Overslept. Woke up at 9 - was supposed to have left by 8 to get my bag from the airport... Anywho found it pretty much straight away which was nice - good old Bunny Baba Ganoush... I knew I sewed him on for a reason. I showed the men at the baggage reclaim how I knew he was mine and they all laughed. They loved Baba Ganoush.... I had my phone ready to show them a picture as I didn't have my baggage tag, although my phone had run out of battery because the adapter was in my rucksack... Luckily they didnt ask.
Went for a wander around Kathmandu - actually I was going to try and meet up with Marianne, who has organised schools for me to teach at and booked the hotel for me etc. but as my phone wasn't letting me make calls I couldn't phone to tell her I was lost and had no idea where about in the farmers market we wouls meet should I ever find it...(which I didnt...) The directions I was given at the hotel were like - turn right... which led me to roundabout... I went down each road for a way and had multiple chats with random Nepalese men who would strangely ask the same questions : Hello; Where are you from? Ahhh London the capital? First time to Nepal? Do you like it? How long do you stay? etc... So I went off with a few of them who had things they wanted to show me - I saw a small 'monkey' temple which had no monkeys but was a nice little place nonetheless. Another guy wanted to show me the market place and practise his English - its very hard to say no to these people... but don't worry - I am being careful and staying safe. :-)
Fixed my phone when I got back. -I needed to put the number 2 before the pin... Phoned Marianne to arrange meeting up - after 2 mins of poor reception and speaking with a severe delay all my credit had expired... she suggested before the call ended that I get a new number -which you can find on facebook. Fell asleep again and was late to meet Ed - a guy from the hotel - we'd decided to go to the big monkey temple together. At first we saw very few monkeys - There were however an enormous number of steps - a taxi driver had informed me 365... I'm not sure if that's true or not... The air seems thick in Nepal, I'm not sure if its humidity; pollution; or altitude, but going up those steps sure was a sweaty affair. At he top there are prayer wheels to turn for good fortune etc, one of the men earlier had told me youi have to turn them with your right hand. There were statues of Buddah as well as some Hindu gods I will have to look up - cos I dont know all their names - Ed just told me we saw Ganeesha - the elephant one. On our way down the steps again there has been very few monkeys - 1 in total. But just as we were about to get a taxi we saw one walking along a path which appeared to be next to the wall of the temple - naturally we followed it and were led to a whole creche of monkeys. One mother screamed at us - but all the others seemed quite dosile. We walked back the way we cam as we didnt want to go up the hill again, and saw a male monkey hassling a young girl with some sort of lollipop - to be fair I would havbe been just as upset as that girl was - and probably would have given the monkey my sweet...
On the way back I started to get hungry and had had my first taste of Nepalese street food... I was going to try a samosa but I'm pretty sure we established it had meet in... so I had a potato thing with a spicy soup and a cracker on top and some onions - it was nice... looked a bit like vomit but decidedly flavoursome... I'd defo have it again.
That's about all - tell me if it's boring or too long and I shall endevour ro make it better.
Interesting how they want to practise their English on you. I had this in Hong Kong a while back - they would happily walk with you while you shopped. Had I thought about it more, I'd have told them that certain choice English swear words were phrases of approval. That's another opportunity missed......
ReplyDelete