My Nepal trip was great, I rather enjoyed myself. I went to Kathmandu, Pokhara and Nagarkot.
The whole trip was rather relaxed, visiting places and drinking lots and lots of masala tea. (I have a tea addiction again).
The highlight of Kathmandu was visiting Dubar Square and visiting some of the old temples. And we even went to see the Royal Kumari, who is a little girl (around 8 years old, I think) who is supposed to be a Living Goddess. The Nepali people worship her. To be a Royal Kumari, you have to: a) be a girl (obviously) b) be young (meaning not having reached the age of puberty) c) pass a series of tests d) have all 32 signs of perfection
After Kathmandu, we drove 6 hours to Pokhara. In Pokhara, we stayed in this amazing lake side lodge called the Fish Tail Lodge. (Fish Tail is like the name of one of the mountain there..) I think I loved Pokhara the best because the place was really serene and everything...
The views were pretty amazing up in the mountains of Nagarkot. We could see the entire Anapurna Range and also Mt. Everest. Unfortunately, the high altitude (2100m above sea level) made me sickish and I threw up and had a bad headache.
We went back to Kathmandu and stayed at the same hotel we stayed at the beginning of the tour, Soaltee Crowne Plaza. Soaltee is owned by the Crown Prince of Nepal and he came to visit his hotel. The security was very tight then.
Actually, the everywhere in Nepal, in the tourist sites, roads, and even highways, there were a lot of armed guards walking around. On the highway, there were like police/army checkpoints every half hour.
Anyway, we broke off from the original tour to stay on another 2 nights on our own. On the day we were supposed to return to Malaysia (that was the 28th), we had a call from the tour agency telling us that although our plane tickets may be confirmed for the 8pm flight, there was no plane.
So basically, we were stranded in Nepal.
It seemed that the tour group who were supposed to return home 2 days ago were also still in Nepal, staying in another hotel. So a van came to pick us up and they lumped us together in the same hotel.
The others in our tour were pretty stressed up. Some of them talked about throwing plates and tearing down the christmas trees... I'm not sure if they were joking, because they said it with a straight face.. LMAO.
Some of the guys in the tour went to the airline office to check the availability of the flights. There was this mad rush then to pack our things and go to the airport when they told us that there was a 5:30pm flight out of Nepal on that very same day.
When we reached the airport however, they told us that they didn't have the tickets with them and some guy would come over to pass the tickets to us. So we waited outside the airport terminal from 3pm to 5pm, and still no sign of any tickets.
And then we found out that those bastards lied to us. There was no flight at all back to Malaysia. The airline is actually bankrupt and the chairman of the airline has fled to New Zealand!
So naturally we were pissed. We reported them to the police and we got ourselves on the Himalayan Times nespaper the next day. Then the Malaysian Consulate contacted us and managed to fix us a flight home. (Though we had to take Jet Airways to New Delhi, India and transit there for 5 hours before getting onto a MAS plane back to KL.)
The Malaysian Consulate guy said that if we were really really desperate, then he might be able to fly us home in a military plane! LMAO, that would be cool!
Thank goodness we got back in time for our New Year party.
Last night, I got pissed-ass drunk. I was totally wasted. I babbled like shit and I cried and laughed and told Lili how much I loved her and how glad I was that Leon found such a nice girl.
Then I went out to the whole crowd of my brothers' friends and made this long speech on how smoking makes you a loser and a sucker. And I even did the lame "hand L" thing on my forehead. And they laughed and did the same thing...
Oh yeah, then I remember going to one of Leon's friends (Eugine) and one of Ean's friends (Rizal), and told them to button up their shirts! LMAO! I vague remember gripping Rizal's shirt collar!
Then I threw up in the bathroom twice and I zonked out on the sofa. I heard the count down and everything but was too wasted to care. When I woke up like at 1am, I felt somewhat better.
LMAO, most of my friends have went home and they were only a couple of drunkards (Ming, Nat and Vun Min) snoozing at a table. I think Nyat was the only sober one. Kenn was pretty sober too, the idiot.
Vun Min was a goner. She was like babbling worse than I was. She couldn't even count properly!
One.. twooo.. three... then four... like... fiveee? after five... sixhh... eight...
lmao.. I wanted to test her so I went, 'After eight is Z, right?'
and she gave me this blurry confused look. 'But isn't Z an alphabet?'
LMAO... she was right, but it was freaking funny.
And I asked her, 'Ei, everyone has twenty toes, right?'
'...Right...'
LOL!
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