Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur to Katmandu

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Namaste,

Well the last few days have been pretty interesting. On my last day in Bangkok I woke up feeling a little bit unwell and not able to eat anything. I had just figured out the dehydration thing and now this indigestion! Anyways, I decided to power through it an go visit the Emerald Palace Grad Palace, which is basically the No. 1 tourist destination in Thailand. At least it seemed that way. I think all the tourists arrived in Bangkok while I was in Chiang Mai for the weekend.



The Emerald palace is this huge temple complex, with a few (?) very famous buddhist relics. One of them is an Emerald Buddha (surprise surprise). It was incredible, the architechture is so ornate and colorful, with all ofthis gold,and glass mosaics. There is one part of the complex with these huge murals that streched all along the inner side of the surrounding wall, that depicted the buidling of the temple. In one of the giant wats was te emerald buddha. You had to take your shoes offto get in, and there wasno video or cameras allowed. It was absolutley packedin the whole complex. It was pretty amazing to see, but we didn't stay for long, because I was feeling sick, and it was really hot, and there were SO MANY PEOPLE. We also saw the grand palace, which was jst more pretty buildings. I think we got some nice pictures. Unfortunately the small camera broke in Chaing Mai, so we only have dad's fancy camera with the huge lens. So taking pictures is a bit tricky because you have to be far away from everything. I did my best though mum, honest!

We got to the Suvarnabhumi airport by skytrain and caught a flight to Kuala Lumpur. Honestly, I am pretty glad to be out of Thailand. The heat and humidity was really getting to me. I got into Kuala Lumpur, which has a really nice airport btw, around midnight. Then we had 9 hours until our flight to Katmandu, so we checked into this air transat hotel, which was SO worth the $80. Especially since my indigestion was still hanging around.

Finally, this morning we landed safelyin Katmandu! There was a crash at the Katmandu airport that killed 19 people a few days ago. It's not exactly the safest airport in the world, soI was gladwhenwe touched down OK. BUT I did see Mount Everest while we were in the plane! It was kind of mind blowing, because you get so used to seeing nothing when youre way high up in the air. Then all of a sudden there's this enormous mountain just sticking up through the clouds. It was pretty cool.

I took it easy this afternoon and had a rest. I'm starting to feel better, but I'm still feeling a little unwell. I just ate a bunch of Dhal Bhaat, but couldn't finish it, my stomach is uncooperative. Dad and I also met withthe manager of the trekking company we're using, and I think we're leaving in about 2-3days! More deets tomorrow on that :D I can't wait to get into the mountains, I'm pretty tired of crazy cities right now.

I haven't seem much of kathmandu yet, so I'll talk about it more after I walk around tomorrow. For now all I care about is that fact that its colder than Thailand 😊 One cool thing: Outside our room window there's a building that seems under construction, but on one of the middle levels there's a school. All afernoon when I was resting I could hear all these Nepali kids chanting and singing and banging their desks. I don't think they do much studying here haha.

That's all for now, I'm determined to feel better tomorrow! I love and miss everybody, it feels like I've been gone for much longer than a week and a bit. Thanks for the emails too!

Love Lara

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