tibet

everything this place has to do with me, again comes to travelling...
i have always wanted to see tibet. badly.

but ofcoz with all de going-ons, u might hav guessed that this post is not going to be on travelling...

the news broke out quite a while ago... and then my msn window is flooded with (L)China signs (i hav quite a few chinese contacts)... chinese students are asking french students about their opinion on the riot... which made quite an interesting conversation...

lets talk about it a bit from my perspective, shall we?
first of all, wot is my perspective? well, as i said, i want to backpack tibet... so, that's from an international backpacker's perspective.



the chinese government is not so nice to international backpackers when it comes to tibet... first and foremost, de visa... in malaysia, we can only apply for maximum one month visa to visit china. for backpackers who wants to travel deep, that's paku in the coffin already... a month in china... 2 provinces max?... how many times do you need to go back to finish all the places you would like to go? nevermind... a month might be enough if you only want to travel tibet...



ok, we successfully got our one month visa and got to chengdu or xi'an(de 2 int. airports closest to tibet) happily, hurray~ ok, now we need to submit our application to apply a permit to get into tibet. pls raise ur hand if you din realize we need to go through this step. thank you... that's alright actually, coz you will eventually get your pass, if you have a local guide. and this guy will need to be with you all the time when u are in tibet. well, that's not a big deal, who will know if we just kick our guide away after we get into tibet? the thing is, we need to pay him either way, which is rather annoying... anyway, we can cope with that~

wait just a second, have a closer look at the pass... it says we can only stay in tibet for max 7 days... @.@... ok, i'll only have a week in tibet then...... >.<

there are a few more restrictions that has been enforced but we dont need to go thru them all to realize that, while chinese residence from other provinces can go in and out of tibet without going thru any of these nonsense (in fact, no restriction at all, just like how i travel between selangor and N9 as i like :P), the chinese government is doing wotever they can to cut down unmonitored contact between something within tibet and something outside china... isnt it an obvious enough evident that there is no internal conflict? the problems are foreign.....



and then i read this...
a letter to all parties by a tibetan...
http://www.anti-cnn.com/forum/en/thread-274-1-1.html
and cried T.T

p.s: photos by angel, a malaysian backpacker who spent 70 illegal days in tibet. mouse over the pictures to see the descriptions. will any other way allow you to see these all?
but that is not the moral of today's story :P