It was time to return to Bangkok :-( We heard the train is awesome. There are several departure times and options. An overnight sleeper is an option offering Bangkok arrival at 6 AM. Assuming you can sleep of course. The countryside is quite beautiful and a 10 hour view of it during the day sounded nice. The train is older but fun. It's a bit rocky here and there but not very bumpy. They gave out a nice meal. It was really spicey. Michelle finally had time to look at our Nepal requirements. Our connecting flight went first to New Delhi. India required a visa application to be complete 4 days before arriving. Oops, we had to do it like now. Our laptop had 60% battery left. We had to provided up-loadable images of our photos, pdf's of our bio and fill out 3 visa applications all with a tethered internet on my cell phone. I had to look away as I did not think the battery would last. I was amazed that it was completed and verified just at the laptop shutdown. Funny thing is we later would have an issue that made the rush redundant. Either way after that the rest of the journey was awesome. I liked the fact that 90% of the train riders were locals. It was nice to experience the real Thailand this way. Our Bangkok hostel (Hua Lamphong) was really close so we walked. http://www.hualamphonghostel.com/ It was really nice. Great staff, and a nice restaurant. We extended our stay so it would be our last hostel. Our first priority was possibly getting our Nepal Visa's. They can be obtained at the Nepal Airport but I suspected that would be busy with a large plane full of people all at ounce (I was right) Traffic in Bangkok can be nasty so getting to and from the Nepal embassy was a little slow. That's what phones are for ha ha. The Visa's were a breeze and now we had a few days to relax. I spent hours cleaning up some of our photo archives. The girls wanted to see the famous trans dancers at the Calypso Cabaret http://www.calypsocabaret.com/ This location was the awesome Asiatique Riverfront http://www.asiatiquethailand.com/
We took a fun Tuk Tuk to that. I had time for a foot clean at Dr. Fish Foot cleaning. The next day we were able to reconnect with Mark from Germany and share a meal at the very cool Rot Fai Nightmarket http://www.bangkok.com/magazine/rot-fai-market-ratchada.htm. I heard some very impressive live guitar playing Rage, Muse and other tough classics in the background. We had to check them out. The band is called Black Rose and they are awesome. https://www.facebook.com/BlackRoseTH/ Their tiny female vocalist kick's butt. Their guitars players are flawless and not struggling with what was a pretty tough set choice. They ended the gig with our favorite Rage song. Sweet.
I had looked at our ticket to Kathmandu and misread our Bangkok departure time OMG. I saw 12:00 which was our New Delhi arrival time. We should have been at the airport 3 hours before the 9 AM Bangkok departure. Instead we showed up 4 minutes before the plane left. There was absolutely no way to catch that flight. With check in, security, customs, walking ... not going to happen. I quickly took ownership, said sorry and simply accepted we need to find another flight. With a little bit of walking around we found a direct Thai Airways flight was departing in 1.5 hours. They had seats and they were not expensive. Sweeeet. Instead of our original 7:00 PM Kathmandu arrival, we were now landing at 12:30 PM. We got to the gate about 15 minutes before loading, whew. No time to find Nepalese cash nor food but hey it was an adventure. The flight was awesome. It's alot cooler here so we donned our sock's shoes and layers at the airport. After getting a SIM card a taxi we were finally at our hostel 8848 Hostel https://hostel8848.business.site/ We had picked this location completely by random. The Nepal Visa application required an address. Michelle picked this place with 5 minutes of searching from the Nepal Embassy. It turns out to be a really nice place so far. The location is amazing, no shortage of shops around wow. After a nice conversation and tea with Janardan Nepal the Managing director http://topoftheworldadv.com/ we were soon walking the streets and purchasing nice warm coats for the next few weeks. This part of Nepal is flooded with trekking clothing shops. We soon met Sukant at Everest Trekking Gear. He offered us excellent prices on Nepalese based down filled North Face knock off coats. 3 down coats for $15000 RP or $60 Canadian for a down coat. Cool. It was a nice evening and we were all in bed and getting warm by 8 PM.
Here's some movie URL's
The train to Chang Mai, from the bathroom
Just had to try having some dead skin removed on my feet. It was cool
The sound probably sucks sorry. Only a few patrons appreciated the song. Epic though
Really nice train station
Our train
The view while peeing
Let's go see to the Cabaret
Our 2nd last Tuk Tuk ride
Traffic made this one fun
Here fishy fishy. These are small fish
These are larger fish
It's really kinda fun
Sorry for the red. Happy lobsters
Sorry we had no nice camera
The show was fast and awesome
Let's go to the subway
How a civilized subway should be
The sliding doors prevent jumpers
How hard would that be to implement Toronto?
Mark, his forgotten name friend and us enjoying duck, yum?
Black Rose
Playing at this bar
Taxi driver to the airport was pretty relaxed. Hmm
Relaxing for 15 minutes after a moderate frazzle
The pilot explained the rare condition were good to see Everest
Deplaning in Nepal
Hello Nepal
Hello 8848 Hostel
Hello new random beer
Nice dive knife
Holy Moly
That's a bug Red Bull
Fresh awaking in Nepal
Let's go check out this wonderful new city
More later
Namaste
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