yak, momo’s and beer

we are living on the roof of the world for almost one month now. in the beginning, we needed some time to adjust but we are doing absolutely fine now.

the local staff organized a welcome pick-nick the saturday after we arrived in tibet. the pick-nick originally started at 10 am. fortunately we could postpone it to 1 pm so joyce and i could take some rest in the morning before entering the drunken pick-nick world.

pick-nick in tibet is slightly different from the european pick-nicks. the only thing that is the same is the park where the pick-nick is held, though the most important part of the tibetan pick-nick is alcohol. you need to be drunk to enjoy the party. they also told us that the traditional tibetan medicine against high altitude disease is the ‘holy’ tibetan beer. they wanted the best for us so we could not escape, we had to drink a lot of the tibetan syrup; not drinking the holy medicine was not an option. the party finished around 9 pm. the result was a partly paralyzed situation (the medicine must have been working) when we arrived in our hotel and i have to confess, sleeping was not a problem and our headaches disappeared spontaneously.

the sunday after the party our headaches were back so we needed our ibuprofens. we bought two mountain bikes after our medical treatments which make it easy for us to travel around, especially for me because my work is about five kilometers from our hotel and walking is really not an option. moreover, lhasa is much smaller than bangkok and side routes make it less dangerous to ride bikes than in bangkok.
it feels more comfortable to ride my bicycle to work than to travel with the crazy taxi drivers in bangkok. however, bicycling in lhasa is not as save as you might think because the only traffic rule is the rule of the strongest and that’s me, yeah.

food in tibet is not only yak meat, which can be very delicious. you can find lots of venders in the city who make belgian chips (french = fake) and i have to admit that they are pretty delicious. you can buy a bunch of chips for 1 yuan (4 bath or 10 euro cents).

we found a restaurant which has incredible dishes that we made our weekend celebration restaurant, so every friday evening we have our romantic dinner there (especially the indian/nepalese food and ‘the great wall’ red wine tastes like heaven).
the chinese influences bring lots of good as well. the chinese dumplings or momo’s in tibetan and ‘meian tiou’ (noodles) are fantastic. when i start eating them, i can not stop and i am afraid that my time in tibet will cause some gain in weight.

i really love living in china’s tibetan autonomous region just like i loved thailand. for me, (south east and east) asian people are mysterious and respectful. i really like the way they behave and for the moment, it is a great honor for me to live in this society. sawasdee khrap!