Fake North Face Karaoke with Michael Jackson

17 July 2009

Another day in Lhasa (beautiful weather). Up early-ish circa 8am for the Potala Palace, the oddly empty but staggeringly situated former residence of the Dalai Lama. He is, of course, banned from China for criticizing the government and for not enjoying the whole not-being-in-charge-of-his-country-anymore thing, and now resides in northern India. There is obviously much more to all this, but as I am not a Charmingly Idealistic New-Agey Western Wannabe Buddhist of any sort (hi, Brian!), I'll leave it to you to go read up on it on your own. Suffice it to say that the Palace, formerly home to vast quantities of monks and the Lama himself, is now a weirdly vacant place, with more than 1000 rooms. The two-tier pricing  structure of tourist China (locals pay one rate, foreigners much more, gradually being phased out) is ironically still in place here: Tibetans pay 1 yuan, and the chattering flocks of Chinese tourists have to shell out the same 180 as we do. Nice.

Lunch on a rooftop cafe serving everything from American breakfast to Nepalese curry, by way of yak steak and fermented barley beer with Denis and Louise, then a pedicab to the National Museum. Which was a bit of a trek, as we hopped in rustic pedicabs only to realize they can only go about 3 blocks on from where we boarded. Lost Louise and Denis along the way, got a taxi, then went in the wrong entrance. Shooed away by a man with a very big gun, and finally welcomed into the beautiful building, which, it turns out, is free. Score one for Tibetan museums, and slightly less for Tibetan transport. The museum has lovely things, decorative arts and costumes and whatnot, all labelled to illustrate how benevolent and friendly the Chinese are to Tibet. Random Chinese yellow silk five-toed dragon robe laden with 12 auspicious symbols labelled as a Tibetan dressing gown. Annoyed companions with a lecture on why this is very wrong. Quick quiz: Clare, why is it wrong?

Last day in Lhasa, ditched the boys for some girly indulgence. Louise's 26th birthday, she and Lindsay and Amy and I had pedicures in what I suspect is also a brothel, then our hair cut (not in a brothel). The shampoo girl washed for about 20 minutes, then massaged head, arms, neck, face and shoulders for another half hour. Then a nice pudgy Chinese boy cut my hair into layers I didn't want (communication is difficult when his English consisted mainly of “Michael Jackson” and “Obama” and my Mandarin consists of hello and thank-you). In fact he kept saying Michael Jackson and making choking/dying gestures, which is funny in any language. Unity among nations. They got in a photographer while I was there, and the senior hairdresser shooed my nice pudgy boy away, so he could pretend to cut my hair for the camera. Suspect I am new hair supermodel in Lhasa.

Karaoke in the evening for the birthday. David and Denis performed a lovely duet involving fannies (US people, this is naughty to UK people). I avoided singing entirely, so I count that a success. Debbie heroically sang the entire length of American Pie, and our Chinese guide Vanessa did Hey Jude. All good fun and also somewhat surreal.

Bought a (very) fake North Face three-in-one jacket while shopping with Lou, as my hideous white waterproof has finally drowned in a torrent of red wine. Warm and cozy for Everest, also cute, and the equivalent of $23. Intellectual property? Pah.