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Tours to Tibet
Friday, April 15, 2005-9:58 PM
Natasha learned from a tour agency in Sichuan that it can take eight or nine days for a foreigner to get a permit to visit Tibet. That means we have to hurry up if we want to go there on May 1st.
The regulations governing travel to Tibet are confusing and "subject to change". The website of the Chinese Embassy in Washington says that in order to travel to Tibet you need to "apply for a visa with permission of the Tibet Tourism Bureau".
The travel books I read advise travelers that it is only possible to get a permit by booking a tour through a tour agency. You cannot simply purchase a plane ticket to Lhasa.
Even after you figure out how you can go to Tibet, you still need to consider the question of whether or not you should go to Tibet. The political situation means that decisions travelers make about where to go, what to see, where to spend money, and what to tell friends after returning take on extra meaning. It might be easiest to just stay home.
Concerned that if we waited too long we might not be able to receive the necessary documents in time, Natasha and I visited a travel agency earler this evening.
I wanted to know if the travel agency accepted credit cards.
"The machine is broken," the travel agent answered in Chinese. I wasn't sure I heard her right
"Broken," I said in English. That shouldn't be a problem. Broken stuff gets fixed. We'll just pay after the machine has been fixed.
"Yes. Broken." She could speak a little English.
"When was it broken?"
She answered me in Chinese. "A very long time ago."
Even at a travel agency in Guangzhou there aren't enough customers using credit cards to make it worth their while to get a new machine.
"It's very convenient," she told me. "There's a bank next door."
That's not convenient. Being able to use a credit card at the travel agency, that would be convenient.
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