I woke up at 7:30 super tired, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I sort of just accepted my fate. All the girls wanted to go see the giant Buddha, but I decided to stick with Kevin, Korey, and Holden. I went down with everyone at 7:45, got the three boys passports and then went back to my room.
I texted them and told them I had their passports but they didn’t respond. I sort of waited around, and then a fear hit me that “oh my god what if they left without their passports?” I ended up calling each one of them, and none of them would pick up, which was super confusing because I knew Korey was awake since he texted me earlier that morning.
So now I’m sitting in my room with three extra passports trying to figure out what to do, but thankfully, Holden texted me. I asked for their room number and then deliver their passports. Turns out they were still sleeping, so that was awkward.
As soon as I got back to my room, Korey texted me back and I was like “sorry I was awake, but I wanted to be silent.”
We made plans to get coffee downstairs and then headed out to the Tibetan district of the city. We squeezed into a taxi, and I was in the middle because the three of them are all 6 feet tall.
The place we were dropped off was a lot like the 袁家村, so we walked around that a bit. We then found the actually Tibetan district, walked around that for a bit, and then got lunch at a Tibetan restaurant.
We ate potato dumplings, meat, eggplant, and something that was similar to a meat pie. It was all really good. We also had to drink a shit tone of milk tea. Also, some monks sat down next to us and started talking to us. They kept calling the guys 帅哥, which was the theme for most of the day. I get it; I’m boring and they’re “attractive white guys.”
We then went back and walked around some more. We did that thing where you drink alcohol and then smash the bowl. The drink was super good, and I wasn’t even sure if it had alcohol in it, but the guys told me not to send it in a group chat.
Holden suggested we go to some boujie ass shopping center. We had to hail a taxi and it sucked ass because no one wanted to pick up the westerns. Kevin told me I should hail the taxi while they hid. I got ignored by the drives, so there went that plan. At one point, one of the guys made the joke that it sucked to be discriminated against, and I said: “it must be so hard being a white man.”
We got some coffee, sat around and chatted, and then Kevin got lost going to the bathroom.
Turns out, the bathrooms are western and super nice, so I was into that. Of course, the girls' line was super long.
We got dinner at an overpriced western restaurant. I had an odd slider and French fries that tasted like mashed potatoes. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great. Also, the waiter brought over hot water for me and then came back with cold water for the boys. I see what she did. She was like: ah yes, I know what this Chinese national and these white boys need.
We were ready to head back, and all of a sudden it started raining. It wasn’t even a light rain; it literally went from zero to 100 real quick. Chinese people react so funnily to rain. They acted like a bomb went off and I literally watched a girl act like she had been shot when she got booped with a raindrop.
When we got back to the hotel we rested and waited for everyone to come back.
