Odds and Ends

Odds and Ends

• The police presence in Lhasa is huge with checkpoint/security checks at many major attractions.
• It is fall and the trees are dropping their leaves.  Yet in Lhasa every day there were ladies out with small brooms sweeping up leaves from the streets.  In the US we would use mechanical street sweepers.  Hear, the manual sweeping creates jobs.
• Outside of our hotel room western style toilets are few and far between. 
•  Passenger power windows on Dien Ba’s Landrover don’t work so well.  Usually required pulling them up…sometimes required two people to pull them up.
• Police control speeds in some areas by speed stops (provided with a time stamped paper that you present at the next speed stop.  If you travel at the proper speed then you arrive at the next time point at the appropriate time.  If we go too fast there can be consequences so the driver would just pull over for a tea break or a bathroom break until time to move on.