Shangri-la

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  Zhongdian, China
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

i believe the last i wrote was about how we met this couple from israel and montreal, canada. well, we went out to a bar to just hang out and talk about travel plans. as we sat upstairs at a chinese bar, we began to talk and laugh about various things. the israeli guy (an eastern medicine doctor) looked like Nicholas Cage, the canadian (who works as a market analyst) resembled Lance Bass... it was good times... times you only get when you backpack through nowhere, meet people with similar life ambitions and share the one true commonality among us... the love for travel off the beaten path. and these guy and their girlfriend/wife are great. the israeli guy and his wife were finishing up their 9 month honeymoon; the canadian and his girlfriend had just sold his house and was using his equity to travel for a year... they were 4 1/2 months into their trips... amazing stories from both couples; as well as our own.

anyways, during the midst of our time together, we hear a commotion downstairs..

inside the

. we were sitting upstairs in an open terrace. we look and a fight broke out. bottles were thrown, spit was flying and chinese obscenities were being exchanged. of course we look to see what's going on.... well, quickly the malay moved outside into the street. we changed our vantage point to the windows. apparently the fight was between a girl and a guy. yelling screaming and eventually the guy had one girl by the throat and pushed her, causing her to land on her back and flip over on the ground almost into a canal. then, another girl is grabbed into a pseudo muay thai clinch and kneed three times into her abdomen. needless to say, everyone involved in the bout were drunk. insane, huh?! what is more insane was that it was between boyfriend and girlfriend!!! that would not fly in the states or most other western countries for that matter... ahh... cultural differences...(later on we spoke with an american living in china. he says that is common. especially between girlfriend and boyfriend).... the three couples had a discussion about this later and although wrong in our countries, figured in places like china, its not good or bad, just different; and because they haven't been raised with the ideals of "not hitting a woman" we can't blame them for this... interesting take huh?

ok... changing subjects...

the next day, the three couples woke up early to take a minivan (when backpacking, it is essential to hook up with other couples because we can then split the cost of things like transportation) to Qiatou..

minivan

. the entrance into Tiger Leaping Gorge. Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the highlights of the Yunnan Province。 well after a two hour drive we arrived。sadly, though because of the rains lately the trail through the gorge was dangerous and closed。no chance. usually if you throw some money at the chinese, they'll let you do what we want... no way on this one... serious danger on the trail... so we improvised instead of sitting around at the dodgy little town at the mouth of the trail.

change of plans。 two hours further north to Zhongdian，otherwise known as the famed Shangri-la. Shangri-la sits at about 17,000 feet on the edge of the Tibetan plateau... yaks and everything! the people are mostly of Tibetan decent。 the town is　as close to Tibet as you can get without having to get a special travel permit. .. charming

we spent the afternoon sightseeing around the small town with the highlight being the Tibetan monastery. here are some pictures. it's a real working monastery. monks and everything. its set at the base of these wonderful mountains and has its own little village surrounding it. no cool stories about the place other than that one of the monks offered us some weird powder to sniff (we didn't take his offer, of course), and a monk made eunice a simple necklace

monastery

.

we spent the night in Shangri-la and headed down to Tiger Leaping Gorge the next morning. unfortuneately, one of the israeli's got sick so we left them there to recover another day and parted after exchanging emails and greetings of "if you're ever in.... email us, we'll show you around".

side note: when eunice and i left lijiang, we figured on doing a simple hike, spending a night at the gorge and heading back the next day. little did we know that our plan for an overnight trip would turn into two nights, a six hour drive and a strenuous hike (i'll talk more about the hike on the next entry). well, we only had the clothes we were wearing, a thin jacket each, not toiletries, no change of clothes, etc... insane huh? well, that's travelling for you... never know when plans will change.

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monastery village	prayer flag tree	praying area	streets of Shangri-la
the monastery area from a far	the monk and i

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