It always hurt when you woke up like this...
So, finally, after much ordeal, I have made it to Lhasa. After Qing Dao I flew into Chengdu, which is considered the gateway into Lhasa and other near-unaccesible regions. When I got off the plane a woman approached me telling me that she could arrange transport into the city for 50 yuan. I told her "That's riduculous. I'm paying 20 yuan for my hotel room," and stormed off down the street. After walking about ten minutes down the road, followed by a short man talking to me in Chinese with me telling him "I don't know what you want, buddy, but I cannot understand you so it's pointless to be talking to me" (with my English being equally as pointless). So he followed me quickly, skipping as he went, into the 2:00 am night city. I then noticed a sign that said 'Chengdu 15 KM' and turned back, with my friend scratching his head for a moment before bouncing up behind me. I went back to airport, found the lady, apologized, and paid the 50 yuan for transport to the hostel that I had booked over the internet. The driver had no idea where the place was, even though the lady assured me that he did. We drove around and aroud, stopping from time to time to ask directions, sped off and slowed down, and asked for directions again. I was so ridiculously tired by that point that I was considering just sleeping on the street when we finally pulled up to 'Chengdu Dreams International Youth Hostel'. I paid my money, grumbling. I then had to jump over the bronze fence because the bell did not work, and entered the hostel. There was a calm, librarian-like Siccuan lady sitting at the desk, looking at me wide-eyed through her glasses and said "I've been waiting for you" and I said "You either need to fix that doorbell or clean that fence because it's filthy." The room was great, clean, and filled with like-minded travellers, still up, reading. Exhausted, I passed out. My dreams were filled with madness. I feel guilty for not jotting them down and posting them, as I'm afraid I've lost all memory of them. I know that at one point I was on a staircase with a gothic window. I was part of a group of people, fighting to make it to the end (which is always a common theme of my dreams reflecting the subconscious competition of spirits) I noticed a toad on the window sill, just waking up, wiping the dew from his little eyes, stretching. I picked him up, realizing that this building was no place for a little frog to be living, and walked down the stairs, carefully. Now, here's the interesting part. Here's where the dream ceases to be a dream and takes on a consciencious reality. I noticed another small toad on the stair, but, knew that if I picked it up, it would be too much for my mind to handle, and I would go splintering off into another time, place, reality, so I gave the one frog my full attention. The lucidity of this was incredible. I remember the way that the hallway looked as I was wandering the halls to the outside. I remember feeling the animal's fear of not knowing where he was. The windowsill was his home, and to enter a foriegn place, trust had to be formed between us. I made it out. I heard the faint insects and frogs murmuring in the dark. I walked down the dirt road and kneeled down to let the toad jump into the small stream with plants growing, blue in the pale light. He took a dignant look at me, and lept into the water.
The light was coming throught the windows. I looked at my watch, blurry at first, then reading 9:00, I plunged back into the dream. It was then a story about a group of monk-children, in their saffron robes, planning an assult on a school with sawed off shotguns and automatic weapons. (This section of the dream was probably inspired by the childrens book that I bought in Qing Dao, which was intened for 3 year olds, as the cover says, and has detailed information about weapons of war, bombs, rifles, tanks... In the same bookstore they were also selling posters for classrooms with the ABC's. A was for apple, C was for cat, E was for eat, G was for gun.... with a picture of gigantic automatic weapon. Kevin's (Chinese) girlfriend thought that our exclaimations were ridiculous and said that all children should learn about these things... I don't really know my view really, because in Chinese society, talking about a gun is like talking about a Burmese Tiger in America. They are both dangerous and both conpletely unaccesible (since guns are illegal here), therefore, harmless. (I still can't help but think that it would be more healthy for a child to learn about the stars or photosynthesis)
So finally, I woke, at 9:45, showered, cleaned the old chompers, and made it with beaming energy to breakfast. The breakfast table was on a balcony on the 4th floor overlooking a park, which I was curious to check out. I ordered a fruit shake and vegetable curry, and reading my book, I delighted at my situation. The sun was great in the air and the city was stirring nicely. A friendly Buddhist Malaysian came over and started up a friendly chat, watching me chomp way, nodding. He told me he was alone and traveling for various reasons and all that jazz so I told him we should pal around together so off we went. We both wanted to hit up a camera store, then we did lunch, and made it to some random museum on the map. The great thing about China is that, when you get to a city and aquire an English map, you can basically just point to a park or historical site and go, and you'll be blown away. Chengdu turned out to be a very lush city with a river running through, so all the parks were really excellent. We vistited a Mausoleum of some old dead emporer, whom I really liked the coffin of, and came back to the hotel in time to buy tickets to the Siccuan opera.
When the clock hit 7:30, a guide from the hostel took us over to a park across the street and lead us to the outdoor playhouse, with two great-big faces scowling at us from either side of the stage. When I told my Malaysian friend, Jackie, that I didn't like them scowling at me, he told me that they weren't scowling, that they were jokers and funny. Still, I was quite uneasy until the play started. We got free tea and nuts. I got several offers throughout the evening for massages and ear-cleanings. The massage was 50 and the ear cleaning was 20... but I didn't really feel like either. The opera was stimulating enough. (When I get back from Tibet I will post a video clip of some of this opera. It was amazing.)
We walked through the city and came to a large shoopoing mall-type area that had an outside pavillion with tables around. We took a seat, I ordered an enormous local-brewed beer, and we enjoyed the splendor of a royalty-free public exhibition of the new smash movie Spiderman 2, in English no less. The night turned into a kind of electric fantasy as we went to the 'disco' next and had a few more rounds. I didn't even seem to be bothered by the fact I couldn't find my credit card. Ah, I must have left it in Chengdu.
Now, however, I realize that the card was really was only means of funds for the journey. More specifically, now, at this moment of typing, in Lhasa, I'm not sure how I will make it out if I don't find a Western Union soon. I really should be more worried than I am right now, but perhaps I have a case of the old altitude heebie jeebies, or a bubble in my brain or something. Anyhow, I made it back to the hotel, weaving, and found my bunk A-Ok.
The next morning as I woke and brushed the teeth and made it to breakie, I noticed a cruelity in the corner. There was a beautiful green snake in a tiny plastic cage, it's nose raw from bumping the walls of the cage futily, with no food. My dreams are starting to make more and more sense, so I knew that it was foreordination and decided to break him out. I left a section of my brain open to process the prison-break as I ate porrige and juice. (I learned later that the snake belonged to an English bloke that abandoned the snake for 10 days to go on some journey.)
Downstairs, I bought my ticket to Lhasa for 1900 yuan cash, and made it upstairs for a shower. The water was cold. As I came back into the room, toweling my hair, there was a girl in the room that I quickly took an interest in from the pleasant, tounge in cheek conversation we had. Her name was Cindy Lam. She had just flown in from Hong Kong and had no idea what to do, so of course, using my powers of deception, convinced her to come to a park with me. We had a great day at the park. I learned that she enjoyed taking random buses as I did. (It could have been weird-for-the-sake-of-weird residual from her time in philosophy class, but it seemed genuine enough). She lived and went to school in Toronto, and her parents were both from Hong Kong, so she spoke fluent Cantonese. It was quite a scene for the two of us to walk around the tiny active streets together - with her asking questions in Cantonese and me with my returning handlebar mustache, not really knowing much Chinese at all. We came to a hotpot restaurant, which is a table with a pot in the middle that you cook your own food in - choosing the vegetables and meats that you want to stew. WE had periods of outright laughing and fun. It was strange and connective and hopelessly romantic. She told me that it's better off that was because I would never know her faults but I told her that I already analyzed all of her faults. She's going back to Toronto soon and I will teach Englsh to Chinese students. That's the story.
We stayed up pretty late, talking about life and everything, and suddenly that part of my brain awoke! [You need to go get your bag, the empty one that you reserved for stuff to buy in Lhasa, sneak into the dining room, get the snake, empty the water out of the cage (they had the poor thing floating at the top of three inches of water with no land, rotting) and sneak him down across the street, jump over the fence, and take the snake to the best part of the forest and let him go]
"I have to go let the snake go."
"Ok, but will you give me your email address first?"
I made it down the stairs, stepping lightly, the snake bouncing in the dark, confused. The librarian lady stared at me perlexed as I was leaving.
"You have a flight in 3 hours"
"Ok then, I'm just going out for a smoke"
I looked left and right crossing the street, pretending that what I was doing was much more dangerous and spy-like... crouched in the darkness beside the fence to the park and, with a single bound, made it up and over. I pulled over the snake-bag carefully, and cut my way through the moon-lit jungle.
The night was warm and damp with crickets and frogs chirping actively and beautifully. I crouched and extracted the plastic cage, the snake looking at me. I popped off the lid and gently poured my friend into my hand. He was so cold. He wrapped himself around my hand, pulsing, waking, then took his head up and stretched it right toward my forehead. He paused, looking right into my mind for a good long time. I let him down and he was gone in an instant into the thickness of the floor. I made it back into the light of the hostel. I asked the librarian calmly for a piece of paper. I walked upstairs with it, creasing the edges, making it aesthetic, and wrote some simple words.
"You should have taken better care of me."
I wrote it a bit messy, as though it was written by a snake, put it in the cage and placed the cage on the dining table, with the night watchmen looking at me.
"Hello." I said, went into the room, said goodnight to Cindy Lam, and slept for a good 2 hours defore waking up wearily to get on the plane. It was a nightmare. The transportation we had was late. We had to pick up other people who were also late. By the time we made it to the airport we only had about 15 minutes to board the plane. The driver abandoned us. We ran to the baggage claim counter, frantic and shouting in English, with the workers doing what they could, in their Chinese way, to help us. It was all too confusing and irritating to type out the specifics of the situation, but it was highly crazy. We made it luckily to the place, and I collapsed.
Finally we arrived in the Lhasa airport. A crazy coincedence occured. Just as I was walking out the dorr, stepping into Tibet, a friend of mine from Datong, a fellow teacher, was stepping into the airport...and I mean exact, too. Really weird. The taxi driver that we chose to drive us from the airport to Lhasa (about 50 km)had a van that continually broke down... I was in the passenger seat, which had to be lifted up to access the engine, so, whenever I started slipping into a peaceful sleep he would pull the van to the side of the road and tell me to get up so he could fix the engine. This happened about 6 times. We made it into Lhasa.
The first hotel that I wanted was completely booked. We walked and walked to the next hotel (Oh yes, when I am referring to we, I mean the group of people that had accompanied me from Chengdu. You see, the only way into Tibet is with, what they call a group-visa. You need to be in a "group" to travel into the province because the law here is pretty hardcore. You can do a bit of research about Tibet, Mao Zedong, and the Cultural Revolution if you're interested) We made it finally to the Banok Shol Hotel and put our things in the room. I had a paradox then...was I more hungry than tired or more tired than hungry? I decided to take a quick bite before my nap. Two of the chaps and I went searching for some food. One of the blokes thought it would be good to sample some of the local culture and that became a string of going in and out through restaurants and what appeared to be restaurants with my vegetarianism confusing everything more. We finally decided on a place and sat. Amir, the bloke with the desire for culture, proceeded to get amazingly drunk with this solemn Tibetan. As we were waiting the hour or so that it took to get our food, he hammered we with drunken Hinduist lectures with reference to Krisna Shaati or some guy talking all about sex and how the desire for it kept people in a vicous cycle of samsara and all that jazz. I was actually quite interested in what he was saying because he was so damn articulate and interesting when he talked with his thick Isreali accent, his white eyes and teeth shining brightly though the well-conditioned beard. He commented on my handlebar mustache saying that it was the desire to get attention from women which I was all too aware of and told me that the right woman will see through your crazy ideas, worn clothes, and ratty beard and that she is the one who will truly make you be the person you want to be or something like that. Perhaps tonight I'll get ridicolously drunk and hammer him with my lightning-thinks theory.
The light was coming throught the windows. I looked at my watch, blurry at first, then reading 9:00, I plunged back into the dream. It was then a story about a group of monk-children, in their saffron robes, planning an assult on a school with sawed off shotguns and automatic weapons. (This section of the dream was probably inspired by the childrens book that I bought in Qing Dao, which was intened for 3 year olds, as the cover says, and has detailed information about weapons of war, bombs, rifles, tanks... In the same bookstore they were also selling posters for classrooms with the ABC's. A was for apple, C was for cat, E was for eat, G was for gun.... with a picture of gigantic automatic weapon. Kevin's (Chinese) girlfriend thought that our exclaimations were ridiculous and said that all children should learn about these things... I don't really know my view really, because in Chinese society, talking about a gun is like talking about a Burmese Tiger in America. They are both dangerous and both conpletely unaccesible (since guns are illegal here), therefore, harmless. (I still can't help but think that it would be more healthy for a child to learn about the stars or photosynthesis)
So finally, I woke, at 9:45, showered, cleaned the old chompers, and made it with beaming energy to breakfast. The breakfast table was on a balcony on the 4th floor overlooking a park, which I was curious to check out. I ordered a fruit shake and vegetable curry, and reading my book, I delighted at my situation. The sun was great in the air and the city was stirring nicely. A friendly Buddhist Malaysian came over and started up a friendly chat, watching me chomp way, nodding. He told me he was alone and traveling for various reasons and all that jazz so I told him we should pal around together so off we went. We both wanted to hit up a camera store, then we did lunch, and made it to some random museum on the map. The great thing about China is that, when you get to a city and aquire an English map, you can basically just point to a park or historical site and go, and you'll be blown away. Chengdu turned out to be a very lush city with a river running through, so all the parks were really excellent. We vistited a Mausoleum of some old dead emporer, whom I really liked the coffin of, and came back to the hotel in time to buy tickets to the Siccuan opera.
When the clock hit 7:30, a guide from the hostel took us over to a park across the street and lead us to the outdoor playhouse, with two great-big faces scowling at us from either side of the stage. When I told my Malaysian friend, Jackie, that I didn't like them scowling at me, he told me that they weren't scowling, that they were jokers and funny. Still, I was quite uneasy until the play started. We got free tea and nuts. I got several offers throughout the evening for massages and ear-cleanings. The massage was 50 and the ear cleaning was 20... but I didn't really feel like either. The opera was stimulating enough. (When I get back from Tibet I will post a video clip of some of this opera. It was amazing.)
We walked through the city and came to a large shoopoing mall-type area that had an outside pavillion with tables around. We took a seat, I ordered an enormous local-brewed beer, and we enjoyed the splendor of a royalty-free public exhibition of the new smash movie Spiderman 2, in English no less. The night turned into a kind of electric fantasy as we went to the 'disco' next and had a few more rounds. I didn't even seem to be bothered by the fact I couldn't find my credit card. Ah, I must have left it in Chengdu.
Now, however, I realize that the card was really was only means of funds for the journey. More specifically, now, at this moment of typing, in Lhasa, I'm not sure how I will make it out if I don't find a Western Union soon. I really should be more worried than I am right now, but perhaps I have a case of the old altitude heebie jeebies, or a bubble in my brain or something. Anyhow, I made it back to the hotel, weaving, and found my bunk A-Ok.
The next morning as I woke and brushed the teeth and made it to breakie, I noticed a cruelity in the corner. There was a beautiful green snake in a tiny plastic cage, it's nose raw from bumping the walls of the cage futily, with no food. My dreams are starting to make more and more sense, so I knew that it was foreordination and decided to break him out. I left a section of my brain open to process the prison-break as I ate porrige and juice. (I learned later that the snake belonged to an English bloke that abandoned the snake for 10 days to go on some journey.)
Downstairs, I bought my ticket to Lhasa for 1900 yuan cash, and made it upstairs for a shower. The water was cold. As I came back into the room, toweling my hair, there was a girl in the room that I quickly took an interest in from the pleasant, tounge in cheek conversation we had. Her name was Cindy Lam. She had just flown in from Hong Kong and had no idea what to do, so of course, using my powers of deception, convinced her to come to a park with me. We had a great day at the park. I learned that she enjoyed taking random buses as I did. (It could have been weird-for-the-sake-of-weird residual from her time in philosophy class, but it seemed genuine enough). She lived and went to school in Toronto, and her parents were both from Hong Kong, so she spoke fluent Cantonese. It was quite a scene for the two of us to walk around the tiny active streets together - with her asking questions in Cantonese and me with my returning handlebar mustache, not really knowing much Chinese at all. We came to a hotpot restaurant, which is a table with a pot in the middle that you cook your own food in - choosing the vegetables and meats that you want to stew. WE had periods of outright laughing and fun. It was strange and connective and hopelessly romantic. She told me that it's better off that was because I would never know her faults but I told her that I already analyzed all of her faults. She's going back to Toronto soon and I will teach Englsh to Chinese students. That's the story.
We stayed up pretty late, talking about life and everything, and suddenly that part of my brain awoke! [You need to go get your bag, the empty one that you reserved for stuff to buy in Lhasa, sneak into the dining room, get the snake, empty the water out of the cage (they had the poor thing floating at the top of three inches of water with no land, rotting) and sneak him down across the street, jump over the fence, and take the snake to the best part of the forest and let him go]
"I have to go let the snake go."
"Ok, but will you give me your email address first?"
I made it down the stairs, stepping lightly, the snake bouncing in the dark, confused. The librarian lady stared at me perlexed as I was leaving.
"You have a flight in 3 hours"
"Ok then, I'm just going out for a smoke"
I looked left and right crossing the street, pretending that what I was doing was much more dangerous and spy-like... crouched in the darkness beside the fence to the park and, with a single bound, made it up and over. I pulled over the snake-bag carefully, and cut my way through the moon-lit jungle.
The night was warm and damp with crickets and frogs chirping actively and beautifully. I crouched and extracted the plastic cage, the snake looking at me. I popped off the lid and gently poured my friend into my hand. He was so cold. He wrapped himself around my hand, pulsing, waking, then took his head up and stretched it right toward my forehead. He paused, looking right into my mind for a good long time. I let him down and he was gone in an instant into the thickness of the floor. I made it back into the light of the hostel. I asked the librarian calmly for a piece of paper. I walked upstairs with it, creasing the edges, making it aesthetic, and wrote some simple words.
"You should have taken better care of me."
I wrote it a bit messy, as though it was written by a snake, put it in the cage and placed the cage on the dining table, with the night watchmen looking at me.
"Hello." I said, went into the room, said goodnight to Cindy Lam, and slept for a good 2 hours defore waking up wearily to get on the plane. It was a nightmare. The transportation we had was late. We had to pick up other people who were also late. By the time we made it to the airport we only had about 15 minutes to board the plane. The driver abandoned us. We ran to the baggage claim counter, frantic and shouting in English, with the workers doing what they could, in their Chinese way, to help us. It was all too confusing and irritating to type out the specifics of the situation, but it was highly crazy. We made it luckily to the place, and I collapsed.
Finally we arrived in the Lhasa airport. A crazy coincedence occured. Just as I was walking out the dorr, stepping into Tibet, a friend of mine from Datong, a fellow teacher, was stepping into the airport...and I mean exact, too. Really weird. The taxi driver that we chose to drive us from the airport to Lhasa (about 50 km)had a van that continually broke down... I was in the passenger seat, which had to be lifted up to access the engine, so, whenever I started slipping into a peaceful sleep he would pull the van to the side of the road and tell me to get up so he could fix the engine. This happened about 6 times. We made it into Lhasa.
The first hotel that I wanted was completely booked. We walked and walked to the next hotel (Oh yes, when I am referring to we, I mean the group of people that had accompanied me from Chengdu. You see, the only way into Tibet is with, what they call a group-visa. You need to be in a "group" to travel into the province because the law here is pretty hardcore. You can do a bit of research about Tibet, Mao Zedong, and the Cultural Revolution if you're interested) We made it finally to the Banok Shol Hotel and put our things in the room. I had a paradox then...was I more hungry than tired or more tired than hungry? I decided to take a quick bite before my nap. Two of the chaps and I went searching for some food. One of the blokes thought it would be good to sample some of the local culture and that became a string of going in and out through restaurants and what appeared to be restaurants with my vegetarianism confusing everything more. We finally decided on a place and sat. Amir, the bloke with the desire for culture, proceeded to get amazingly drunk with this solemn Tibetan. As we were waiting the hour or so that it took to get our food, he hammered we with drunken Hinduist lectures with reference to Krisna Shaati or some guy talking all about sex and how the desire for it kept people in a vicous cycle of samsara and all that jazz. I was actually quite interested in what he was saying because he was so damn articulate and interesting when he talked with his thick Isreali accent, his white eyes and teeth shining brightly though the well-conditioned beard. He commented on my handlebar mustache saying that it was the desire to get attention from women which I was all too aware of and told me that the right woman will see through your crazy ideas, worn clothes, and ratty beard and that she is the one who will truly make you be the person you want to be or something like that. Perhaps tonight I'll get ridicolously drunk and hammer him with my lightning-thinks theory.