After our nap in the Bangkok airport hotel (I consider about 4 hours sleep a nap), it was back to the airport and time to check in for our Drukair (Royal Bhutan) flight. To give you an idea of how small this country is, until recently, this was the only airline that flies there. Contrary to belief (mine included), they don't limit the number of tourists per day. But they do have a per day tourist charge (a tariff) which reduces the number of people who enter the country. It is unusual in that you can't just come visit here on your own. You have to be with a guide. The fee that you pay to come here makes the place all inclusive. It includes accommodations, food, guide and driver. There are varying levels to that fee based on where you stay and what you do but I don't know.
There are a few things we know going in about Bhutan:
- The population of the entire country is about 700,000 people. I think more people than that live on the Upper West Side.
- Cigarettes are illegal here (smart country).
- The national sport is archery. Moira is hoping her prowess in archery as a kid (she apparently won some ribbons at camp) will ingratiate her to the locals.
- Both men and women dress in traditional clothes. Men wear the gho which is a long gown, belted at the waist. Women wear an ankle length dress called the Kira, which is mostly hand woven, with traditional patterns.
- It is another Buddhist country.
- It will be cooler than Mynamar. Way cooler.
- Instead of flying between locations, we will be driving. It doesn't seem like the trips are terribly long given the size of the country (first day from Paro to Thimpu is 90 minutes). We are actually glad for the reprieve of uncomfortable airport waiting areas.
- It is the world's youngest democracy, according to the inflight magazine. And the democracy was a gift from the monarchy, not something that happened through revolution.
- They measure gross national happiness here (GNH). Seriously. Google it. It places value on things like cultural heritage, health, education, good governance, ecological diversity, and individual well being. It sees economic growth not as an ends but as a means to achieving more important ends.
Bhutan is an hour behind Thailand and a half hour behind Mynamar. That means when it is noon here, it is 2 AM at home, or a ten hour difference. We think our flight is supposed to get in around 10:15, which given we left at 6:45, would make the trip around 4 and a half hours. It wasn't a non-stop flight though. We stopped about 2.5 hours in at some other international airport (we are assuming in Bhutan), adeposited some passengers, and picked up some others. The whole process took about 45 minutes.
The weather when we landed was gorgeous. Blue skies. Clear air. We later leaned that it has been nice here for 4 days. Prior to that, they had rain from the typhoon. The views coming in were amazing. And the airport was small but quaint. We had a paper that showed we had a visa and we had brought the passport sized photo but they didn't give us a special stamp for it. It turns out you only need to show the paper when you check in. Who knew. Our guide, who we will have the whole trip, is named Dawa and he was waiting for us. He didn't have the customary "Cynthia Dianne Freed and guests" sign so we didn't see him. Luckily all the guides were helpful and we realized Dawa was the one with the Sita placard.
He recommended that we change money at the bank there. We weren't sure the conversion rate (and it turns out you can get a much better one for $50s. We figured there were about 50 of their local currency (begins with an N) to a dollar. There isn't much need for local currency due to the tariff that covers everything but we read that we should get about $50 converted. Steph went to the ATM and in her state of currency confusion, got out the equivalent of $6. She is, what we call, currency challenged (see our first Vietnam blog entry where she scared me into thinking I had withdrawn the equivalent of $10,000). We went outside and met our driver Kasha. Before we left, Dawa almost performed a little ceremony by putting a traditional white scarf around all our necks as a traditional Bhutanese welcome.
The drive to Thimphu took about an hour to an hour and a half. We leaned a lot along the way (see below) and the drive consisted of twisty turny roads. Dawa said there is only one straight raid in Bhutan and that is the one leading out of the airport. We stopped along the way to walk across an amazing suspension bridge, covered in prayer flags (more about that below). When we arrived at our hotel, we got another welcome scarf and then they did this really cool thing. They took us outside were there was a monk waiting for us. He said a prayer for us, a welcome prayer to look over us while we are guests here. Then he gave us a prayer, wrapped in a yellow string. He took the string off and tied it around our wrist. We are supposed at least 3 days and hopefully longer to protect us and keep us safe.
After lunch, we had a series of stops which I will highlight more in what we learned, but it included a visit to the local hospital where a doctor explained to us about the different herbs and plants they use for eastern medicine, a visit to a local artisan trade school (Zorig Chusum) which trains students in Bhutan's 13 traditional arts, a stop at the post office, a visit to the National Memorial Chorten (in honor of the king) and the local archery grounds (which is the national sport here and a religion in and off itself). Back near our hotel, we walked through the local crafts market and watched a traditional Bhutanese song and dance show at the hotel. At the show, we met a German man who was there with 18 others. He is a pilot and his group is flying around the world, each pilot in his own plane, arranged by a German flight magazine. They had been traveling for 6 weeks, going to places like Icdland, Alaska, Australia, Bali, Fiji, Singapore, etc. with a couple weeks to go. He told us Papua New Guinea was awful and that we should never go there...I think he even called it lawless. Bummer. Later at the bar, there were people sitting near us who all of a sudden got up to get the bartender to change the station. One of the men appeared on the TV. Turns out that he is Canadian and received some high honor today from the king. The Bhutanese man with him used to be Bhutan's delegate to the UN and also was the ambassador in DC. We know how to roll when in the kingdom of Bhutan.
Before I move on, I should touch up the four friends image that is all over the country. It is an elephant with a monkey on its back. A rabbit is on the monkey's head and a bird is on the rabbit. The story is something like the they all help one other survive. It illustrates the concept of teamwork although the story in the book is different than the one Dawa told us. Regardless, the image is everywhere and we like it as it also represents us - the four friends.
Things we learned;
- Bhutan is sandwiched between India and China.
- They used willow trees for firewood and the leaves to feed livestock in the last.
- Paro is at 2400 meters above sea level.
- 72% of the country is under forest.
- Two to three generations of family live in one house.
- They grow rice and apples (red and golden delicious).
- There are what look like abandoned old homes, made of mud, along the way. Those are the traditional homes and they leave them standing as they believe they have home spirits.
- There are red chilies drying on roof tops. Dawa says they are appetizers. They are used not just as spices but as vegetables. They grow them in the summer.
- They don't advise we eat in local restaurants due to the poor local hygiene.
- Prayer flags are on the bridges so they flutter in the winds and take the prayers with them. Dawa said they call it the luck force.
- Bhutan's economy depends on hydropower and tourism or what Dawa said are non- polluting industries.
- 95,000 people live in Thimphu which is the capital since 1955. Was in Punakha before. King since 1907. A lot of new construction going on now. Has to follow traditional design. Can't be more than 6 stories. Only capital in the world without traffic lights.
- Government tourist target is 100,000 per year. But that includes Indian tourists who don't need a visa. About 35,000 are non-Indian. Tourism was privatized in 1991.
- People who sell things here aren't pushy at all, unlike some in Myanmar.
- All the kids here go to school 5 and a half days a week (half day on Saturday). They get two months off for a winter break from mid- December to mid-February and then two weeks off in the summer.
- As people walk around the holy structures here (circumambulate as they say) always clockwise, they recite a 6 syllable mantra "Om mani pae mey hun." It is believed that the more they recite the closer they will get to nirvana. Older people spend a lot of their time at the National Memorial walking around with their rosary beads reciting this. It was interesting to watch.
- There are also prayer wheels that people spin to make a bell ring. It is another way of sending your prayer out.
- Archery is the national sport and they take it very seriously here. It all started from fighting during olden days. Now different towns play one another and there are other competitions. They do rituals prior or and during the matches. Each team has 11 players and each player has 3 turns from each end. We were lucky today in that we got to see the second day of a tournament, and the king's brother was participating. We didn't realize you aren't supposed to take pictures of the royal family but we stopped when told. It is amazing the length of the field and how small the bullseye is. I could barely see it. When they hit the bulls eye, teams would dance and sing. They also made fun of the other team if they had a bad miss. It was quite fun to watch. ESPN should run it on a Watch or something.
- According to Buddhism here (and maybe everywhere...I need to study this more when I get home), there are 5 elements in the body - air, water, fire, earth and space. If they aren't balanced, it causes sickness or other problems. They are represented in paintings by different colors. If you don't have enough air, your negative energy is ignorance and it is represented by the color green. If there is an absence of earth in your body, your negative energy is pride, represented by yellow. Absence of fire is greed and represented by red. Absence of water is jealousy and represented by white. If you don't have space, your negative energy is anger and represented in blue. And that is all I know.
Steph's line of the day, spoken when we were a little chilly while sitting outside and waiting for the traditional show to begin: "Remember, three days ago I was dehydrated. I was eating salt for breakfast."
Number of flight segments to date: 10
Number of airport bus rides: 8
Number of boat rides: 5 (forgot Inle last time)
Number of horse drawn cart rides: 2
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