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Altitude Sickness
Monday, May 2, 2005-8:23 PM
The altitude sickness didn't set in until around 5:00 in the evening. Up until then Natasha and I had had a fulfilling day, beginning when we met our tour group at the airport.
There are two other foreigners besides me in the group, Laro from Spain and Edward from Venezuela. The two speak perfect English with North American accents. Laro sports a beard that is thicker than the carpet in my parent's home.
The way Laro told me they work for the UNDP in Hangzhou it sounded like I should know exactly what UNDP stands for. I nodded when the letters UN registered as United Nations, but I couldn't figure out what DP stood for. I swallowed my pride and asked.
UNDP stands for the United Nations Development Program. Volunteers spend at least six months working on various projects in developing nations.
Eventually another acronym worked its way into our conversation when Laro told me he'd consider working for an NGO. I knew I should know what an NGO was, but the more I thought about it the more I couldn't remember what it meant. I didn't want to come across as stupid, so I just kept thinking while Laro continued the conversation.
The first thing that came to mind was the president of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. But I figured he Laro wasn't interested in working for him, and he was probably dead anyway.
Damn it. This guy who speaks English as a second language has a bigger vocabulary than me. The meaning emerged slowly. Non...Governmental...Organization.
A huge wave of relief swept over me when I finally figured it out. That was the last acronym that I had to worry about.
Lhasa's airport is the farthest airport from the municipality it serves in the world. It was a long bus ride.
We drove along the Lhasa river for a while. The mountains behind the river look just like in the postcards.
Traffic didn't get any more congested when we were in Lhasa than it was on the way to Lhasa. The city is tiny. I didn't see any of the huge towering residential buildings that are so common in other parts of China.
The first mistake we made that led to altitude sickness was not resting upon arriving in Lhasa. An hour after we checked into the hotel, Natasha and I headed out to see the city. I could feel myself breathing deeper and my heart beating harder to compensate for the thin air.
The second mistake was drinking Lhasa beer. A group of Tibetan drivers we met in a park invited Natasha and I to sit with them for a while. Since the beer was only 3.4% alcohol and we weren't planning on drinking much anyway, we accepted when they offered us some.
I was thrilled to be sitting with real Tibetans. They spoke Tibetan to each other and Chinese to Natasha and I. Their clothes were just like everybody else in China. A couple of them looked more Chinese than Tibetan to me.
Every time my cup was anywhere near half empty they topped it off. That's what did me in.
Back at the hotel after taking an hourlong nap, I woke up feeling sick. I began wondering why I even came to such a hostile environment to begin with.
I felt like I was on the verge of passing out. I was light-headed and nauseous.
When Natasha woke up, she was on the verge of running a fever. She was shaking and had a head ache.
This evening we stayed in while the others went out for dinner. The symptoms of altitude sickness have mostly subsided.
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