"Arrested." Again.

It was going all too well. I ate a decent breakfast, went to the bus station, bought a ticket for the local price, caught a bus that was leaving in 15 minutes. They guy next to me got spat on by another Chinese guy who'd missed the window. Nothing else of interest happened.

Tsethang turned out to be another Chinese monstrosity of grandiose proportions. However, the people were lovely. So many Tibetan smiles and 'Tashi Dele"'s. Still, I didn't want to hang around for fear of the cops. Walked to the edge of town and eventually a lovely Tibetan lorry driver gave me a lift for a few km. Asked me about the Dalai Lama, but unfortunately I. Refused payment for the lift.

I kept walking. Passed some road workers, then jumped onto the back of a tiny Daewoo yute with 3 Tibetans. Great ride, as the river valley spread out below us with some monasteries on the hillsides. Eventually made it to the village of Rong, 30km out of Tsetang, just as the rain came in. Walked to the edge of town and took shelter by a road junction petrol station with some other Tibetans.

Was waiting when a jeep with 3 cops happened to drive by. Unfortunately, the guy in the front was a high-ranking officer, and knew the score. A few phone calls, and I was loaded into the jeep and made to wait. I decided to play the stupid-student-from-Poland-with-bad-English-and-no-money card. It worked. Soon, I'd made 'friends' with the young cop in the back, who showed me through his CD collection and even apologised for stopping me.

Half an hour later, 2 cops from the foreign affairs branch in Tsetang rocked up. They seemed pissed off, but relaxed once I'd convinced them that I was completely clueless. The officer in charge at the station wasn't so nice, but in the end they took down a report, photocopied my documents and told me to go back to Lhasa without fining me.

Got back to Lhasa at 10pm, hungry and pissed off. Turned out that every hotel was full (Checked 7). Since I'd stayed in Kirey for a few days, I managed to convince the staff to let me sleep on the floor for 15 RMB. The materass had blood stains on it. Oh well.