We went to a library and these steps are really how you get to the next level!! People of Bhutan have to be fit!! And here is more of the school for the arts. I was impressed with all the thread and the sewing machines.
More of what some of Bhutan looks like.
Archery is the number one sport in the country. They take it seriously. Everyone got to try it if they wished. I was about to throw up and wanted no part in this.
We went to a textile museum started by one of the four sisters married to the prior king. This wall hanging is a replica of the one that is put out for the special occasions like honoring a new king and it’s so big that 100 men have to carry it back to it’s storage place. It gets hanged in front of a huge 3 story building for every inauguration of kings, rain or shine.
What’s funny is that I don’t think I really saw this statue in Bhutan. It’s a good possibility I saw it on my Facebook page and screen-grabbed it because I thought it was cool. I still think it’s cool, but probably has nothing to do with Bhutan.
After this textile museum, I went to the hotel and got very sick. I threw up breakfast, and didn’t eat lunch, dinner, breakfast, or lunch. I did eat 3 bananas, but vowed never to eat the greasy/spicy local food in order not to be insulting. I’m too old for that shit and I can’t afford to get sick like that again.
While I was binge-watching Suits on Netflix for nine hours straight while tending to a headache, my travel mates were walking a 1 hour 45 minute hike and a lunch in the woods. I am very glad to have missed that.
I dragged myself to dinner only to find out that they were all dressed in local garb and there were tween-agers for each traveler and we had to talk to them all evening. I felt like shit, and had no interest in talking to a 13 year old boy who I could barely understand.
But I persevered, ate white break and a banana and found out the kid’s dad was a cop, his mom planted flowers for a botanical garden, his younger brother was at the dinner, they had 3 dogs kept outside and a cat, inside, that the dogs did not like. He like Halloween and usually went with fake blood, etc. He liked the action movies. They ate with their hands out of a bowl at home, but used utensils nicely at the dinner. Found out his dad used to beat him when he was small when he did something wrong. I asked if he learned not to do things wrong any more. He said yes, the beatings were a long time ago.
I told him I needed to leave early, but to go sit with Maria (who was not happy being paired with a little boy who could barely speak English. It’s very hard to conduct a conversation that way.)
But I persevered, ate white bread and a banana and found out the kid’s dad was a cop, his mom planted flowers for a botanical garden, his younger brother was at the dinner, they had 3 dogs kept outside and a cat, inside, that the dogs did not like. He liked Halloween and usually went with fake blood, etc. He liked the action movies. They ate with their hands out of a bowl at home, but he used utensils nicely at the dinner. Found out his dad used to beat him when he was small when he did something wrong. I asked if he learned not to do things wrong any more. He said yes, the beatings were a long time ago.
I told him I needed to leave early, but to go sit with Maria (who was not happy being paired with a little boy who could barely speak English. It’s very hard to conduct a conversation that way.)
This was a temple with 108 stupas. 108 because a special buddha had 108 markings/scars on his body for something or other and 108 became an important number.
This photo was taken 15 minutes after the one above. THAT’S how fast the fog rolls in and makes everything invisible.
Look at the view here.
And then almost total invisibility in a couple minutes.
More bathroom pics. This was a religious place and I suppose many ceremonies occur here — enough so that they have a special changing area for people to get into their approved religious outfits.
There were some big-ass metal bolts on some of these bathroom doors.
Sometimes I surprise myself on how GOOD I look while feeling like sh*t.
Thank goodness for heat.
It was here I found large square crackers almost like the butter crackers like the CLUB crackers in the states. I stashed many of them into my purse for future bland meals.
This was a botanical garden that boasted all these animals were part of Bhutan’s fauna.
We had a 20 minute video, I was happy to be able to SIT and watch.
I love this serene place.
The water never seems to be very clean. But the fish were plentiful.
More of the beauty of the Bhutan countryside. My travel mates were on the lookout for limes for their happy hour drinking time; but settled for lemons. I wasn’t ABOUT to eat anything that had to be washed.
More architecture and more building. One of the places we had lunch. I love a chair with a bow on it!!
This was dzong (fortress) that the repairs wouldn’t be complete for another month. Thank goodness. By now I was TIRED of visiting another dzong.
The wooden bridge was cool. And an artsy pic of the temple through the bridge. …..and the dirty water.
Here are more white prayer flags on the hillside, put out by a family to commemorate their relatives who have died.
Our Tour Guide, Sonam, is required to wear this colored scarf and folded and twisted in exactly this fashion in order to enter the temple. He even had to put on nicer shoes than black tennis shoes. The color indicates the prestige and level of importance the person is in the temple. This white/beige shows he’s a nobody.
Sadly, today I found out that Nepal had another earthquake 310 miles from Katmandu. It was a 5.6 and killed hundreds of people.
Call me crazy, but on the first day off the plane in Nepal, I was laying in bed in the daytime and felt a little movement/tremor and thought to myself “I wonder if Nepal gets earthquakes?” I could have been in bad jetlag and my body was just in the heebie-jeebies. But who knows if it was a slight tremor. The next day we found out all about the huge quake they had in 2015.
More to come.
Safe Travels!!