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23 October 2002
Tashilhunpo Monastery It was another interrupted night sleep due to the altitude. We had a breakfast of toast, fried eggs, milk and coffee at the hotel. We have some sightseeing to do in Xigaze before the drive back to Lhasa. The first sight was Tashilhunpo Monastery. It is the monastic seat of the Panchen Lama […]
22 October 2002
Friendship Highway Today we move to Xigaze or Shigatse. Things went more smoothly at breakfast. We weren’t charged today but instead were given a refund. They were very gracious about it. I made an egg sandwich with the bread roll and added a bit of soya sauce for flavour. Once in the Landcruiser, we picked […]
21 October 2002
Drepung Monastery Due to a miscommunication, we had to pay for our breakfast at the hotel. It was a simple Chinese breakfast of warm congee, steamed buns, bread rolls and hard-boiled egg. The steamed buns were tough on the outside and tasteless on the inside. It seems to be the way it is done in […]
20 October 2002
Potala Palace I skipped the hotel breakfast because I felt unwell. I had some muesli and fruit jelly for sustenance instead. We were picked up from the hotel at 0915 and drove to the nearby rear vehicular gate of the Potala Palace. This museum was the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas from 1649 to […]
19 October 2002
Leaving Chengdu It was an early morning wake-up and we were picked up at 0530. The ride to the airport was faster than yesterday on a new road. At the airport, the domestic terminal was very nice and modern unlike the international arrivals area which had overflowed into the tarmac. We have Denise, from the […]
18 October 2002
How we got into Business Class today With the time difference from New Zealand, I woke around 0200 but lay till 0530 before getting ready. At check-out we overheard that the cheapest rate at the hotel was currently HKD1300++. I thought our rate of HKD980++ was high already. Without our luggage, we went through immigration […]
17 October 2002
Our flight had left Auckland on time and took nearly 12h to get to Hong Kong. Upon disembarkation around 1800, we went to the transfer desk to collect boarding passes for tomorrow morning’s flight to Bangkok and Chengdu. Initially, we were told they could only give us the first one to Bangkok but not the […]
17 October 2002
Our excitement about going to Tibet was somewhat masked by a very routine wake-up. Our 1105 departure to Hong Kong meant that we got up and readied ourselves at a similar time to a normal work day. Auckland airport was dead quiet and check-in was immediate. We had bought our Air New Zealand tickets to […]