Tuesday, October 20: Monkeys! and the Sweet Smell of Success...Oh, Wait...That's Urine

Contrary to what you might believe by the title to this post, the monkeys and the smell of urine are from two separate unrelated events. That's not to say that the monkeys didn't smell like urine. I really don't know. I didn't get close enough to get a good whiff of one. Anyway, I must digress. This was our last day in Nepal before we went back to Bangladesh, or at least it was supposed to be, but I'll get to that in a couple of paragraphs. We started the morning by meeting Krishna (our travel agent). He took us to the Swayambhunath Stupa which is more commonly known as the Monkey Temple. It is the oldest Buddhist temple in Nepal and is believed to be at least 2,500 years old. I probably don't have to explain that it is also well known for the large number of monkeys that make their home there. They are very comfortable around people and will harass you if you are not careful.

The temple itself was a series of buildings and monuments that were all very ornate. I felt a little uncomfortable because there were many Buddhists there practicing their religion, and I was trying not to get in the way. Of course it is a popular tourist spot, so we were not the only non-Buddhists there. We didn't get much of a tour by Krishna. He explained some things regarding Buddhism and the buildings, but I still did not come away feeling I knew very much about the religion. The temple was on top of a hill on the west side of the city, so there was a great view of the city. It was interesting to see the monuments and buildings, but I was a little disappointed overall.

The other thing that was very noticeable about the Monkey Temple was the amount of stray dogs that live there. We even saw a couple of dogs that had a litter of puppies. In fact, Phillip even got a picture of two dogs making a litter of puppies! If you want to see that picture, you'll have to ask Phillip for it.

The picture above is of a Buddhist holy man. I don't know what they are called, but in Kathmandu, they would go around and hand out flowers and put a red mark on people's foreheads for good luck. I found this out the hard way the night before as we walked around Kathmandu. I told the guy that I didn't want one but before I could even finish saying no, he reached up and put the mark on me real quick. Fortunately it came off easily.


And now for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say...

Like I said before, this was supposed to be our last day in Nepal. After lunch, we went to the airport for our flight at 3:05. We got checked in and had some extra time, so we sat in a waiting area for a while. After it got closer to our flight time, we decided to go to our gate. We got to our gate to discover that there were a couple of hundred people packed into a large room. These people made up several flights to different parts of Asia and Europe. We also quickly discovered that the room had a very strong odor which we determined were from the restrooms in the corner. I'm sure the BO from the number of people packed into the room also didn't help the smell.

Anyway, our flight was late in boarding, but I wasn't going to be too upset as long as we made it back to Bangladesh that day. To board our flight we had to walk down a hallway and board a bus that would take us to our airplane. We made it as far as the bus. We kept waiting for them to take us to the plane, but finally after probably 15 minutes, we were told there was a problem and taken to another room. There we waited for awhile longer before we were told that there was a "technical problem" and they would let us know in 30 minutes whether or not the flight was going to go on this day. Of course, in typical developing world fashion, 30 minutes turned into two hours. Finally, they told us that our flight was canceled, and we would fly to Bangladesh the next day. Then we had to go back into the waiting room with the incredible stench and were given lousy boxed airline food to eat. We ate what we deemed to be safely edible and waited some more.

Eventually we were told that our flight would not be until 2:55 the next afternoon, and that we would be put up for the night in a hotel at the airlines expense. We were not happy! Another hour later, finally saw us leaving the airport about seven hours after we had arrived and taken to our hotel. Most of the people on our flight were Bengalis, and we were separated from them along with a couple of Bengalis that we think were a little more financially well off. I'm not sure where the majority of them were taken, but we were taken to a hotel that said on its front that it was a "real deluxe hotel". We were of course not impressed with how "fancy" the hotel was. Below are a couple of pictures of the hotel. You can see how "deluxe" it was. I can only imagine what the hotel the Bengalis were taken to was like. The only amenity that was nice was that it had cable TV and even had several American channels like ESPN and the Discovery Channel. This was nice since our flight didn't leave until the following afternoon and we had to figure out what to do for the morning. Needless to say, this day was not a very good day. Instead of being back in Bangladesh, we spent the night in a pink hotel room somewhere in Kathmandu.

This picture was taken in the stairwell. We saw this on a couple of the different floors. It was not real comforting.

And to make this day even better, it was dad's birthday! We were supposed to go to one of Phillip's co-workers apartment when we got back to Dhaka for a home cooked meal and cake. Fortunately, we were able to enjoy that meal another day. I'm sure this was a birthday that dad won't forget.