Kathmandu arrival story

Hello again everyone,
Shannon and I are hanging out filling time during one of our scheduled energy load sharing times. This means that we don’t have any electricity for two hours, this happens twice a week, apparently our two days fall on sat and sun, maybe it’s because we are near a couple of big hotels and a convention center.

So, I wanted to continue to share the story of our trip here. I told you about the excess baggage and how the clerks were clueless about what to charge. That all ended well, it actually cost substantially less than shipping any other way. In Bangkok we had to do a little finagling to get seats next to each other, Shannon ended up whistling and yelling across the terminal when our names were called to come to the front desk, she was really more freaked because she thought that her carry on had been stolen, when actually it was below her seat. Kind of funny. I got to catch up on some movies on those two flights, Spider Man 3, Shrek 3, Fracture, and some other even more lame one. I’ll have to say, Shrek was my favorite. We also got some reading in and some shuteye. Then we got to Bangkok. The business director had made reservations at a hotel in the airport for us and boy were we looking forward to taking a shower and getting some more sleep, especially since we had twelve hours to kill. Well, we spent a good two hours just finding the hotel, that airport is huge and fancy, it’s like a Las Vegas style shopping mall. Once we found our hotel we found out that we actually did not have reservations, maybe it was a speech barrier, Janna insists that she made reservations, speech barrier or not, we just were not getting a room. Sweet! At least we had already killed a few hours by this time. We ended up finding a lounge that’s for handicapped people and mothers, of course we made sure no one was there because we couldn’t poach the leather if there was, I mean we still do have our morals you know. We ended up sleeping on a leather changing table, it was pretty miserable, but we were able to get some sleep. Sebastian was a little freaked, he would hardly come out of his carrier and when he did he would crawl under whatever he could find and hide. That morning we were both kind of out of it and went through security without our boarding passes, oops. We also hadn’t checked in Sebastian on this different airline, maybe we should’ve had more coffee; oh no we couldn’t because the security check thingy. Shannon came shining through with a little wink and wit at three different desks, one for our boarding passes, one to pay extra for Sebastian (“how much does he weigh? Oh, fat cat”) , and then one for his papers, my mad book keeping skills saved the day there, which cost even more. Shannon had to haul ass back to the security check to catch our flight, which was all good.
We actually met two teachers from The Lincoln School in the waiting area. We recognized one of them from being on the same flight to Bangkok; she ended up being one of the people we had corresponded with via e-mail. She’s our age and very active, a great connection. We’ve hung out with her a couple of times already. This last Friday night we went to some bar that we had to go through this funky little alleyway and through a big gate to get to it. It was a cool little place with some dude playing the guitar and a woman singing a lot of bad eighties American hits. By the end of the night we didn’t mind. The cab ride home was a trip. The driver might have been thirteen years old and we were drunk and lost. Good time.

Anyways, back to Thailand. We flew Thai Air, they were great. Free drinks, they had whatever you wanted and they had some really good food, topped off by being given an orchid when we got off the plane. I think they do that because they knew what the airport experience is all about in Katmandu. You’ve all seen the movie Midnight Express? You know the airport seen when he’s on the tarmac and he’s getting busted? Well, that’s all I could think about when I got off the plane. It looked like we had landed at the local prison. The place looks like the old Montana prison in Deer Lodge that’s been converted to a car museum. There were all these random airplanes around that were all dirty and scary looking with names like “Buddha Air”, “Cosmic Air”, and a couple of others that seemed to have been thought up over and after cocktails. It was hot and humid outside and that quadrupled once we got inside with all these people standing in all these random lines for different visas. Our friend from school luckily was there to vector us in on the best bet. Thank goodness the line we needed to be in was the shortest one of all of them because I was sweating so badly that my eyes were stinging from the sweat getting in them. Once we got through that line we were on to our baggage.

Holy crap, talk about mayhem. I felt like I was walking into this starving crowd that had just been thrown free food. People were everywhere, on top of crates, on top of these beat up old push carts, standing on the turnstile that carries the luggage. It was chaos. Then, through this mayhem I see Shannon’s boss waving and yelling at us. I was so damned relieved! He had already found a good portion of our stuff in a pile of luggage that had fallen off the turnstile and had carts waiting for us. We found the remaining pieces, all of which made it, and we’re off through customs. This is when Allen says to me “Just follow me and don’t stop, act like you don’t understand what they’re saying and play dumb”, I had slept for maybe a total of two hours the night before, and those were on a diaper changing table, I had landed in what I swore was the courtyard of a prison, and I was just breaking out of this crowd of people that were crawling on top of one another to get their luggage. I did not need to play dumb at this point. Shannon, in the mean time is just getting it done all with a smile and looking as cute as ever with her little orchid pinned to her shirt. Okay, I’ll follow Allen as he just wheels the cart with our ski gear through customs while the guard is yelling and grabbing at him, Allen just yanks his arm away and keeps walking. Shit man, doesn’t he know we just landed at a prison? that‘s what I’m thinking. I mean, these guys have guns, but hey Nepal is all peaceful right? Wait, The Maoist thing. Maybe it’s not all peaceful; I need to just play dumb. Well, it worked; we got through the customs gate after some yelling and twisting. I’m not even sure why we did that other than to save some time, apparently customs here must be slow. We get outside and there are three or four men in uniforms grabbing our baggage from us and taking off with it; I’m thinking what the hell at first, then I realize that these are guards from school and the woman with them must be Janna. Indeed that was the case. I gave up all of my luggage except my ski gear, I am not going to pack that all the way over here and have it get thrown on top of a pile of other stuff and have it topple out onto the street. The guards were looking at the ski bag and me and looking kind of puzzled;” what, haven’t you ever seen a ski bag before? Come on we’re in the Himalaya’s, people must ski here all the time”. Apparently that is not the case. Needless to say, I still made sure that it was placed securely in the back of the pickup.

Finally, we’re in a vehicle moving on the ground towards our new home. Introductions are made; there was Allen the school’s director, Janna the business administrator, and our guard and driver. This all felt like it was out of the movies. It was like we had just made some brazen escape and now we were being given the entire beta on these current events that we needed to be privy to. Janna and Allen were both in front of us looking over their shoulders talking simultaneously to us, while the driver drove down the “wrong” side of the road honking every time that he turned the wheel. You know those times when you’re riding with bad driver’s or driver’s that tailgate cars in front of them (what’s up Nathaniel?) and you’re afraid to take your eyes off of the road, because you know that as soon as you do there’re going to wreck? Well, multiply that feeling by like ten and you might get a sense of how I felt. Holy frickin crap man, all of the signs and lines on the road are merely suggestions. The only form of any control is the horn. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry. I mean, I think that I usually handle driving and what comes along with it pretty well. I guess that’s the driving that I know. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. After a few minutes I gave in to the laughing. It was so absurd to me. The only times that I almost cried or peed myself was when, and this happened more than once, these very big, decorative water trucks were coming at is head on, somehow our driver would find this hidden space on the road to let them by, all in what felt like warp speed. This indoctrination into the driving here was an eye opener for me. Shannon, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

We were very happy to hear Allen and Janna say “here we are, your new home”. We had just gone down this little alleyway where all the homes are surrounded by nice large fences and gates with guards standing outside of a good portion of them. Our house was the last one before a tee in that leads to dead ends both ways, making it nice and quiet. It has come to be quite the nice sanctuary.