The last couple of days we spent in Kathmandu were really lazy days, just wandering around the shops, people watching and generally mooching about. We explored more of the side streets but the weather worsened with it raining more during the day than normal. This meant we spent more time in our favourite restaurant in Nepal, The Royal Penguin (the one with cuddly toys and a Scottish flag) playing board games, Othello, Scrabble and even Chess. That is the first time we have ever played chess together, was quite good. Although I think the waiters and another diner were not too impressed with our strategies. In chess , the Nepalese have a king, the queen is called a prime minister , the bishops are policemen and the knight is just a horse. The staff in here are really nice and welcoming and we particularly liked two who were very
On the very last day we realised we had too much money left over and Nepalese rupees aren't much good anywhere else, so that meant one thing , shopping. It was strange shopping though we only bought things that were light and small enough for our rucksacks, which even involved us in one shop weighing what we liked and choosing the lightest. During our time in Nepal and India, we have haggled to get a mutual price we agree on, on the last day we still haggled but not to the same extent, but strangely shopkeepers were offering us deals, which we didn't really want. Typical!
Now, you are probably thinking why did we not just exchange the money, we did look into that and eventually we did with the money left over , but the money we were going to lose was a bit too much,
so we thought we would try and get something for it. So we now have t shirts galore, stone carvings, felt animals, and we even bought a lonely planet travel guide. We also treated ourselves to a very nice meal on the last night, which saw David trying fried ice cream. It was actually quite nice I had a wee
bit.
It was quite sad leaving our hotel, which was called Hotel Family Home, as we had really enjoyed staying there and all the staff were lovely and helpful. The young lad that served us our breakfast was always polite and cheery , while the cook made brilliant banana pancakes. When we left the owner gave both me and David a good luck scarf which is supposed to give you a safe journey, which was really nice. At our last breakfast, we had our usual friends the crows keeping a keen eye on us but also a lovely gingery bee buzzed by and decided to drink my juice.
This was the second time the bee came to guzzle on my juice, but I think it went to his head as he fell in this time , we had to quickly pour the juice into a plant pot to save it.
The hotel organised a car to take us to the airport, which took us through some manic traffic to get
there. This is when things started to go pear shape! When it was time to check in we went up to the
desk, they asked where we were flying to and when we said Bangkok, the two ladies dealing with us
looked at each other and said wait there and one walked off. She quickly returned with a man who
told us he had been trying to call us but wasn't get a reply. This was because we weren't getting a phone signal in Nepal. He then went on to say that our flight which was supposed to go from Kathmandu to Delhi to Bangkok was now stopping in Delhi! Not our favourite place. So we had two options, one was to fly to Delhi, stay overnight then fly to Calcutta and onto Bangkok the next day or pay extra to fly direct to Bangkok with another firm.
We said we would pay the extra to fly direct to Bangkok, he took our passports and left to sort out
tickets, only to return to say they wanted more money as there was only business class seats left. This was a step too far, as it was a lot of extra money, so to cut a long story short we are now in Delhi, courtesy of Indigo airlines, with the promise of a hotel " that meets the mark", transport to and from the hotel and food.
To be fair the Indigo staff in the airport have been very helpful and we were met from the plane and basically escorted to the taxi, which was a relief and we were driven to Hotel Star. Well I am not sure what meet the mark means in their book, but it's different from mine. The hotel room is clean enough but I will be sleeping in my sleeping bag liner as there is no top sheet on the bed just a rough blanket
which has seen better days. Have just noticed the walls and sheets, not pleasant.
Now I don't want to be doom and gloom, so to put a positive slant on things we are lucky that in our room we have a really noisy air con right beside the bed and a noisy fan, a blessing as they drown out the sound, well nearly, of the traffic going past. With the air con on as well, you can't hear the
television, which is now working again after a broken spell when it wasn't playing ball. Even when you swith the air con off , it is noisy! David thinks the noise is coming from the air con next door.
We headed down to the restaurant for our tea, we were given a menu, and as we are not curry lovers we decided to have vegetable fried rice each, and two pepsis. Only for the waiters to ask our room
number, whisk the menu away and another set menu put in front of us. A menu we didn't understand
any of, as it was all in Indian, apart from the words steamed rice, tea and coffee. We were then told
we would have to pay for anything else that was not on this menu even water. So we are back in our room, having not eaten or had anything to drink since breakfast, we have no Indian rupees as we
weren't supposed to be here. The thing is what we wanted would have been cheaper than if we had chosen something from the set menu, as veg fried rice was one of the cheaper things on the menu. I understand that they do not want people to take advantage by ordering loads, so a better way of doing it would be to set a monetary level of what you can order. David went back down to the reception about an hour later and said that we had not eaten anything from their menu and could we at least get a bottle of water, he was told, no. What makes this even dafter is that the man at reception said we could have tea which costs 40 rupees the same as water, or coffee which is 50 rupees the same as Pepsi, at breakfast, so they would not lose any money, by giving us one bottle of water.
Oh well it is only for one night, and we do have a packet of Fox's boiled sweets to see us through.
That's a first moment!
We were sat in our seats on the airplane, when it came over the tannoy that they were going to spray insecticide which was not harmful to us, at that an air hostess walked up the aisle spraying a can, I presume of insecticide!
Now, you are probably thinking why did we not just exchange the money, we did look into that and eventually we did with the money left over , but the money we were going to lose was a bit too much,
so we thought we would try and get something for it. So we now have t shirts galore, stone carvings, felt animals, and we even bought a lonely planet travel guide. We also treated ourselves to a very nice meal on the last night, which saw David trying fried ice cream. It was actually quite nice I had a wee
bit.
We don't really like the crows because they ate the baby pigeons. Yesterday there were vultures
circling the hotel and I thought to myself there are a couple of crows down here you could have.
The hotel organised a car to take us to the airport, which took us through some manic traffic to get
there. This is when things started to go pear shape! When it was time to check in we went up to the
desk, they asked where we were flying to and when we said Bangkok, the two ladies dealing with us
looked at each other and said wait there and one walked off. She quickly returned with a man who
told us he had been trying to call us but wasn't get a reply. This was because we weren't getting a phone signal in Nepal. He then went on to say that our flight which was supposed to go from Kathmandu to Delhi to Bangkok was now stopping in Delhi! Not our favourite place. So we had two options, one was to fly to Delhi, stay overnight then fly to Calcutta and onto Bangkok the next day or pay extra to fly direct to Bangkok with another firm.
We said we would pay the extra to fly direct to Bangkok, he took our passports and left to sort out
tickets, only to return to say they wanted more money as there was only business class seats left. This was a step too far, as it was a lot of extra money, so to cut a long story short we are now in Delhi, courtesy of Indigo airlines, with the promise of a hotel " that meets the mark", transport to and from the hotel and food.
To be fair the Indigo staff in the airport have been very helpful and we were met from the plane and basically escorted to the taxi, which was a relief and we were driven to Hotel Star. Well I am not sure what meet the mark means in their book, but it's different from mine. The hotel room is clean enough but I will be sleeping in my sleeping bag liner as there is no top sheet on the bed just a rough blanket
which has seen better days. Have just noticed the walls and sheets, not pleasant.
Now I don't want to be doom and gloom, so to put a positive slant on things we are lucky that in our room we have a really noisy air con right beside the bed and a noisy fan, a blessing as they drown out the sound, well nearly, of the traffic going past. With the air con on as well, you can't hear the
television, which is now working again after a broken spell when it wasn't playing ball. Even when you swith the air con off , it is noisy! David thinks the noise is coming from the air con next door.
We headed down to the restaurant for our tea, we were given a menu, and as we are not curry lovers we decided to have vegetable fried rice each, and two pepsis. Only for the waiters to ask our room
number, whisk the menu away and another set menu put in front of us. A menu we didn't understand
any of, as it was all in Indian, apart from the words steamed rice, tea and coffee. We were then told
we would have to pay for anything else that was not on this menu even water. So we are back in our room, having not eaten or had anything to drink since breakfast, we have no Indian rupees as we
weren't supposed to be here. The thing is what we wanted would have been cheaper than if we had chosen something from the set menu, as veg fried rice was one of the cheaper things on the menu. I understand that they do not want people to take advantage by ordering loads, so a better way of doing it would be to set a monetary level of what you can order. David went back down to the reception about an hour later and said that we had not eaten anything from their menu and could we at least get a bottle of water, he was told, no. What makes this even dafter is that the man at reception said we could have tea which costs 40 rupees the same as water, or coffee which is 50 rupees the same as Pepsi, at breakfast, so they would not lose any money, by giving us one bottle of water.
Oh well it is only for one night, and we do have a packet of Fox's boiled sweets to see us through.
That's a first moment!
We were sat in our seats on the airplane, when it came over the tannoy that they were going to spray insecticide which was not harmful to us, at that an air hostess walked up the aisle spraying a can, I presume of insecticide!
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