This has been going so fast.  I am right now sitting in the courtyard of my Xining hostel.  Look how nice it looks:

They offer tours where you can be intoxicated by rape flowers.

I can hear the rain pounding on the greenhouse type roof.  It is very relaxing to listen to.  I have been lucky to not have been in rain this hard until today.

My room is not as nice as the courtyard.  The bed is the hardest one I have come across in China.  China typically has hard beds.  I am sure this one is just a box spring with a mattress pad on it.   Good thing I have a double room so I can use one comforter as a mattress.  In China, every hotel / hostel / train I have slept in has had super thick comforters.  The pillows here are weird.  They are filled with bean bag type material.

I cannot get into or out of my room without it being a huge production every time.  I keep getting locked in and locked out.

Internet here (in China, not at just this specific hostel) is very slow for me.  This may have to do with my netbook being horrible.  It is really frustrating to say the least.

Last night I took my first overnight train.  It reeked of feet.  Tomorrow i go for 24 hours on a train.  Maybe even longer.  I haven’t looked at the confirmation since before I left home.  I have it in my head it is 24 hours.  It sucks that the altitude is so high that your laptop will fry.   I can’t even use the time to be productive.

Once that ordeal is over, I will be in Tibet.  This will be the last part of my trip where I am not in a major tourist area.   I do not like major tourist areas.  Xi’an was the worst for me.  I arrived from Guilin, where so many people were so exited to see a Westerner and they would all yell “HELLO” at me. In Xi’an, the “hello” is usually followed by someone trying to get you to pay for something.  It is exhausting.  At the Terra Cotta Warrior museum, you are approached non-stop by guides who want you to pay them to guide you through the museum.  The more you say “no”, the more they keep pushing.  “This is a historical area, you need me to tell you the history.”  No, I live in the United States where I can look freely at the internet so Google already told me the history.  Thank you though.

The Xi’an Main Train Station makes Penn Station in Manhattan look like a secluded beach resort.  It also makes Xi’an look like a city in a third world country.

My favorite area so far has been Guilin.  My least favorite has been Xi’an.

I have only had one meltdown so far, not surprisingly, in Xi’an.  I just couldn’t take being there any longer and I gave up my day’s plans and spent it in bed reading  a book.  Joke’s on me because now I have no book to read on my 24 (?) hour train ride to Lhasa. Oh well.

I do have to say that despite only knowing two words in Mandarin (hello and thank you), this has been a very easy trip.  I honestly feel like it should be harder.  Maybe I am jinxing myself with this.

After Tibet, I fly to Chengdu and then I will go to Leshan to see the Big Buddha.  From there, it is an overnight at Mount Emei, then back to Chengdu. My final stop is flying from Chengdu to Shanghai.  I am getting more and more bummed that my time near mountains will be ending and I will again be in major cities.  I would much rather ride a cable car up to the top of the world than ride an elevator inside a man made modern marvel,

I have become completely addicted to milk tea and often pick it over milk coffee.  For some reason, all drinks in Xining are not refrigerated in any store.  I find this really weird and annoying.

My hostel has a water purifier in my room, but no air conditioning. This may be the first time my “washed in the bathroom sink” socks don’t dry overnight.  That will just make my train ride that much worse tomorrow.

I have a lot of posts typed up.  It is very hard to get everything up on a netbook that is always frozen.  Editing pictures makes me want to scream.  But here are a few for now:

Terra Cotta Warriors, Xi’an:

Guilin:

Kowloon Park, Hong Kong

View of Macau from the fortress:View from train to Xining:
Bob sled to slide down Yao Mountain in Guilin:

And of course, China.   This is actually mango flavored.  I guess this is a too-literal translation of “man go”