Thai VIP Bus

I had the pleasure of spending the night on a Thai VIP bus last night.
It cost 600 Baht or maybe A$28 for the 10 hour overnight journey.
The seats recline almost fully and you are given a box contaiing snacks and water.
There are only 3 rows of seats occupying the width of the bus instead of the traditional 4, so the seats are really wide.
It is the most comfortable bus ride ever, and less than the cost of many hotel rooms in Thailand, its a great way to get around.
My only complaint is that it was so cold inside... Take a jumper and socks to suppliment the supplied blanket.
I wanted to take a picture of the inside, but folks were already sleeping :)

Leaving Nepal

Leaving Nepal.. Nepal has got to be the most difficult country to leave!

It must have taken more than two hours to get through the system.

Well, there was only one door open into the airport terminal, everone was trying to funnel in from every direction, it just wasnt happening, after 30 minutes, we had just moved 1 metre.
So, they opened a second door and things got much better, 40 minutes to get into the building.
Inside the terminal, all big bags were x-ray'd, sounds reasonable.
Then off to the Nepali bank to get departure tax
Then check-in.. Maybe 1 hour to this point.
Through passport control,, easy enough

Interrupt.. I am writing this on the flight from Kathmandu to Bangkok, flying with Thai airways.
I love flying with Thai airwaysm we have just been fed and I have hada small Singha beer befoe the meal, Red wine with the meal, another small beer to follow.
I have to enjoy it beause when I fly my next segments with Jetstar, the cheapskate airline, I get nothing..
There is a message on the p.a.. "There is turbulence, please return to your seat" Ha ha, I love turbulence, I am a Para glider pilot! bring it on!

Now a long 30 minute queue to go through security,, This is where it gets more crazy.
First small bags are x-rayed
Now you go through the metal-detector door thing.
Then, you are patted down.. Why? Doesnt the metal detector work?
Then, your small bags are all opened and hhad searched.. Why? Doesnt the x-ray machine work?

You sit in a boring room till your plane is ready
You walk out to the plane, where you are patted down again.. Why?

It keeps a lot of people employed for sure, but it seems to go on.

Mind you, not like the curtained room in the domestic departure area.

It will feel good to be back in Thailand.. only a three hour flight:)

While I was waiting in the boring room before boarding the plane, Mick and John left on their flight to Singapore, followed not long after be the Russian paraglider pilots headed to Karachi on their way back home.. "Hello Australia" they all called out.
It was a great end to an amazing paragliding session..

p.s. It IS great to be back in Thailand :)

Kathmandu - It's Cold here

Its 5:30am on Thursday morning and its cold, well its 14C in my room, but I feel cold, which is why I am typing this in bed, with a shirt and jacket on.
Getting to sleep was difficult.. The bed has a big heavy doona on it and it took about 2 hours for me to warm it to a suitable temperature.
Kathmandu, like the whole of Nepal, only has intermittent mains electricity, overnight, it came on between midnight and 5am.. Useful eh?

We flew into Kathmandu on the 1:30pm flight from Pockhara, which actually left pockhara about 3pm and arrived Kathmndu at 3:30pm, I guess we were installed in our hotel in the city by about 4:30pm.

Kathmandu is a great city, you could do a lot of shopping here, but when you have a 20kg baggage allowance and a 17kg para glider, it limits you somewhat :) I am already overweight on my lugguage!

We wandered around our part of town for a couple of hours while working up an appitite, and then ate.

I ate at an 'Organic food Cafe and Salad bar' which is not my normal kind of place but I was wooed by the free WiFi internet.
I had this amazing bowl of soup there, and the best coffee that I have had in Nepal, which isnt saying much.
The soup was a vegatable soup that contaied all the veggies that I could imagine, and in case that wasnt enough, it had a lot of rice in it, it was a huge bowl and really really filling.. I ate it all :)
Here is a picture of th soup....

And some dogs sleeping i a doorway :)

Our plan for today is to find breakkfast somewhere and leave for the airport at 10am, arriving there at 11am.
Mick and John's flight is meant to leave for Singapore at 1:15pm and mine is meaant to leave for Bangkok at 1:55pm, but in Nepal, these flights times are approximate :)

It will be strange for me to go from being too cold in Kathmandu, to being too hot in Bangkok, but I am looking forward to the idea.

Thanks for the comments, it is good to know that someone reads these ramblings.

Raining in Pokhara today

It has been raining this morning here in Pokhara

But, we are not para gliding today, so we dont care :)

Its 9:40am here and we leave for the airport at 12, for our tiny flight to Kathmandu :)

Finished

We have just finished our last flight of the trip and we are all safe and sound.
Enough

Roxy and Bones

Yesterday (Sunday) One of the Russian para glider pilots was injured on launch and everybody was really sad.

We drank a lot of grog and got really drunk.

So,this morning, we didn't feel much like paragliding, but we did eventually launch at about 12:30.

I was thermal ling up to my target of 200m ASL, at which point I would have automatically left the hill to go cross-country when I decided that I had had enough!

So, I landed after only 30 minutes flying :)

In the evening, I visited a Tandoori place that I had spotted a few days ago. I have a real soft spot for any place that has a Tan dour oven :)

This Tan dour oven looked as if it had been built into an oil drum.

A Tan dour oven is a drum shape, like the drum on a top-loading washing machine and the sides and bottom are lined with clay.

They cook Naan bread by slapping the dough against the inside of the drum to cook, the guy as using a large smooth stone on which he placed the dough before slapping it against the inside of the drum so as not to burn his hands.

Real Naan brad cooked this was tastes infinitely better than the crap w at at home!
I had a really simple meal of Butter Naan, DaalFry and a curry made with kidney beans, all for A$2

The people of Ne pall are very poor indeed. The daily wage for many of the population is around 200-300 Rupees a day, which is A$4 - A$6

A large bottle of beer costs 160-200 Rupees, so, as you can imagine, the locals only drink beer on birthdays and other special occasions.

So, to combat this lack of alcohol, there is this local moonshine grog called 'Roxy'

Roxy is made from millet and rice and maybe many other things.. The first time I tasted it, I thought that it tasted foul, but I expect some batches are good, and at 50 Rupees for a large bottle which is enough to get 4 people fairly drunk, goes down well with the locals.

While I was ambling back to the hotel, I passed a group of 4 guys sitting around a table by the lake.. As I passed by, one of the guys asked if I was lost or needed help, as I was telling him that I eat too much an had to walk a lot, I noticed that they each had a glass of clear liquid poured from a plastic bottle, so I added "Drinking Roxy?"with a grin. They said, "Come drink some"

This batch was better than the one I had tasted before, but still not good.
So we sat, drank ad talked a little an then their supper arrived in a black plastic bag which was emptied into a metal bowl in the cent re of the table.

The guy proudly announced it as 'Buffalo bones' and that was exactly it, a steaming pile of 10cm sections of leg bones with pieces of gristle ad the odd meaty looking piece clinging to the outside.

I don't like eating this, it is one of the few things that really don't appeal to me, but they were anxious for me to try a little, so I found a meaty looking chunk that had been overlooked by whoever had stripped the bones of their meat and popped it into my mouth.

It didn't taste good, but I politely ate it before excusing myself and went back to sleep at the hotel.

In the Air

Usually, when I am flying here, there is too much happening for me to take photographs, but yesterday, as I headed off over Pokhara city towards DikiDander, I had a few minutes to snap off a couple of pictures.
The first is of Pokhara city, ad the second one is the hill that I wass heading towards.

It was another great days flying :)