around the world in 180 days

Nepal does everything it can to distinguish itself from India: it even has its own time zone, only 15 minutes ahead of India, just to be different. Still, with a billion people and by far the largest area on the subcontinent, it’s inevitable that there will be some cultural similarities and both India and Nepal are fundamentally conservative when it comes to sex and public displays of affection. There are not many places in the world that are more the opposite of that than Phuket.

The thing that bothers me the most is seeing men who must be 60 or 70 walking hand in hand with a girl that can’t be a day over 20. As long as the woman is making a choice to do that, I guess I don’t have a problem with it. I just wonder how many of the women are choosing for themselves and earning money for themselves. Most, I hope.

Other than that, we’ve not been up to much. We met Steve in Bangkok on Saturday night; he’d been traveling for something like 40 hours and was pretty wiped out. After a few hours sleep, we took a cab to the new Bangkok airport, which looks like a space station. We left Kathmandu airport, which is a third world airport in every sense of the world, and landed at this space age wonder in Thailand. I felt like an astronaut getting off the plane. Anyway, after a blissfully uneventful flight, we landed in Phuket and the relaxing began.

Steve’s been a good tour guide. He knows quite a few people here, so he took us around and introduced us. We decided to splurge and stay at the same place as him, which still isn’t too insanely expensive, and when we were registering, one of the receptionists said “deposit?” to the man checking us in, who replied, “this is Mr. Richner’s nephew. Deposit not necessary.” Repeat business is rewarded in Thailand.

But yes. Very different. It’s like we’ve been welcomed back into the modern, if not the western, world.

All three photos are from the day we crossed the pass; as you can see, we were lucky and had wonderful weather. Enjoy!

We've been in Kathmandu for a total of 6 days now, between the first time we were here and the last few days, and before today, we hadn't seen any of the cultural sites here. It's almost shameful, until I ... [Continue reading this entry]

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Well, everyone out there in blog land, sorry for the long lapse in posts, but Anna and I are out of the mountains and back at an altitude you can reach in MN. I wrote every other day or so ... [Continue reading this entry]

We walked to Marpha yesterday, a town famous for its orchards, primarily apple, but also apricot and peach. All the hotels served apple pie and apple crumble, apple juice and apple cider and apple brandy, all of which Anna ... [Continue reading this entry]