July 22, 2006
Plans to go to Tibet had to be cancelled when we realized we'd be spending an extra week in Beijing. It's probably just as well, since David caught the tail end of a news story about travel agents overbooking Tibet trips and travelers not having tickets despite paying for them and not being able to get refunds. The government has apparently pulled the "privilege" of booking trips to Tibet until sometime in August and since you can only get to Tibet through a travel agent because of the special permit, I guess most trips are off until the fall. So while we're sad, Lhasa is saved for another trip when we have more time.
Having had no problem picking up our passports with the (finally!) extended visas, we're currently in Xi'an, home of the first (and basically only) Qin emperor, the man who built an enormous life size army out of terracotta, complete with horses and chariots, as a way to rule the afterlife. (Given the state of his army things probably aren't going so well there.) There are also several temples and museums in town, some of which we've already explored and others which I'll see tomorrow. David's planning on hiking up one of China's 5 sacred mountains, but I am reluctant to be pushed over the edge of a mountain by hoards of Chinese tourists, so he'll probably go by himself. Unless it's still raining, in which case he might concede to being boring and coming with me.
We bought train tickets to Luoyang, in Henan province, for Monday, where we hope to see some more Buddhist cave art and then will wander over to Yantai to catch a ferry back to Seoul. Assuming, of course, our plans don't change before then.
-Leah
