Real Yak, Pandas, and Lamb; Fake Everything Else

Yak: delicious.

For dinner after the cooking school feasting, we hit a Tibetan restaurant. This is where we learned that yak is much more than just the word of choice for the letter Y on elementary alphabet charts. We shared three big dishes and a bunch of sides. The first was some kind of stir fried (?) yak. Delicious, even on a full stomach. The next two were very similar: big roasting pots filled with potatoes, a few veggies and meat. One was yak and the other lamb. Obviously, it was the best yak I've ever had. Not quite so obvious was that the lamb ranked right up there with the best in my limited but reasonable lamb eating experience. It was so tasty! To follow the meal, we all shared a "yak butter tea", which turned out to be nobodys particular favourite. It really is just that I think. Milk tea with yak butter in it. It tasted mostly like drinking really rich butter. Not the most terrible thing in the world but certainly not something to crave or even tolerate when stomach space is at a premium.

After the yak we hit the little pedestrian street, which certainly didn't compare to the markets we'd seen in other cities, but was kind of quaint. It was actually rebuilt recently which is why it wasn't as special -- more amusement parkish than night markety. They even had a little crossbow booth and all. Anyhow, we did find some interesting street vendors with some new foods and desserts to try. There was one that looked kind of like cupcakes. You get a corn one and I assume the other was rice with a bit of sugar and stuff on top served on a banana leaf. A bit dry, but when they were being steamed, the vendors played percussion things to them. God only knows how the sound waves affected the cooking. In any case, it made me feel special enough to not complain about their lack of flavour. Wouldn't go back though since I can just watch other peoples' orders being played to.

After dessert we hit the sack so we could wake up early the next morning for the bus to see the Panda's at what I think might be the biggest research complex. The morning was alright, we woke up earlier than necessary so we could get some breakfast before catching the bus. I had a fried egg sandwich which wasn't bad, but it did some instant work on my stomach causing me to rush back to my room instead of the bus. I caused a scene when the bus had to start honking because I was late. I only held up the group by 4 minutes though it kind of seems like an eternity though when sitting on the toilet with a honking bus waking up the entire hostel complex.

The pandas were incredible. It was a cool place where not only can you get really close to the pandas who happen to be really freakin cute, but you can also learn a bit about them. Everyone knows they're endangered but now we know why. They've evolved into what seems to be the worst adapted animal in the universe. Seems like Darwin had some grand master plan for getting rid of them and we've gone and screwed it all up. In any case they're remarkably fun to watch. I kind of want to be one. They find a nice comfortable place, lie on their backs, cover themselves with food (bamboo) and then eat themselves out. When they're not doing that they're performing a similar progression that ends up in sleep instead of consumption. And because of their status as "national treasure", it seems that the more they keep up this routine, the more they're loved for doing it. I've already sent in my application to be a national treasure here -- I'll keep you posted. Oh, they also had some "red pandas" that looked more like raccoons than pandas. Still cool though.

After the pandas we were ripe and ready for another good meal. The bus dropped us off at a Buddist monestary (can't remember the name just now) with a little restaurant that's now open to the public. We sat down and the food started coming. There was an obscene number of dishes and they just kept coming. There were sausages, shrimp, assorted seafood, chickeny dishes and tonnes of other stuff... all fake! Not fake food, but fake meat. It was all vegetarian and all delicious. Some of it didn't necessarily taste exactly like its dead animal counterpart but was delicious none the less. We were so full after that!

We walked around the temple grounds after lunch and it was quite a big complex. Gorgeous gardens with pathways and ponds. The ponds were filled with turtles and large frogs too! There wasn't a square meter of water that didn't have at least one turtle. They were fun to watch compete for high spots on rocks for some sun.

After that Yen and I walk a heck of a big walk back to the hostel to clean ourselves up for a "culture show." We didn't get to see any shows in Beijing and the one in Chengdu was appparently a good variety of short snippets of different Chinese cultural elements. There was a lot of what I think was filler, with fancy costumes walking/"dancing" dramatically around the stage. Nice costumes I guess, but nothing you can't get on CCTV (Chinese cable.) Then there was guy playing a one stringed Chinese instrument that you can sometimes see being played in the Toronto subways. I actually really enjoyed that one. There was a foot balancer who was really good. There was also a clownish routine that was funny only because of the subtitles scrolling across the side of the stage, a shadow puppet artist, some other stange puppetteer and the grand finale was the famous changing of the masks. This is where there are some interestingly costumed people whose masks change so fast you can't see it. It's kind of a hard thing to explain but cool.

Unfortunately, couldn't find a restaurant open in the neighbourhood after the show so hit the local "east meets west" pub with the gang and had a pizza :-(. It was good, but just a bit out of place. Anyway, we had a good night with a few drinks and snacks.

We got up in time for a great breakfast of wonton soup, dumplings and yoghurt, fruit and muesli. I had to get a second bowl of yoghurt because I forgot to take a picture of it before inhaling the first one. So tasty! Then it was off to the train station for our final overnight train in China to Kunming.

The train station had a few enjoyable sites (see below -- hopefully you'll be able to read the signs)

We're actually about to leave Kunming as I'm writing this, so I'll have to add Kunming from Thailand! Our flight to Bangkok leaves in 3 hours!

Later!