Theme 6: How to pass time

A few essential items you ought to have when you are on a road trip.

1) Ipod/mp3
2) Camera
3) book
4) Notepad/pen
5) Snacks
6) Chatty people

We clocked quite a number of hours while we were on the road, moving from Lhasa to Namtse, from Namtse to Lhasa, from Lhasa to Shigatse and later to Gyantse and back to Lhasa.

Lhasa to Namtse - 5-6 hours
Lhasa to Shigatse - 6-7 hours
Shigatse to Gyantse - 3-4 hours
Gyantse to Tingri - 3-4 hours

Here are some of the silly things we did while we are on the road.















The most important ingredient to make a perfect trip is to be with the right crowd.
What can I say when we have the best travel mates, the best guide?

:) Thank you guys.

Theme 5: You can't defy nature

You can choose what you want to eat or what you don't want to eat while on a trip. But can you really defy the call of nature?

No. You can't. You have to make do with whatever facilities you have for fear that you will leak or poo in your pants.

Going through the daily calls of nature was very challenging for us, for 4 ladies who are brought up in an urban environment.

I'm the sort of girl who been through camps and trekking trips. I am really okay to complete the call of nature in an all natural environment, such as behind some huge bushes in the open, as long as everyone is doing the same thing. However I found out that it was difficult to do that while on the road in Tibet.

Let me explain the various types of toilets you can find in Tibet.

A) Proper concrete toilets that are completed with flush.
You find them in Lhasa easily, such as the toilets in the hotel, in bigger restaurants. No problem with these toilets, unless you are unlucky to have a faulty one.

B) Toilets that are concrete but no flush i.e Tourist attractions
These toilets we would try our best to avoid. Why? No flush. It is amazing how much these toilet bowls can hold, in terms of shit and wasted papers.
I find it hard to maintain a sanitary system when you have an old infrastructure that are utilized by city urbaners.
It's a clash of civilization. We simply used too much trash that are not bio-degradable. As a result, you have stuffed toilets that stank the entire area. You don't have to get near to those toilets to realize they are toilets!

C) Toilets on the go
These ones have varying standards. The better ones that's those toilets that are linked to a river or out in the open. Hence the stench wasn't too bad, as long as you don't look at the big hole where all the goodness end up in.

Sometimes the residents around the area will ask you to pay for an entrance fee. We didn't mind paying as long as the toilets were okay. But some were so bad as flies were hovering outside. OMG.

There was one toilet which I didn't enter. My friends did and the QC obviously failed. According to them, the hole was full and even piling up with shit. We were really impressed when some tourists managed to go to the loo and stayed for 30 secs. We seriously counted with our watch. My salute to that lady!!!

D) Toilets over at overnight stays.

If you are just visiting a gross toilet once, and you survive it, good for you. But if you have to visit bad gross toilets throughout your one night stay, you have to be psychologically prepare for the challenge!

The very first gross toilet I been to was during our Namste Stay. You remember seeing the really beautiful lake with tent house, yup, that's the one I'm referring to.

Imagine this, you have a number of tent houses for the tourists. You have this concrete structure that's elevated with stilts. and you have little cubicles without doors. You squat down and do your business, and all these goodness falls to this big container (hence you are standing on an elevated structure).

Overtime, the goodness piles up, especially during the peak tourist season. THE ENTIRE PLACE IS ENCLOSED.

You have flies hovering around. The stench is impossible. Even with my high tolerance of rural toilets, this was the only one that I almost puked when i first entered!

We tried our best not to drink water and limit ourselves not to re-enter the toilet.
I dashed out without doing my business as I was shocked. Seriously too stunned to do what I set out to do.

We came up with ideas, hold our nostrils, unbutton/unzip our pants before we enter so we use the minimal amount of time to complete our business. We unpacked our tissue paper so we would not waste any time taking our tissue papers.

It worked. But it was a total nightmare!

Tips for travelers
a) If possible, wear sarong or wrapped skirts. It makes it easier for you to do your business.
b) Do not wear complicated pants that come with belts/buckles.
c) be fast!
d) Bring medicated oil or perfume, anything that will prevent you from inhaling.
e) Do not overeat. Seriously good luck to you if you have diarrhea.


Live with the dirt! Haha there were 2 occasions that we couldn't bath as the types of toilet we had were really run-down.
Bring your wet tissues and powder, and have a dry bath instead! Thankfully the weather wasn't too humid hence we didn't feel to bad.

:)

Theme 4: Eat like a local?

Sometimes we travel to a place just to taste it's local cusine. I must say that Tibetan cusine is an acquired taste, hence you don't really see Tibetan restuarants around the world, versus Japanese/Chinese/Indian etc.

Nevertheless, it was indeed quite an adventure for us to attempt to order local dishes on our own.
In this case, I can rougly seaparte Tibetan cusisine into 3 main parts.

1) Sichuan influence - There are quite a few Chinese restaurants that serve local Sichuan food. Sichaunese food is marked with extreme spcice and oil. In fact, almost every dish is served with losta chilli oil, the sort that you will run to the loo the very following day!

2) Tibetan fare - Yak meat is the main meat origins that you ended up trying. In additional to that, Tibetan food includes their local dumplings and their famous Milk Tea. Their spice includes peppcorn as well.

3) Fusion - Tibetan western food , such as Yak cheese pizza, not too bad!


Here are some of our favorites!

Tibetan food

Lhasa Kitchen in Bagkor Street




- Tsampa Soup, a very light tasty soup with pieces of Yak










- Yak Stew with Potato, yummy! Good to go with rice!





- Meat puffs , our very favorite dish! The puffs were steamy hot and flakey.. And the minced meat simply made the entire dish perfect!






- Panfried Meat Momo - MOMO is the main dumplings, a sort of staple








- Veges momo in soup, more veges! Yeah, reminds me of Shui Gao!







Sichuanese food

Here are some of the super duper spicy food we tried.


- 1st day in Chengdu - Spciy spicy chilli soupy noodles... It definitely woke us up!








I enjoyed this dish more, its bean flour dough with chilli!













Beef noodles, very different from the HK/Taiwan type. It is called Dao Jie Mian - Sliced by a knife as the cook prepare this dish




- Shao Bing, a light pastry with minced meat as filling! Not too bad, I must say as it is not SPICY. And finally, went to the local fastfood restaurant to get a drink and egg-y soup with seaweed!


- In Lhasa - A Sichuanese eatery as we were sick of Tibetan food in the middle of our trip. We ordered tasty dishes such as Ma Po To Fu, Stir Fried Veges and Dumplings in Spicy sauce.

- These 3 dishes were okay, but a little too salty. Somehow they love to put pepper corn with veges..and if you bite one accidetally, your tongue turn numb!












We ordered a big pot of Spicy Meat stew, indeed it was really spicy and hot enough! What an adventure!

I pretty much stayed away from spicy oily food as my little tummy couldn't take the heat.





- A fusion of Tibetan-Chinese food at Lhasa. Our very first dinner, very simple dishes, the Chicken soup was fantastic. And the pancake simply reminded me of Roti-Prata! Yum!







- Price increase! Inflation! One of the Chinese eatery we tried at Shigaste in the early morning while waiting for Tashi. The food consists of mainly soupy noodles in a hot pot. Quite expensive for the locals...








Tibetan Western Food

- Organic salad and yak milk tea. It was a true test of being adventurous.

You have to sip the tea as if you are drinking cream of mushroom, as the drink is more of a savory feel!




- The true test! Clap clap : Kelly!








- Fried MOMO - really tasty, as well as the Yak ball soupy fan si!!








- Yakky cheese pizza, not too bad I must say!









Conclusion:

Ha be prepared for a little adventure. By the way, the pictures that I posted here are just a tiny fraction of what we actually tried. I'm not a big foodie photographer and well, I'm lazy!

Some of the food that we ate while we were on the road were simpler. That's more like local Tibetan food. As our stomachs couldn't digest some of the local fares, we chose the safest dishes such as

1) Fried Rice 2) Tomatoes and eggs 3) Fried veges 4) A meat dish.

We ate this combination a couple of times while we stopped by some local eateries while we moved from one place to another.

What did we crave on the last day? A simple fare of HK Char Siew fan!

Back in Action!

Sorry about the lack of update. Been through quite a hectic period of time, from moving to a new place to receiving a brand new year. Yeah, it's end of Quarter one and i'm heading to Japan for my next adventure.

Finally found my little travel journal that contained my little adventure in Tibet in August 2007. Yup yup, you probably heard about the late unrest that has taken place in Tibet. Well, what can I say, I will share my thoughts in my later writings.

:)

Tune in for more entries on Tibet!