Xining and the Scare

This morning, we woke up bright and early with plans of extending our Chinese visa.  Our trip in Tibet will keep us in China for two and one half months.  We currently have only a two month visa.  A man named Mr. Deng, who attended the Surmang Health Festival, agreed to help us today.  We drove down to a visa office near our hotel.  The official behind the counter said it was too early to get our visa extended.  This was, however, our last opportunity to go to a visa office.  We are still contemplating what to do about our lack of a long enough visa. 

We then shopped for some needed supplies and explored some more of Xining.  Soon Mr. Deng had to leave, and we headed back to the hotel.  We hung out for many hours in, what was for me, mostly complete boredom.  We soon headed back to the city for some food and fun. We achieved both in our afternoon outing.  We wandered to a small market filled with many Chinese Muslims.  One Muslim man was chopping up some sort of raw animal liver or heart.  We saw pieces of flesh cooked on sticks, hole in the wall restaurants, fruit and vegetable stands, fresh pastries filled with meat and Chinese nick nacks.  For dinner, we had noodle soup, meat pastries, and a meat sandwich all for about four dollars total.  On our walk home, we saw a big grocery store.  Inside, was the heavenly ice cream we had all been desiring.  We brought a pint of green tea ice-cream back home and on our return we had a little scare.  The lights of the hotel room only work when the door lock card is in the light switch of the room.  If the lights are on when you take the card out, five minutes later the lights will turn off.  When we entered our room tonight,  the lights were on, but no card....  Also, water was boiling in our tea pot and a towel was placed between the two beds on the floor.  To this moment, we have not yet figured out the mystery.

Xining

Our Hotel

Muslim Market

One of Our Three Small Meals

Meat Pastries In The Making

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