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<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:03:27 -0500</pubDate>
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    <title>Lhasa, finally! &#x2014; Lhasa, China</title>
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    <pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:03:27 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Lhasa, China</b><br /><br />finally made it into lhasa! got a 4:30am wake-up call in the hotel to catch the first flight of the morning. we actually got to use our permits too - after booking and collecting the tickets without needing to show it, boarding a beijing to lhasa flight with out it, i was kinda wondering why i bothered paying so much for it. but they checked at chengdu airport as we went through, so i guess it is lucky we forked out for it.<br><br>lhasa is so amazing! because it is winter, all the nomads have come into the city to hang out, so it is full of people in their traditional yak skin outfits, with great lumps of coral and amber in their hair. there are pilgrims everywhere too, and very few foreigners, because the cold has scared them off. within 5 minutes of getting into town, we were talking to a tibetan man, who promptly whipped out his phone to show us that he kept a photo of the dalai lama on it.<br><br>spent yesterday just wandering around a bit and having a look at things. got caught in a massive procession of people who were circling the barkhor area, around the jokhang temple. lots of them were making the whole trip in protestations. there are little kids to really old people doing the circuit, all swinging their prayer wheels. its pretty cool. apart from wandering i spent time recovering in the hostel. i haven't got altitude sickness at all, just a bit of breathlessness when climbing stairs and stuff becuase of the low oxygen levels. but after the travelling ordeal of getting here, i was a bit wrecked. the hostel is a little primitive - it doesn't have heating. lhasa isn't as cold as beijing, the temperature range is about -5 to 10, but it is definately cold enough for heating to be welcome.<br><br>we went to the potala today, it is soooooooooo much bigger than i imagined it would be. it just towers over the whole city. the chinese have built a 'tasteful' monument to the communist party right in front of it, but the potala beats it hands down. luckily my body has adjusted to the low oxygen levels, and i am pretty much back to normal, otherwise the steps probably would have killed me. there are so many to get up the the top. the whole complex was full of pilgrims paying their respects - whole families of nomads were using their time in the city to visit. they all had little bags of butter to add to the butter lamps, and were leaving money and scarves everywhere. there were alot of chinese guards, but they didn't bother the pilgrims too much, they where mostly there to enforce the no photo policy so that tourists would buy more postcards at the end :P but the inside was amazing, huge, colourful murals everywhere, and beautiful statues of buddhas and bodisattvas. we saw the dalai lama's throne, and they keep some of his clothes or robes on each throne so that it is not empty. there are picutres of lots of the other dalai lamas, but not the current one.<br><br>also went to the jokang temple this afternoon, which is what the pilgrims are circling. its amazing inside, very dark and all lit by butter lamps, with these massive statues of buddha. there were alot of monks hanging out inside, because there is a prayer session later in the day. they are all lined up outside to be able to get in. the temple has lots of little apses and passageways filled with statues, and every available surface is painted with scenes.<br><br>spent this afternoon wandering the barkhor markets again. bob has been a bit shocked, because i keep pointing out the various bits of bone for sale. i think he thought they where yak or something, i had to find a human skull before he would believe me that they weren't yak at all.<br><br>anyway, that is about it. as part of the permit 'deal' we have a tibetan guide for the next few days, so he is going to take us out to sera monastry tomorrow. other than that, we are just canvassing the other hostels around to find other people who want to go to everest base camp and the villages surround lhasa. it is cheaper to travel in a group, and there are quite a few backpackers around the city. so hopefully we will have that sorted soon and will go travelling around.<br />
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    <title>Beijing &#x2014; Beijing, China</title>
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    <pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:32:59 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Beijing, China</b><br /><br />so have arrived in beijing, still alive, and have spent the last few days wandering around sightseeing in the sub zero temperatures. its fucking cold.<br><br>went to visit mao on tuesday morning (continuing the 'dead body' theme, for regular readers) which was pretty funny, there were just thousands of chinese people lined up to see him, and two foreigners (me and bob). you get herded through these various security checks, kept in rigid line formation by the guards who are all yelling in chinese. takes about 1/2hr to line up, then you are ushered through the room where mao is for about 3 seconds, and then end up in the large mao gift shop in the next room. so much for communism.<br><br>after mao, we headed off and got lost in the forbidden city, ate AMAZING duck and wandered around some hutongs for a bit. today was more wandering around, visted the temple of heaven, and ate more amazing food.<br><br>anyway. this is just quick, because we are about to leave to get to the station to catch the train to tibet. catching it will be fun, because it is coming up to chinese new year and the entire population of china is travelling, many of them by train :P anyway, will be on the train for the next 2 days before getting to lhasa.<br />
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    <title>More Losar. Lots of dragons and dust... &#x2014; Lhasa, China</title>
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    <pubDate>Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:38:25 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Lhasa, China</b><br /><br />losar celebrations are still going strong here. everyone is out in the streets in their best clothes, and visting various temples. there are certain temples that you visit on certain days after the new year. on the first, it was places around the city, like the jokhang. there are so many pilgrims everywhere, and the chinese police are out in force. a few nights ago they were just patrolling up and down the main street, and racing around in cars with riot helmets on. i don't know what they were up to, there was nothing going on. i think they just do it to remind everyone who is boss. its pretty annoying.<br><br>yesterday was the day the visit nechung monastry, where the state oracle used to sit. the dalai lama used to visit on this day, so all the tibetans head out there as well. we got to the site at about 11am, and there were thousands and thousands of people waiting in line to go into the temple and be blessed. people where waiting about 3 hours in the sun to get in, the line stretched all the way down the hill. it was a really cool atmosphere, even though the place was crawling with chinese police again. it was a bit like a carnival, there were big incense burning stoves around, and everyone was buying prayer flags to hang on the mountain. by the end of the day there was just a wall of prayer flags up. <br><br>i didn't want to wait to get into the monastry, because we visited it the other day, and waiting 3 hours in the sun wasn't my thing. instead i met a tibetan family who had already been in, and they took me up to drepung monastry, which is up a kora path behind nechung. so we headed up there, and they took me around the monastry, which took hours, because it is the biggest in tibet. all the monks from the monastry had gone down to nechung, but started returning in the afternoon, and the pilgrims came up as they finished at nechung. it was really crowded. the monastry has associations with the demons as stuff that are in nechung, and everyone was bringing offerings of alcohol for them. except for the dragons, who were being offered small cartons of longlife milk for some reason. so there were piles of milk cartons in front of all the dragon statues. but later on i saw alot of the really little monks, like, the 5-7 year olds, drinking the cartons of milk. obviously, when the dragons show no interest in it, it goes to them. it was pretty cute.<br><br>i was so wrecked by the end of it, the monastry is all hills and stairs. also, it was a balmy 15 degrees yesterday, which is extra balmy when you are dressed for -15 degrees and climbing hills in the sun. but when i headed back down to nechung at about 4pm, the line of people was still stretching  all the way down the hill, they would have been waiting in the sun for hours.<br><br>i have the cough to end all coughs now. it was bad from the gunpowder and dry air, but 10x worse after the dust and incense at the monastries. but we had been invited to go to a tibetan new year party, so i carted myself and the cough off to that. it was a really fun night, they were serving tibetan homebrew barely beer called chang to everyone. it isn't all that strong. but there was sooooooooooooooo much of it, and as soon as you took a sip someone would refill your glass. then the women started singing, and while they sang you were expected to down the glass of chang in front of you so that they would refill it. by the end of the night, chang was being served out of bowls.<br><br>so today i feel a little rotten, what with the effects of chang and the cough that prevents me from breathing. the air today is really dirty, i think a duststorm came through last night, there is a fine layer of dust on everything, and you can barely seen the mountains around lhasa. i now have some strange chinese cough mixture, so hopefully that will allow me to get on the plane without being dragged off by chinese authorities as a suspected SARS case...<br />
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    <title>Losar! &#x2014; Lhasa, China</title>
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    <pubDate>Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:14:05 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Lhasa, China</b><br /><br />so tibetan new year (losar) celebrations are in full swing here, and apparently will be for the next week or so. on tuesday it was the tibetan year end festival, so at 8pm everyone let loose with all the fireworks that they had been stockpiling. i have never seen anything like it, there were fireworks shooting everywhere, into the traffic and people's windows, and people where just walking around in it completely unconcerned. little kids where launching rockets at each other across the streets, it was crazy. they kept letting off fireworks solidly for 2 hours. and not just little fireworks. enormous fireworks like the ones they let off the harbour bridge where being launched of people's roofs. there were police cars and ambulances going everywhere, and the firetruck made several appearances. it was so crazy.<br><br>then last night it was chinese new year. ususally tibetan and chinese new year are at different times, but this year they are very close together. so it was the chinese people's turn to let off crazy amounts of fireworks. we are staying in the tibetan part of town, so it was quieter - the chinese part of town is to the west of the barkhor and old tibetan area.<br><br>today the tibetans where up at 6am letting off more fireworks. apparently they all go and hang around the potala in their new clothes at about that time, to welcome in the new year. i was going to get up and go watch, but the lethal combination of low oxygen, cold, and two nights worth of smoke and gunpowder hanging around in the air has given me a spectacular chest infection. i am barking like a tibetan mastiff. so i decided that more fireworks at 7am was perhaps pushing my luck.<br><br>we did go to visit a temple though. we wandered in there yesterday and had watched the nuns making statues out of butter and tsampa. they invited us to come back to see a ceremony today. so we went in and sat with them and their cat while they prayed. they gave us litres of butter tea to drink while we were there. it is difficult to get away from tibetan hospitality and butter tea, because it is considered really rude to let your guest's cup get empty. so you choke down one cup of tea, and suddenly someone appears to fill it right back up again. as far as butter tea goes, this stuff wasn't particulary bad - most of the stuff tastes like melted margarine. but it still smelt like rancid yak butter and really isn't my thing. but the nuns where really funny, they were praying and chanting, and then one of their phone's rang, so she answering it in the middle of the ceremony. she just pulled her robes over her head and chatted away! and the oldest nun spent the whole time plugged into a music player. tibetans were coming in to visit the gompa the whole time. there were alot of pictures of the state oracle around, so i think that the nuns and the gompa had something to do with him.<br><br>we did manage to eventually escape all the butter tea. all the tibetans are out in the streets wearing their new clothes, they look so amazing. all the women have all their jewellery on, i don't know how they can walk with the great lumps of coral and amber tied to their heads. and all the men have new fur hats, its very cool. i am going to go lie low for a while. butter tea has done nothing for my lungs (surprisingly enough...)<br />
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    <title>Norbulinka palace, Nechung and Ganden monastries &#x2014; Lhasa, China</title>
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    <pubDate>Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:16:35 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Lhasa, China</b><br /><br />oh my god, so i just typed out this entire thing, and then the computer turned itself off and deleted everything. so cranky.<br><br>so i am still in lhasa, just hanging around becuase tibet has pretty much shut down for tibetan new year. there are no public buses for a week, so lhasa it is. which is fine, because there is plenty to do here.<br><br>yesterday we hired bikes from the hostel and rode out to the dalai lama's summer palace, norbulinka. it is still beyond me why you would need a summer palace in tibet, i don't think the temerature ever gets above about 20 degrees, even in high summer. you can see that the palace and gardens would have been nice once, but it hasn't fared well under china, its pretty neglected. they have turned it into some sort of chinese picnic park. you can walk through the palace though, and see the dalai lama's old room, including his bathroom, which is a bit weird. the whole place was still full of tibetan pilgrims though, praying and giving money to everything. the gardens are totally neglected, we ended up lost in them and couldn't find the exit. did however find a massive, angry dog, and only narrowly avoided rabies.<br><br>then we headed to nechung monastry, which is where the state oracle used to live. the dalai lama used to visit the oracle every new year, so when we got there they were busy cleaning and decorating, even though the oracle is no longer there and the dalai lama won't be visiting. the monastry is creepy. the doors are decorated with pictures of flayed human skin, the walls are all decorated with demons doing horribly creative things to people, and the beams of the roof are painted with snakes and dragons, and of course, more human skin. there are no statues of buddha around, just statues of demons, including one really creepy one with one fang and black eyes. it is supposed to be a frightening place, because the oracle used to go into a trance and hiss out his prophecies, and then pass out and have to be carried off.<br><br>toda we got up ridiculously early to catch the 6:30am pilgrim bus to ganden monastry. there are pilgrim buses that leave from the barkhor every morning to take tibetan pilgrims to various sites. its pretty cool, the pilgrims are moslty old women and monks, and they all chant and pray the whole way on the bus. ganden is about 1 1/2hrs out of lhasa at the top of a mountain. luckily it was dark going up the mountain so i couldn't appreciate the full terror of the road. we arrived before sunrise and everyone ran off the bus to start walking the kora, which is the track around the monastry. it is basically a thin, rocky, dirt track clinging to a cliff face. i was concentrating on not slipping and dying but all the grandmas were leaping around and scaling stones, and some of the monks were running, just to show off. the people where really funny, they kept showing us the right paths to take, and if you tried your own way you were likely to end up on a precarious cliff face and having to backtrack.<br><br>once the kora was finished we wandered around the monastry. again, the tibetans were showing us where to go and what to do. i got adopted by an old woman who took me around and showed me random bits of the monastry that you otherwise wouldn't notice. after that i wandered around the hills some more, there are amazing views over the valley and mountains. i made friends with two donkies, who followed me when i went down the hill to the teahouse. that was ok though, because there were already two other donkies and a yak in the teahouse. i got to pat the yak and fed it some potato with chopsticks, becuase i didn't want to go near its mouth. the people in the teahouse found this extremely amusing. <br><br>the bus back down the hill was a little harrowing, becuase this time i could actually see the road. on the way back we stopped at a random monastry whose name i don't even know. but there were some monks praying and it was all very cool. back in lhasa now. losar is the day after tomorrow, so everyone is stocking up on fireworks. should be fun!<br />
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    <title>Shigatse, Gyantse and Everest Base Camp (almost..) &#x2014; Shigatse, China</title>
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    <pubDate>Sat, 02 Feb 2008 08:04:20 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Shigatse, China</b><br /><br />so i'm back in lhasa after 4 days sitting in a car with unwashed backpackers (me being one of those backpackers - tibet will not be remembered for its shower facilities). the trip was excellent, except for a minor incident involving a lying travel agent and the chinese army.<br><br>the team, comprising me, bob, a bosnian guy called mladen, a german guy called rob and an australian guy called lachlan set off early wednesday morning to drive to shigatse. the scenery along the way meant that the drive which should have taken about 4 hours took more like 7. many photo stops along the way. at one stage we passed this insanely rickety suspension bridge, which was being used by a group of people to move an entire house (walls included) piece by piece. we got into shigastse in the afternoon and  headed off to visit the monastry there. shigatse is where the panchen lama traditionally lives. the monastry was enormous, and had the biggest statue of buddha in it that i have ever seen. it was like, 50 metres high. apart from that, shigatse mostly consisted of row upon rown of headless, dried out lamb carcasses. out hostel was smack in the middle of some sort of open air butchery. it was pretty gross.<br><br>on thursday we headed off towards everest base camp. again, amazing scenery, we were passing through mountain passes that were over 5000 metres high. luckily, it turns out that i don't get altitude sick at all, unlike the rest of the car, who were suffering a bit at that height. we stayed in a tiny little town, whose name i don't know (it was so small that the name hadn't been transalted into english). we ended up staying with a tibetan family who were lovely. anyway, in the afternoon, we headed off to go up to everest base camp. unfortunately, we only got as far as the checkpoint, where we discovered that instead of organising permits for us as instructed, the travel agent who we had booked the car with had just pocketed the cash instead. there was a nasty showdown between a pissed off bosnian and the chinese guards, but nothing worked. apparently they have really clamped down on foreigners since some americans managed to paint 'free tibet' somewhere near base camp. with the olympics comming up the chinese are paranoid. so with no permits, we couldn't go all the way to base camp. we still got to see everest, and it was pretty impressive (although cold, black, windy mountains do very little for me...) so we headed back to where we were staying and hung out with the tibetans, who fed us some kind of yak soup whose primary components were yak butter and heavy dumplings. unfortunatly by that stage i had eaten the same yak soup for 2 days in a row, and i was well over it.<br><br>next day everyone was pretty wrecked, as we hadn't really slept - the room we were in had reached -9 degrees during the night and everyone froze. luckily, the day pretty much consisted of a long drive to gyantse, about 8 hours away. we got into gyantse and had a quick look around, then headed off to find food. the place we ate turned out to be right next door to some sort of tibetan niteclub, so we headed in there. it was hilarious. there were live singers performing tibetan music on a stage, and all the people would get up and dance proper, structured dances to the music. of course, we didn't know what we were doing, so they all tried to teach us. we ended up at the table of the owner of the club, who turned out to be some sort of tibetan mafia type figure who kept buying us drinks an telling us how much he hated china. it was all a bit surreal.<br><br>today we have been to yamdrok-tso lake, which is a massive, turquiose lake high up in the mountains. it was really beautiful, half frozen, half not, and with great big geese cruising around everywhere. from there, we headed back to lhasa, were the trip ended with a showdown between 5 angry foreigners and a dodgy chinese travel agent. foreigners 1, travel agent 0.<br />
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    <title>still Lhasa &#x2014; Lhasa, China</title>
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    <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:59:40 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Lhasa, China</b><br /><br />still hanging out in lhasa, it is so cool here. yesterday we went to the sera monastry, which again, was swarming with tibetan pilgrims. the monastry is beautiful inside, really dark and atmospheric, with butter lamps everywhere. we ended up being there just as the monks came out to pray and have lunch, so 500 monks filed into the room at all sat down and started chanting. they did their first lot of prayers, and then the younger monks had to all race out and get the tsampa and butter tea for the more senior monks. they kept chanting while they where having lunch, but by then the younger monks had started losing focus a bit - they kept pointing and laughing at the white girl wearing the funny hat (ie. me) and throwing bits of tsampa at each other :)<br><br>in the afternoon we went to drepang monastry, which is just outside lhasa in the hills. the monks there debate each other in the afternoon, but happened to be having the day off when we got there. the monastry was pretty much deserted, there weren't even many tibetans around, just the occasional monk wandering about. we met one monk who invited us into his little house/room. he spoke a little bit of english, and wanted to practise it. the room had so many pictures of the dalai lama hanging up everywhere, it was great. he told us a bit about the monastry and how there are so few monks there now. the tibetans talk about 'their time' ie. before the cultural revolution, and now, which isn't their time anymore. its pretty sad. but he was really pleased to be able to talk to people, that was why he was learning english.<br><br>we managed to miss the last bus back into lhasa, so ended up hitching a lift back in on the back of a truck with a bunch of monks. they thought the whole thing was pretty funny.<br><br>tomorrow we are headed off to everest base camp for 4-5 days, via shigatse, gyantse and some other places with another australian, a bosnian and a german. we have hired a landcrusier and a driver for the trip. apparently it is currently so cold up there that even the tibetans are decamping, so that should be interesting :P<br />
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    <title>Chengdu, not Lhasa... &#x2014; Chengdu, China</title>
    <link>http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tarah51/2/1201257000/tpod.html</link>
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    <category>Travel Blogs</category>
    <guid>http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tarah51/2/1201257000/tpod.html</guid>
    <pubDate>Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:52:20 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>China &#x26; Tibet</description>
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        <b>Chengdu, China</b><br /><br />so... not yet in Lhasa. there have been debacles. maaaaaaaany chinese debacles.<br><br>we headed off to catch our train on wednesday night, leaving a good hour to make the 15 minute journey to the train station. unfortunately, it is coming up to chinese new year, when every single person in china is on the move heading back home to see their families. so everyone else was also on their way to the train station. the 15 minute trip dragged out to 45 minutes, leaving us only 15 minutes to make the train, so we bailed out of the taxi and ran along the freeway to make it. got to the train station and were confronted with a sea of people with way too much luggage. we didn't know where to go, so we ran into the station and asked a friendly chinese policeman which way our platform was. he gestured for us to keep going ahead. went a bit further, asked another one, he confirmed that we should keep going. 5 policeman later, we still hadn't found the platform, but we did find the ONLY helpful policeman in china who told us that we actually needed to go all the way back along where we had come, back outside, upstairs and then start again. so we bolted, and made it to the right place 2 minutes before the train was scheduled to depart, but the guard refused to let us board because the gates closed 5 minutes before departure. frantic yelling and pleading in chinese and english did not sway him.<br><br>so we missed our train, and then had to stand for 2 hours in the cold to try and get another ticket, or a refund. but because it is chinese new year, all the tickets sell out 4 days in advance. so there were no tickets, and we eventually decided to cut our losses, get a refund, and try to find another way to get to lhasa.<br><br>we caught a taxi back to the hostel to check back in for the night, only to find that in was totally booked out. bob did a lap of all the hotels and hostels in the area, and all were booked out. because the hostel is across the road from another major train station, all the travellers on the move for new year were filling every room in the area. so we were pretty stuffed. luckily, bob was able to call a friend of his at 1am in the morning so that we could stay with her.<br><br>so the next day we bought exhorbitantly priced plane tickets, which was totally easy, no permit checks at all. picked up the tickets, everything was going well, and used the unexpected extra day in beijing to go to the snack market to look at all manner of creatures roasted on sticks. cicadas, crickets, scorpions, seahorses and starfish all available.<br><br>not wanting to repeat our previous mistakes, we left for the airport at 6am to ensure we would catch our 9am flight. which we did, and everything on the beijing to chengdu leg of the journey went smoothly. had a 1 hour stopover in chengdu, then got on the plane to lhasa. got EXACTLY halfway through the flight to lhasa before a 'technical problem' forced us to turn back to chengdu. no idea what the technical problem was, but i maintain it better have been pretty fucking spectacular to warrant turning a plane around when it is just as far to the destination as it is to the point of origin.<br><br>so now we are in chengdu for the night. the airline has put us up in a ridiculous 5 star hotel, which has chinese opera performances in the foyer, and a gingerbread house decorated with chinese gods to celebrate chinese new year. unfortunately, our luggage is missing in action, and no-one seems quite sure where it is. nor is anyone sure when we might be getting a flight out. hopefully tomorrow. anyway, for now i am amused by the ginerbread house, and the sight of tibetan monks and nuns wandering around the foyer of a 5 star hotel.<br />
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    <title>Aswan &#x2014; Aswan, Egypt</title>
    <link>http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tarah51/spain2006/1169766240/tpod.html</link>
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    <category>Travel Blogs</category>
    <guid>http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tarah51/spain2006/1169766240/tpod.html</guid>
    <pubDate>Wed, 07 Feb 2007 06:44:35 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>ICS Spain 2006</description>
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        <b>Aswan, Egypt</b><br /><br />after 16 hours on the train we finally arrived at aswan, in the south of egypt.<br><br>i like the south much better than cairo - it is much much more relaxed, and the people more friendly<br><br>because the train was so late, we headed straight out to visit the temple of philae. the temple is dedicated to the goddess isis, and it is on an island in the middle of the nile. the whole thing had to be moved when they dammed the river because the water levels rose and flooded it. so they cut the whole enormous temple into blocks and moved it to a new, higher island.<br><br>the temple is amazingly well preserved, and very pretty sitting in the middle of a wide part of the nile. unfortunately the chrisitians got their first and did their best to hack the faces off almost all of the beautiful relief carvings of gods and goddesses, but you can still imagine what it would have looked like. likewise, the flood waters, and time, meant that none of the painting has survived.<br><br>but its still a very pretty temple, and i took a heap of photos :)<br />
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    <title>Barcelona &#x2014; Barcelona, Spain</title>
    <link>http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tarah51/spain2006/1170631560/tpod.html</link>
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    <category>Travel Blogs</category>
    <guid>http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tarah51/spain2006/1170631560/tpod.html</guid>
    <pubDate>Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:27:35 -0500</pubDate>
    <description>ICS Spain 2006</description>
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        <b>Barcelona, Spain</b><br /><br />barca<br />
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