanting Tibet's independence from China, the Chinese government shut down Marriott's website for a full week, no doubt costing them thousands of dollars in reservations. And the poor social media guy got fired. I do hope someone else hired him.
Several of us on this trip are skiers and as such we've been a lot of places at high altitude. In Telluride, Colorado - depending on where we stay - our lodging may be at 10,000+ feet and it's not unusual for some of us to feel a bit of altitude sickness on our first day or two. Breckenridge, Colorado is another place we often run into this condition. But the BASE elevation of the city of Lhasa is 11,990 feet. That is quite high and even walking very far on a flat surface we learned to pace ourselves.
Due to the upcoming government meetings Jack had warned us that security might be tighter than normal. It was a little disconcerting to see fighter jets parked right beside the airport terminal but both the military and commercial flights use the same runways so it makes sense. I could never get a cell phone signal the whole time we were in Lhasa, I assume because I was using a foreign phone. Jack, who had a Chinese cell carrier, was able to use his phone.
Lhasa is practically a village compared to Beijing and Xi'an, with just under 300,000 people living there. As such they did not have any large buses so Jack's group of 31 had to be split into 27 passengers on the bus with Pen, the local guide, and 5 (including Jack) in a van.
The airport is about 35 miles away from town and other than a few businesses right around the airport there are only mountains and fields around it. As we approached the city traffic (such as it was) backed up just a little because we had to go through a military checkpoint where our passports were examined to be sure we had the special permit to enter. Then we proceeded into town where we knew for sure we were no longer in the big city because there was a yak making its way down the street....
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| Not something you see everyday... |
Lhasa Home Visit
Before we even reached the hotel we stopped to visit a local home. The street side had two or three small shops but we went down the alley beside the building and the colorful home entrance stood out.
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| Makes it easy to find your front door! |
I don't remember what family members lived in this home but while we were there was a (great?) grandmother and her (great?) grandson who was about 3 or 4. During our time in Lhasa I found it difficult to gauge the age of older adults. The sun is so intense here that it tends to weather people's faces quite a bit, I suspect. Despite seeing small patches of snow on nearby mountain peaks we were surprised to learn that it really doesn't snow in Lhasa all that often. December and January are the coldest months but the average high temperature is in the 40s (F).
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| Tibetan grandmother |
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| Tibetan grandson |
The home consisted of a large open area surround on three sides by various rooms. Upstairs was a simlar layout with a multi-use patio. The trim around the open areas was just beautiful.
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| Our local guide, Pen, tells us about the house |
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| Incredibly detailed - look at all the gold overlaid on the red and green at left |
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| The upstairs was intricately decorated as well |
The rooms did have doors but on a warm day like the day we visited these decorative quilts were hung over the doorway to allow fresh air to circulate.
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| Quilts over the doorways |
One room was set aside for worship and was incredibly ornate. The white and gold items that look like scarves were prayer shawls and we were each given one to keep.
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| Home worship area |
They didn't have a laundry room but did have this corner set aside for that purpose.
The upstairs patio allowed us to look into the corral behind the home and we could see the family's yak there along with giant haystacks. Firewood was stacked along the roofline.
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| Yak in the corral |
A small truck, ideal for zipping through some of the smaller alleys, was parked in the carport.
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| The small truck is more practical |
And it seems this home was fairly typical as the neighbors had a similar setup.
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| Hello Neighbors! |
From the patio you could cook in the outdoor oven while admiring the view of the mountains.
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| Oven on top of the roof |
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| Mountain View from the Rooftop |
This is certainly not something we could have arranged on our own so I'm glad Viking was able to set this up for us.
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