Manhattan

When we first arrived in Yushu town Caleb complained a little that he did not like it. In his words: "There isn't even a burger bar here." On Sunday we met a couple of friends from Xining and spend the morning with them. At the end of the morning they asked us: "Have you already been to Manhattan?" Turns out that Manhattan is the local burger bar (a bit like KFC or McD). Of course we had not been there yet, as we did not know it existed, but guess where we had Sunday luch?

Caleb had a good holiday.

Meeting

I thought I better write a few holiday stories before I forget them.

One day we were on our way to another little town and we had stopped to stretch our legs. From the other direction someone came our way on a motorbike (there are lots of motorbikes on the plateau). I waved to him, just being polite, but I had forgotten that you wave people down when you are in trouble (the nearest village was 50km back), so he stopped straight away. I think he thought it was interesting to talk to a foreigner. He was a man of about 60-70 years old, with a great smile and three teeth in his mouth. (He did not want to go on the photo, otherwise I would have shown you.) We talked a little (with my limited Chinese and Tibetan I can't talk very long and after a few minute he went on again. It was one of the meetings that makes it really fun to be here. I hope this kind of things will happen to me much more often.

Roads

Roads on the plateau are a little different from roads in the west. If it is on the map as a main road it most likely has a road surface of some kind, but that is not guaranteed. On our Yushu trip it happened several times that the road surface just stopped and we suddenly were driving on a dirt road. At one point I noticed a very large dust cloud behind us and when I looked at our speedometer I realised to my amazement that we were doing 80 kmph (50 mph) on a little dirt road. Maybe I am getting to used to the roads around here.

Directions

When we were on holiday we came past a little town where we did not know how to go on, so we did what you would do anywhere: we asked for directions. Now asking for direction wasn't so hard, but the answer we got was even easier, be it a little unusual: "Take that road and follow that for 400km".
I presume distances here are a little different than what we are used to.