Shangri-La

It's been a whirlwind 48 hours since I wrote last so I will try to describe a few of the things that have happened.


First, Friday was my last day at Kijiji. Everyone gathered to take a photo (below) as I was leaving which was very cool.


Then I went out with the GSB crew to great Cantonese dim sum and then to karaoke with a bunch of Shu's friends. I knew it would be an interesting experience but it was crazier than I imagined. The place felt sort of like a nice casino, with big marble floors and high ceilings, chandeliers, great service, and fancy private karaoke rooms. Everyone was so in to singing it was crazy. I expected that, but it was more intense and more fun than I thought. Kind of like Lost in Translation, but with bigger, nicer rooms. Our GSB group sang Sweet Home Alabama, though I mostly banged on the tambourine to drown out my voice.

I left bright and early Saturday for Kunming, Yunnan. I have decided that Yunnan is equivalent to Colorado, and Kunming is Denver. There are mountains all around, a pretty unique culture that is not like California and not like the East Coast. I am probably not explaining this analogy very well, but the point is Kunming is a pretty cool city, especially for China. Very little pollution, a really nice downtown, some great pagodas and temples and a great lake. I spent a very pleasant 6 hours there, then hopped on a plane to Shangri-La.


Shangri-La is in the very Northwest corner of Yunnan/Colorado. Despite it's technical location in Yunnan, Shangri-La is a Tibetan town. All the people I have met have classified themselves as Tibetan, they dress and eat Tibetan food, and many of the local people are monks at one of the local Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries. [A quick note on Tibet, the people that we met here say that Westerners falsely associate the Tibetan culture with the Tibet SAR that is designated by the Chinese government. There are many Tibetan villages in the provinces that border that border Tibet SAR.]


I checked in to my hostel last night the same time as two Dutch travelers, so the three of us went out to check out the town and grab dinner. The town has a really cool monastery on the top of a little hill which was great. Then we went out and had a surprisingly good dinner of dried yak meat, pickled potatoes, and barley noodle balls.


Today we rented mountain bikes to explore the area. I will not write more about my dislike for the act of biking but I survived off road biking in the Himalayas on my first day at altitude (the town is at 3200 meters, surrounding area is higher) with only one bleeding knee.


But the best part of biking was that we got to see all sorts of off the beaten path things. We met a monk who took us into one of the monastery's kitchens and had yak tea with us (absolutely gross but amazing experience). We went through all sorts of gorgeous valleys with flowers and yaks and yak sheppards and Tibetan people going around the daily work. Everyone was super friendly and yelled "Hello" or "Nihao" to us. We went to the biggest monastery outside Tibet and hiked all around it, went through its dozens of cool temple areas, and trekked up through some of the hills and villages around the monastery. Finally we ended up in a huge lake bed and chilled in the fields.


That's all I can write for now. I will upload more pictures to this post later.