Holiday Super China Adventure Time

So, stuff stopped working and I haven’t been able to get to some certain social networking sites recently, OOPS!

Anyway, tomorrow starts my big holiday! Ten glorious English free days! Woohoo~~~

Rather than do a normal relaxing vacation, I decided to go trek around ethnically Tibetan areas in Gansu and western Sichuan! Whoaaa!!!~~~~

But wait, Paul, why don’t you just get your ass over to Tibet itself?

Well, dear friend, that’s because Tibet sucks as a foriegner.

Why? Here’s why:

1. I can’t go there by myself, I must go with a Chinese-lead travel group.
2. Because I can’t go by myself and, despite what you may have heard, capitalism is alive and well in China, the prices for said groups are ridiculous.
3. Large portions of Tibet have been really Han-ified in the last couple decades. It actually isn’t the best place to go for Tibetan culture!

The best place to go would be Qinghai. The problem with southwestern Qinghai is it isn’t my idea of a vacation. I’d be trekking around, sleeping under the stars many nights, hangin out with nomads and stuff, running away from crazy dogs… etc. Some people love it, I don’t think I’d feel the same way.

I’m going to the SECOND best place: Eastern Sichuan. It’s a bit more civilized, but still managed to get through the Cultural Revolution more or less unscathed. It has a whole bunch of old and still running monasteries and temples, a whole bunch of crazy scenery and other such nonsense.

I’ll be starting out in Lanzhou, home of the famous lamien! Hopefully I’ll be there for like an hour or so while I wait for a bus to get to Xiahe. Xiahe has a big temple, nice stuff to see, and a living Buddha. It’ll be pretty cool.

From there I head to Langmusi, another big temple place. It has a really old famous temple that is real important for Tibetan Buddhists. Lots of people go on pilgrimages there. It was apparently a riot or something there a few weeks ago and it was all closed down, but it’s reopened to foreigners now. SHOULD BE FUN!

After that my trip gets sketchy. I’ll end up in Jiuzhaigou, eventually. How I’m getting there is the big blank in my excursion. The original plan was to go to Songpan from Langmusi, but the bus transfers seem to be pretty annoying as I’d have to spend a whole day in a little town with more or less nothing in it.

Jiuzhaigou is sorta like the Yellowstone of China. It’s a big naturey place with stuff and wild pandas and crap. Should be nice.

Here’s a map of my trip!