Spaghetti tacos!

31 May 2010     7:57am     Lhasa!

We finally made it to Lhasa.  The train ride was definitely a unique experience, but I think my maximum limit is 48 hours on a train.  I was starting to go a little crazy.  Yesterday, our train pulled in at 6:30pm and we were promptly notified by an angry train attendant yelling at everyone, I’m assuming, to get off the train.  In all the confusion I left my scarf on my bed.  I’m so pissed.  Hopefully I can find a similar one to replace it, but I doubt it.  If all else fails, I might as well try eBay.

    Once we left the station we met our tour guide, who immediately recognized us and started waving – possibly because we were the only white people leaving the train station.  We had a lovely drive from the train station to Lhasa proper and saw a lot of soldiers everywhere.  Our guide warned us not to take any pictures of them or of any military locations – generally a good idea no matter where you’re traveling, but it definitely seems like a good idea here.  They look beyond angry, like they would shoot you in a heartbeat.

    We finally arrived at our hotel, which is set back in a little plaza.  Unfortunately the plaza is off a street full of stalls selling all sorts of goods.  We’re going to go broke just staying on our street!  There’s a tiny internet café in the plaza that apparently is still running dial-up.  Needless to say, internet access is going to be basically zero this week.  At the hotel we finally met Tony, who is pretty nice.  However, doing math and handling money don’t seem to be quite his thing, as we spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how much we owed him.  I wasn’t doing too well at this point as I was hungry, tired, and upset over my scarf.  Finally we got to go up to our rooms.  The good thing about the hotel is that the rooms are huge.  The rest of it (and it seems to be just my opinion) is pretty dingy-looking.  Clean, but just old and dingy.

    After some people took quick showers, we went to a restaurant across the street for dinner.  It had a whole bunch of different food- Chinese, Indian, Nepali, Western, as well as Tibetan.  I ordered a chocolate milkshake to drink, which ended up basically being Yoo-Hoo.  Katie, Keesler, and Ceci ordered Indian food, I ordered Mexican (tacos- which were oddly listed under ‘Spaghetti’).  Lesson learned- don’t order one country’s food in another country.  It just isn’t right.

    After such a long day, some of the girls went to use internet but I went straight upstairs to go to sleep.  Best sleep ever!  Now this morning we’re getting ready to go to breakfast, and then start the first day of our tour at 10:30am.