The scenery in Tibet is gorgeous as promised. Once again, I'm the only american, except this time it is me, 3 Taiwanese and 63 Chinese. However, the three Taiwanese consist of a banker/salesman and two programmers who had just finished their six week training course in Beijing and were on their one week vacation before starting their jobs. They seem very nice and speak english well, and I think we will end up companions for the rest of this trip. They said that out of the whole IBM crew, they were the only ones who chose a visit to Tibet over Shanghai. Their friends didn't want to go because they were afraid of altitude sickness. They also told me that the altitude of Lhasa is 3000 meters. It sounded higher than Mammoth, but I wasn't too worried, that sort of thing had never bothered me before.

When I arrived in Tibet, my head cold, which had been going strong for two days magically disappeared. For a few hours I happily jaunted around town,.. then suddenly I was sick as a dog with altitude sickness. I stayed up most of the night throwing up about once an hour.