day 177 – the guide was supposed to meet me in the morning but she didn’t show up. i walked down to the travel office and it was empty took. so i walked around lhasa and took photos. i’d sussed out a tattoo place that advertised in english and found their shop down town. i got two tattoos (one full tattoo and one addition to an old tattoo).

i found my guide and told her off for not being there. she apologised and made excuses about family business. i’d wanted to go to potala today, but now i couldn’t see the inside of the palace. i wasn’t too angry about it, since the entrance fee was so expensive, but i was a little disappointed at not seeing the palace up close.

i bumped into the japanese group again and one guy (whose name i don’t remember) went with me that evening to take night photos of potala palace. we got some good photos of the district and palace with the lights on, but it started raining and we were forced to retreat back to the hotel. i switched to a single room, took a shower and got some sleep.

day 178 – everyone left today. my japanese friends were headed out of lhasa and deeper into the tibetan countryside. they were making the journey to the nepal border and would cross over. i was flying back to chengdu (having failed to find a train ticket out). we all said goodbye and spent an hour writing on the hotel walls (a bit of a custom, the walls were covered in travel graffiti). we took photos together, swapped email addresses and said farewell.

i had an extra hour or two to kill, so i made a quick, last minute dash to potala. i took some more photos with matilda and then returned to the hotel to meet the guide. we drove to the airport and i got my flight back to chengdu.

when i arrived in town, i decided not to return to the same hotel. i wanted to stay in a different part of town. so i went to a hostel that was right next to a cool night market and walking zone. it was late, so i had meat on a stick and some beer at a nearby stall, booked my train to xian and got some sleep.

day 179 – my train to xian was in the evening, so i had the whole day to kill. i didn’t want to spend too much money, so i found a nearby cafe which had wifi. i had fun talking to the girls who worked in the cafe. one girl said she liked my bracelet (a cloth tie around my wrist i bought in vietnam) so i took it off and gave it to her. she returned later with a wooden chinese bracelet which she gave to me. it was a nice gesture, so i stayed in the cafe all afternoon enjoying their coffee, free music and free wifi.

note from diary: although i’d rather not spend too much time online, i like the fact that i have a computer and can keep up with friends & other things. especially at night, it’s good to chat, play chess, KoL, edit photos and update my blog. i get to travel and meet new people without feeling isolated from the rest of the world.

in the evening i caught the overnight train to xian. i had beer and bananas (what a great dinner!!) in the dining cart and spent the rest of the evening watching movies and listening to music on my ipod.

day 180 – i arrived in xian and got a rickshaw to the hotel, ate lunch and walked to the nearby shopping mall. i had a look around and found a store close to my hotel that was selling headphones. one pair of headphones was really nice, and quite cheap, so i bought them and returned to the hotel.

day 172 – i packed, checked out of the hotel and went with hokuto to catch our flight to lhasa. customs and immigration were really strict (no surprises there) and hokuto had his lighter and bottle of contact lens fluid confiscated. we had a bit of a laugh about that, but i could tell he wasn’t happy. we had a while to wait, so we drank a beer in the nearby lounge. then the flight was delayed so we had to wait nearly two hours longer.

we eventually got on the plane and arrived in lhasa in the late afternoon. our guide was there to pick us up and drive into the city. the airport is quite a long way to town, so it took us over an hour to get into lhasa itself. we got our hotel and walked around for a bit. in the evening we went to a nearby coffee shop for a late drink before bed.

day 173 – today was the first day of the big festival called ‘shorton festival’. we got up early and went to dreprung monastery, where most of the festivities were being held. the monastery is on the side of a big hill, so we walked all the way up and walked around the massive buddha cloth painting that was on the side of the hill. thousands of people were there, throwing cloths on the painting, praying and having a lot of fun. it was very exciting and i took a lot of photos.

i had started to notice that china has very strict control over things in tibet. there are a lot of police on the streets and there are military posts at most major points. there are even military personnel (carrying tear gas guns, shotguns and riot gear) posted outside most monasteries. when we enter we have to have our guide present, show our passports and permits, and everything’s written down. in dreprung monastery there were quite a few ‘security’ personnel, who told us that we couldn’t go certain places.

that aside, we had a good time walking around and being part of the crowd. we headed out of the monastery and back into town. we all walked down to another monastery but i was starting to feel tired. i had a headache and begun to show signs of having altitude sickness. i stayed at the bottom while hokuto went to the top. after he was done, we met up and grabbed a taxi to our hotel. i spent the afternoon sleeping, feeling like shit.

day 174 – i woke up (having slept 14 hours) and still felt like crap. i had a little breakfast and went for a walk through the nearby markets. i got some medicine and decided to spend the rest of the day trying to sleep it off and recover as fast as possible.

day 175 – i still had a headache, but i managed to drown it in painkillers. my altitude sickness wasn’t serious (similar to what i had in the himalayas) and it was just a matter of waiting for my body to adjust. in the morning we went to the dalai lama’s summer palace. the palace is called ‘norblingka’ and is absolutely amazing. it’s a beautiful place, but has been completely ruined by the beer stalls erected all over the place. the place didn’t feel buddhist at all.

we wandered around for a while and found a small tree in the back garden which still had apples in it. the lower branches had been picked clean, so i climbed the tree to try and reach the higher branches. my guide thought it was funny, but then she worried about getting into trouble, so i climbed down without any of the apples in hand. we returned to the front of the palace and watched a traditional show that had just started. of course, the place was crowded, so hokuto and i tried to get photographs from the back. we weren’t having much success. i noticed that a few photographers had been allowed inside the middle to take pictures, so i grabbed hokuto and we approached the police who were controlling the perimeter. i gestured with my camera and pointed to the inner circle area of the performance and the police woman smiled and let us go sit in front. we had a great view and i snapped heaps of shots.

when we got tired of the performance (it was really, really long) we headed out of the summer palace and walked down to lhasa’s crowning glory – potala palace.

ah, i forgot to mention that our guide, a nice local lady named dolma, was keen to run away and do personal business as much as possible. the day we went to dreprung monastery, she made an excuse that her father was sick and left us to find our own way home. she did the same at the summer palace, leaving shortly after we got inside. i figured out that her plan was to get us into the sights (we couldn’t enter without a guide) and then she’d nick off to do her own thing. at first i was annoyed about it, but then i realised that it gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted. but it also made me a little angry that we had to pay for guides that we didn’t really need. nobody cared that two foreigners were walking around town alone. no police or military stopped us. nobody seemed bothered. so it was shit that we’d wasted so much money hiring a guide that we didn’t need and who was rarely around.

however, happy with our newfound freedom, we walked all the way through town and up to the gates of potala. we couldn’t enter without our guide, but we were very happy to walk around and take photos outside. it’s a beautiful palace and the weather was fantastic.

when we got back to the hotel, i had a small sleep, checked email and met hokuto’s japanese friends who’d just arrived in lhasa. we went to a korean restaurant next to the hotel and i ate kimchi jiggae and a little bit of yak steak. hokuto and i had a room to ourselves,so his friends came back to our room and we played cards until the wee hours of the morning. it was a lot of fun and we crashed late.

in the afternoon i booked a tour of the panda research facility and a giant buddha. then i had a few beers and spent the evening messing around online and sending emails.

day 167 – i joined a group of 3 girls and headed to the panda research and breeding centre. we arrived early and got good photos of the pandas eating and playing. there weren’t too many people that early, so it was easy to get a good view and walk around. it was the first time i’d seen a panda, so it was pretty interesting. they’re funny looking creatures and the big black patches over their eyes make pandas look like they’re up to no good.

we’d been there for about an hour when hoardes of chinese tour groups arrived. the place became crowded and chinese push and jostle for position. i got shoved out the way a few times and decided to give up. there was a place where it’s possible to hold a panda and get photos taken, but the price was ridiculously expensive. i gave that a miss and we wandered around a bit more before heading out.

after leaving the panda centre, we took a long drive out to the enormous buddha carved into the cliff face. it was about a 2 hour drive from chengdu. we got there and walked around the temple grounds. it was a beautiful place and the buddha is absoloutely gigantic. there was a staircase leading down the side of the cliff and tourists lined up for about an hour to reach it. then it took about another hour to get down the staircase, crossing in front of the buddha’s feet (between the cliff and the river). then we walked back up the other side. again, the crowds were annoying and chinese tourists are very pushy shovey. what pissed me off was people would try and pass you down the stairs, like it was a race to get to the bottom, but then stop and hold everyone up (creating a bottleneck) so they could take a hundred photos of themselves in front of the buddha. then they’d race down further, pushing others out of their way, to the next vantage point.

the only good part was walking back up the other side to the top of the temple again. all the chinese were hot and tired and resting in the shade. we marched past them and kept going all the way to the top. it struck me that they seem to exert a lot of effort for very little real gain … but that’s china for you!

i’d got pretty tired of the whole thing myself (weary more than physically tired) and we headed back to the car. we grabbed some food at a nearby restaurant and then started the long drive back to chengdu.

when i got back to the hotel i tried to change from my dorm to a single room, but they didn’t have any available (even though i’d booked one). so i returned to my dorm and spent the evening drinking cheap chinese beers and messing around online (again).

day 168 – i’d been trying to get a permit to enter tibet as an invited guest (not as a traveler). it turns out that all invites are prohibited and i’m unable to secure the permit. so, i had to resort to my original plan of joining a group to see the tibet region.

so i started my second round of emailing other travelers and looking for groups i could join. i played chess, chatted online and edited photos while i waited for news of possible travel groups. i spoke to a few people and none of them had itineraries which matched with mine. most people were going much later than i wanted to go or spending 3-4 weeks in tibet (which was prohibitively expensive for me).

day 169 – i was getting a bit frustrated with the hotel and travel arrangements, and i took it out on the hotel staff. they’d dicked me around with the rooms and i wasn’t happy about it. the hotel owner sorted it out. he gave me a discount on a room and introduced me to a japanese traveler who had a similar itinerary to mine. hokuto and i chatted about our plans and agreed to team up and reduce our costs. it made me happy to have sorted everything out, so i submitted all my paperwork for the tibet permit, and paid for the travel arrangements.

day 170 – today i finished making arrangements and paid for the rest of the tour. i was in much better spirits, so i took a walk around town, relaxed at the hotel and spent the afternoon talking to my new travel buddy hokuto.

after breakfast i packed up and our group hiked to some other villages. it had rained the previous night, so the track was quite muddy. a lot of the area we were hiking through was all rice paddies and small forests. the ground had a lot of clay, making the track really sludgy and slippery. we took a break at the top of a waterfall and also visited a local house. i took some great photos of kids playing with buffalos in the nearby river. eileen and i said goodbye to our british companions and we parted company. we hiked up to the highway where we had lunch at a restaurant and waited for the minibus to take us back to the hotel.

when i arrived back in sapa i took a shower, ate dinner and messed about with my now broken computer. i tried to get it running and tried installing linux on it, but the computer was playing hardball. i suspect the problem is the hard drive.

we got a minibus back to the train station and during the drive a guy on a motorcycle pulled our minibus over. he was the owner of a rental shop and accused two foreigners on our bus of ripping him off. a vietnamese guy, also a passenger on our bus, quickly showed he was a racist prick by siding with the rental shop owner (despite not even knowing what was going on). after some shouting, the rental shop guy tried to get on the bus and continue the fight. i was sitting by the door and when he came around i gave him an evil look and said “you are not getting on this bus”. my face and tone of voice actually made him stop. he took his hand off the door handle, paused to think, and then returned to the other side where he could berate the foreigners through the window.

they offered to pay him some more money, just to shut him up and end the saga. meanwhile i yelled at the vietnamese guy that he should mind his business and he was an arsehole for interfering (and assuming the foreigners were in the wrong). i told the minibus driver to hurry up and go (even though we were quite early and had no chance of missing our train). the rental shop guy was satisfied with his extra cash, so he left and our driver took off. the couple got stuck into the vietnamese passenger for getting involved. eventually, everything quietened down and we arrived at the train station.

i bought a kinetic (batteryless) torch from a street vendor and got the overnight train back to hanoi.

day 162 – i arrived in hanoi at 5am, said goodbye to eileen and caught a cab to the travel agency (who had my bus ticket to china). i had breakfast and jumped on the bus to nanning. the trip was mostly good. i crossed the border and immediately noticed the difference in attitude. on the vietnamese side, everyone pushes and shoves to get their passport stamped. on the chinese side, everyone lines up calmly and the chinese guards yell at people who don’t follow the rules. it was nice being in a country with a bit of organisation.

when i arrived in nanning i got a taxi across town and it was a moment when i felt a little worried about what the hell was going on. the driver spoke no english and he had another passenger, a female, in the front seat. i figured he was doing a double fare, so i just enjoyed the view for much of the ride. i’d been in the cab for a while when i realised he hadn’t asked me where i’m going. so i told him i wanted to go to the train station. he didn’t understand and called a friend, who spoke english to me over the phone. i told him where i wanted to go and that it seemed the driver was taking the long way. the driver laughed when that was translated and soon after he turned off the meter. we arrived at the train station a few minutes later. it turns out that the passenger wasn’t a customer, she was a friend (probably girlfriend) and just coming along to keep the driver company.

i found my hotel, checked in and wandered around town. i found an internet cafe, checked email, returned to the hotel and watched tv. ‘star wars’ (the original) was on, which was cool. i discovered that the movie channels show the same movie repeated all day long.

day 163 – i went back to the internet cafe to do some research about entering tibet and i also tried to download another version of linux to install on my still broken computer. after lunch i walked down to the train station and got myself a ticket to chengdu. everything was going well. i installed ubuntu linux on the computer and watched ‘the empire strikes back’ … i was pretty pleased that they seemed to be showing all three original star wars movies. downloading linux had taken a few hours, so the rest of my evening was ruined. i played about with the computer, watched tv and went for a walk through the fruit and veg market in the next street. burried deep amongst the stalls (as i was to quickly discover) are little store fronts for ladies of the night. a hooker accosted me as i tried to pass by. i made my escape, returned to my room and called it a night.

day 164 - in the morning i finished the star wars trilogy with ‘return of the jedi’. i checked out, walked across to the train station and boarded the train.

when i bought the ticket, the idiot employee hiding behind inch thick glass told me there were no sleeper seats. when i got to the train, i noticed plenty of sleeper seats! dickheads!! i got off the train and found an attendant. i complained and used sign language to illustrate that i’d asked for a sleeper. the guy was sympathetic and said it would be ok. he told me to board the train and he’d come find me after the train had departed.

he found me again 20 minutes later, crammed onto a seat with four other people in cattle section of the train. he lead me to the dining carriage, and after a short discussion about my ticket, told me that i can upgrade (for a fee). they issued me a new ticket and lead me down to the sleeper section … there were plenty of available beds and i wanted to slap the guy who sold me the ticket. i had lunch and two large bottles of beer to celebrate my new (much more comfortable) arrangement. the warm beer got me a bit pissy, so i had a short afternoon nap. i spent the evening eating, reading my bill bryson book, watching movies on my ipod and doing more sleeping.

day 165 – i bought some bananas from the food cart and continued reading my book. then i spent some time writing my blog on my computer. the train ride was 32 hours, so i had lots of time to kill. i ate lunch and spent the afternoon relying on my ipod for entertainment.

late in the evening, we arrived in chengdu and i couldn’t find anyone who knew where my hotel was. i was kicking myself for not printing the address when i was in nanning. i asked a girl at the vip counter for help. she was friendly, but didn’t know the hotel either and i eventually had to go to an internet cafe, print out the address, and get a taxi.

the taxi drivers in china will happily take your business. they nod and smile and most of the time have no fucking clue where they’re going. i handed the driver the paper with the address (in chinese) and off we went. he went up the wrong road and then came around to the right road. he stopped twice to ask directions from passers by and we found the hotel after a long frustrating taxi ride.

i’d emailed the hostel twice before arriving in chengdu, but they hadn’t received my emails and hadn’t booked a room for me. so i took a dorm room (single rooms in china are ridiculously expensive), i checked my email and went to bed.