Thailand – the last visit for a while…

So, as you know after I finished up being a wannabe yogi in India I headed back to Thailand to stay with my dad. I was pretty broke and needed to sort myself out – so Dad’s seemed to be a very good place to go! Thanks dad. 🙂

After India I couldn’t get over how nice, clean and quiet Bangkok is! I found the infrastructure to be overwhelming; it was like being back in the modern world – fast cars, motorways, mega shopping malls – consumerism everywhere – talk about a direct entry back into the rat race. I noticed an absence of rubbish, an absence of men urinating in the street, and of course… a serious absence of city cows! I guess it is kind of lucky I didn’t go straight back to NZ from India or I would have really had a sensory overload – all things are relative huh?!

While at dads I helped him out with a few projects, soaked up the warmth and enjoyed eating good Thai food and hanging out with family. I washed my clothes using a washing machine for the first time in months (instead of a bucket) and I had the longest nicest longest hot shower (much to the detriment of my Indian tan!) It was good to be back in into civilisation.

So I ended up spending about 8 weeks at Dads all up… during this time I managed to get my old job back in NZ, found a flat (ironically it’s the same flat I lived at before going overseas), had a side trip to Malaysia, went to the beach, had a day trip to Ayutthaya, ate plenty of good food and booked tickets to New Zealand!

Here is a random selection of photos, mostly of family and food!

A pretty rough start…

I made it to Nepal!  Hooray…  The journey has begun!  To be honest it’s been off to a pretty rough start… 

While in Bangkok I thought it would be a good idea to get my eyebrows waxed just before going to the airport.  Well… that was a freakn disaster.   Seriously, I cried.  They are that bad, the woman butchered them and my eyebrow is still sore 24hrs later.   I’m going to have to grow them out and deal with a mono brow for a while before finding somewhere good (aka very expensive) in India to get them fixed up.

To make it worse the woman took 40 mins and by the time they got someone else to try and fix them up I was running VERY late for the plane.  So late I thought I would miss it.  But the gods of Royal Nepal Airlines were shining on me, little did I know that this airline is known for being unreliable… So the flight scheduled for 1.30 was delayed till 4pm, then 6pm… then we left at 7.30pm.   

I got the privilege of sitting next to a group of smelly men one of which who took his shoes off to add to the stink and then stared at me the whole way.   It was horrible, they told me to bring ear plugs – nose plugs would have been a better idea.

Oh, to make that flight even better – the plane was about 100 years old (ok, slight exaggeration) and I was sitting by the emergency exit door which wasn’t shut properly.  I spent the whole flight waiting for it to tear open, suck me out and splatter me on to Mt Everest or something.    I really shouldn’t have watched ‘how not to die’ last week.

So I have arrived… spent the day being harassed by trekking guides and wandering around a bit disorientated.   AND I have already been scammed – I knew what was going on and when I out witted him the little bugger nicked $10usd from me… Grrr…    You live and learn.  

I did score a free lunch though from one of the touts wanting me to book an overpriced tour, he took me to a Nepalese place and I had my first meal sans cutlery…  I can still smell the curry on my fingers… give me a spoon any day!

So…  I’ve got a few days before meeting my tour group, I’m thinking getting out of Katmandu and into the country side is a good idea.   Watch this space… I will post photos in the next few days…   I just wanted to let you know I got here ok.