Tibetan Food and the Tourist Treatment in Western China

Former Traveler staffer Ashley Thompson gives us a glimpse of travel and food in Western China.

Out the bus window, the Wild West of China began to unfurl, as did lush peaks towering over muddy rivers. We whizzed past tiny Sichuan mountain villages, whose daredevil residents sell exotic fruits mere inches from the highway, affording them harsh breezes as tourist buses came and went. We even passed one particularly brave woman doing her daily exercises using the highway guardrail as a makeshift ballet bar.

We had left Sichuan's comparatively glitzy provincial capital, Chengdu, that morning. After a total of nine hours of winding up and down cloud-cloaked mountains, we arrived in Kangding at about 8 p.m. Most of Kangding, considered by Chinese standards a mere blip of a town with a population of 80,000, is squeezed into a valley and sidles up to two rushing rivers that converge near the center of town. The water sounded distinctly frothy, the air crisp. Local street-goers were adorned in a wide array of attire, from sleek blazers to traditional colorful Tibetan robes to Adidas T-shirts. My travel companion and friend, Thomas, and I wore shorts and T-shirts, expecting a climate similar to the one we left in sweltering Chengdu.

Read more after the jump . . .




Post originale: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/11/tibetan-food-and-the-tourist-t-1.html

The Radar: Banksy in Torquay, GloboMaestro, Japan Recruits Tourist Feedback

• The stealth-yet-celebrated graffiti artist Banksy recently descended upon the Grovsenor hotel in Torquay, in the county of Devon, England, where he left behind a eight foot tall drawing of a little boy and a robot. A hotel manager noticed the artwork and they're now making an attempt to preserve it. While it hasn't been proven as a Bansky yet, it has appeared on the artist's website. It's valued at $240,000. [Daily Mail]

• Want to get inside the heads of some of the most in-the-know urban gurus? The new site GloboMaestro has recruited concierges from the world's top hotels to offer their insider picks. Check out their blogs and videos on everything from the best ceviche in Miami to the secret speakeasys in New York's East Village. [GloboMaestro]

• Japan is recruiting 100 people who are native English, Chinese, and Korean speakers to visit the country and give feedback on its tourist offerings, the China Daily reports. They plan to send them to urban centers and ask them to report on how well they're able to access public transportation, area hotels, and restaurants. All of their in-country expenses will be paid for. "It's hard for us Japanese to judge how prepared different parts of the country are -- we need people to use as monitors who really don't know Japan at all," one spokesperson said. No word yet on how you can volunteer to be one of those tourists, but the Japanese Tourism Agency will release details next year. [China Daily]
  

Photo: Via the Daily Mail

Post originale: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2010/10/the-radar-bansky-in-torquay-gl.html