My dire predictions of a disastrous night fortunately didn’t materialise. My trusty sleeping bag did me proud and the windows had fly screens so we didn’t have a mossie problem. I had a reasonable night apart from an hour when I had a terrific gut ache. Fortunately that disappeared but I must have had sympathy pains with Bob next door who was up all night with a severe case of vomiting and diarrhoea – so I certainly can’t give Bhutanese food my seal of approval.
Tiffany and I spent most of the time before breakfast mopping up the bathroom again. Having a shower caused another deluge of water on the floor and a minor flood that threatened the rest of our room. Bhutan hasn’t got it right yet when it comes to designing bathrooms!
Bob stayed home today so the 3 of us + Pruba, our guide, set off for Punakha Dzong, a short drive down the valley. It was a magnificent dzong and in a very good state of repair. Like the dzong yesterday it was half local administration and half monastery. We climbed the steep and I mean steep, almost like climbing a ladder, stairs up to the front entrance. Inside there were quite a few tourists as well as monks scurrying about. Inside it was all decorated wood and looked fabulous. We spent an hour or so touring the building and even managed to avail ourselves of the monks’ toilet, not that I would particularly recommend it – after all we girls all know what men are like in the bathroom!
We took a short walk up the back of the dzong to Bhutan’s longest suspension bridge about 200m across the river. The others walked across it but I sat on the side and watched some young monks washing their robes in the river and enjoying a very cold swim. There wasn’t much activity on the bridge apart from one young couple that staggered across. The husband was bent double carrying a gas hot plate together with large gas bottle on his back. His wife had a young child on her back, a shopping bag in one hand and was holding tight on to a 3 year old boy with the other. The husband stopped near me and adjusted his load. He was carrying it backpack style but his ‘straps’ were just 2 pieces of twine so it must have cut into his shoulders dreadfully. I wondered if they moving house or if they’d just managed to score the cooking equipment from some relative.
We had lunch in a cafe overlooking the river but they didn’t have any toast! They managed to rustle up a couple of bananas for me but they were local and tasted awful; pasty with hard lumps in them. I ate my apple and thought of my packet of chips in my hotel room. The food everywhere is all the same. It is always a buffet with red rice, some fried-style vegetables and some bony fish or chicken. There is a distinctive smell about it that just churns my stomach. Perhaps it’s the oil they use or some spice but I can’t bring myself to even eat a little bit. Can I survive on 2 eggs for breakfast, toast and a sprinkling of fruit, I wonder?
In the afternoon it was quite warm and blowing a gale with dust flying everywhere but we set off for a short walk through the fields to the Divine Madman’s temple. This monk was eventually revered once folk got over his antics and lewdness. It is from him that the prevalence of phallic symbols in Bhutan comes. It is often quite confronting because you are driving through a village and there painted in vibrant colours on a wall is a huge pink penis ringed around with flowers and dragons! A lot of houses have penises over their front doors so you have to mind the willy as you enter! At the temple I expected the walls to be decorated with phalluses but they weren’t. Instead there was a monk inside ready to bless visitors with a giant wooden phallus. I declined; being blessed with a large circumcised penis didn’t really seem appropriate. For the Bhutanese it is a sign of good luck and fertility. There are some amazing postcards that you can buy but I doubt they’d get through the postal system.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the old town of Wangdue to buy some water and have a quick look around. Tiffany managed to top up her supply of chocolate with a few bars past their use-by date. It was a chance to see the old town as by the end of the year it will be gone and the residents all moved to the new town.
We had tea in the garden once we arrived back at the hotel and Bob joined us. I looked forward to eating my chips. Tonight it will be toast and honey for me for tea. Tomorrow we drive further into eastern Bhutan, an area few tourists manage to see. Most western tourists just see the Paro-Thimphu area but we are going further. We have seen a sprinkling of German, French, Japanese and Chinese tourists but the majority of tourists are from India and they do not have to pay the government’s special tourists tariff of $200 a day, going up to $250 a day next year. Our guide says there are only 35,000 tourists a year at the moment and their average age is 55 but the government want to increase this to 100,000 a year. This isn’t going to happen if they raise the daily tariff unless they concentrate on the Indian market.
No comments:
Post a Comment