Arrived in Bhutan!

I read that flying to Bhutan was challenging because of the airport's location in the Paro Valley.  The surrounding mountain's weather patterns are unpredictable.  

Our early morning flight from Bangkok to Paro was delayed due to weather in Paro.  Once we left Bangkok we made what was supposed to be a 35 minute stop in Bangladesh but because of the weather in Paro we found ourselves on an extended layover at the Dhaka airport. UGH...that is all I have to say. I have attached a pic of our group making the best of it at the Dhaka airport.

Eventually, though, we made it to Bhutan and met our guide and driver, then off to a restaurant in Paro for lunch.  Most of the food we will be eating on the trip is served buffet style and includes red rice, thai like noodles, veggies, and occasionally some meat.  There is also a dish called chili cheese which are medium hot to hot peppers baked in cheese. It has quite a kick to it and is really good.

The road from "downtown" Paro to the hotel was a total mess. Lots of rain had washed most of it away!  Our hotel for the night was nestled in the mountains. Attached is a view from early this morning.

Another thing we noticed is that marijuana grows wild on the side of the road.  The driver pulled over when we mentioned it and he picked a bunch to show us! Our guide said the Bhutanese don't care about pot and it is just a weed!

Bangkok Highlights

Sam, my guide, met me at the hotel at 8am.  Sam is a Thai native and a really nice guy; it was like hanging out with an old friend.  I had a list of places to see and really appreciated having Sam not only to tell me about the places, country, culture, religion, but also to navigate the city!

We started out taking the sky train, an elevated train and part of the local transportation system.  We transferred once and ended up at the  river, where we then took a water taxi to Wat Phra Kaew and The Grand Place. A wat is a Buddhist temple.  I was blown away by the architecture and details of the wat. Every detail was symbolic and Sam explained so much to me; all in all it was overwhelming. The Grand Palace is where the kings lived.  There have been 9 kings in Thailand. The current royal family lives in another palace north of the city. The Grand Palace is only used for special celebrations.   

After touring these two places, we walked to the Wat with the Reclining emerald Buddha which is made of jade.  It is huge, 130 feet long I think...

I purchased an umbrella to try and keep the heat at bay but it did not do much. I was not prepared for the heat and humidity of Bangkok, the only thing I can compare it to is July in New Orleans on steroids!   

At this point Sam and I decided to skip the next wat on my list and go to Jim Thompson's house.  Jim was an American architect who served the US Army and after WWII he was sent to Bangkok as a military officer, fell in love with Thailand, and after leaving the service moved here permanently. 

He became intrigued with the hand weaving of silk and devoted himself to reviving the craft. He contributed substantially to the worldwide recognition of Thai silk.   

He constructed an amazing home by combining 6 teak buildings.  The place is beautiful and houses his large collection of art.  

In 1967 while visiting Malaysia, Jim disappeared and there are no clues as what happened to him.  His house is now a museum.  

The house and museum had a Thai restaurant and Sam and I enjoyed lunch before I took the tour.  After, I was pooped so we jumped the sky train back to the hotel and parted ways.

I truly enjoyed the day with Sam.  He is passionate about Buddhism  and it was interesting talking about it.  I really had an ah-ha moment when I asked what it was like growing up as a Buddhist and learning the concept of mindfulness at such a young age.  He laughed and said he just really started his Buddhist practice...he said his parents, as well as 95% of the Buddhists in Thailand, don't practice mindfulness and being in the present moment.  They only go to temple on holidays and don't understand the teachings of living in the present moment.  I was so surprised! In my western mind, all Buddhists were like the Dalai Lama, practicing mindfulness since childhood and therefore enlightened...boy was I wrong!  

Made it to Bangkok

After leaving Cleveland at 4pm on Friday,  I arrived in Bangkok at 6am Sunday morning.  (Cleveland--Chicago--Brussels--Bangkok). Having a lay flat business class seat made it bearable. 

The airport was not crowded and immigration was a breeze. Grabbed some Thai Bhat from the ATM, got a taxi and showed the driver the directions to the hotel which where written in Thai, and prayed that he would get me safely to the Ariyasomvilla located in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok.

After dodging many stray dogs, motorcycles, and other cars, we made it to the hotel.  It is a small boutique place I found on Tripadvisor and it is just as amazing as the reviews.    Go take a look!  I am here for two nights, then heading to Bhutan for twelve nights, and back here for two more nights.

Today I am just going to chillax, get a massage and go to the pool.  Tomorrow, a local tour guide is meeting me at the hotel at 8am and he is taking me to all the places on my must see list.  Then, at 6:15pm I am meeting the other 5 ladies, who are traveling to Bhutan, for dinner.  

(attached are pics from breakfast and my room)

Why Bhutan?

That is the question I have been hearing from most people lately.  After "where is that?" People who have heard about Bhutan, though, say "Ahhhhhh Bhutan..." 

One reason I was drawn to Bhutan is that they measure their kingdom's value using a statistical method around the concept of "Gross National Happiness".  Yes, it is a real statistical method and you can look up the details for yourself. 

Another reason is that is it located in the Himalaya mountains and is hard to get to in many ways.  They only let in a limited number of people a year because they have limited guides; you have to travel with a guide from their country and a driver; and only 8 pilots are licensed to fly there since it is considered the most dangerous airport in the world because of the location.  Sounds like my kind of adventure!

There is one more reason I chose to go to Bhutan.  Because it is a very small country in size and population (600,000) and borders China. Let's just say I want to visit before the possibility of it falling to the same fate as Tibet.

So off I go to explore this seldom visited place and experience Gross National Happiness for myself... 

June gloom...NOT

San Diego has a saying for Spring....April showers, May flowers, June gloom. I would like to report that there was not June gloom this year. There were clouds in the morning, but they were gone by noon and sunny skies the rest of the day.

I had a great trip here for the SLA conference. It is an annual conference for "special" librarians, ie. librarians in non-traditional libraries. There were great sessions and a large hall of vendor exhibits. Today I got to take a tour of the Qualcomm library and museum which shows the history of the company. We also went to UC San Diego library, which was huge. It has been a while since I have been in an academic library. This one was built in the 70's and I thought it looked liked a spaceship. After seeing the library we went to the engineering department's StarCAVE virtual reality lab. WOW! What impressed me the most was they had an area which had 32 HDTVs, connected together, which you could use to upload HD photography and zoom in on different aspects. NASA uses this to analyze photography taken from a the discovery rover on Mars, professors use it to anaylze big data sets, and an art history professor has been using it to analyze HD photos of original DiVinci paintings...both the paintings you and I see, as well as the sketches underneath the paintings. They save their visual big data sets in special software programs and can come to the lab and visualize details. I have never seen anything like this. They also had two 3D labs (rooms) which were pretty cool as well.

San Diego had some great food, and my favorite was Katsuya. I had dinner here with the Dow Jones folks and another librarian from Dolby. We ate sushi and rolls until we could not eat any more. The Cakebread Chardonnay and sake were flowing as well. Thanks Dow Jones!

I'll give another shout out to the Omni Hotel. I love Omni Hotels, and the one here did not disappoint. All the people who worked here were super nice and accomodating, the pool was beautiful as was my corner room of windows overlooking the bay. It is one of those hotels you could live in.

All in all a great conference and free time too!

Instruments of Torture

My dark side has been looking forward to this fascinating exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Man. When I knew I was coming to San Diego I did some research to determine how I wanted to spend my time and this was at the top of the list. The San Diego Museum of Man is located at Balboa Park, which is a lovely area that has about 15 Museums and the San Diego Zoo. It was only a 5 minute cab ride from the hotel, or a 3 mile walk. I  went to the San Diego Museum of Art as well.

I arrived right when the museum opened and headed to the Instruments of Torture exhibit. It is a traveling exhibit from The Medieval Torture Museum in San Gimignano, Italy. I was not able to take pictures, but here is a link to a website where you can take a look at some of the devices http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/misc/torture/ There were many torture devices and each included a description of how and why it was used, as well as drawings of what the "event" looked like. There were torture devices to remove any appendage you can imagine and many were gender specific. There were devices which would cause unimaginable pain, those which would provide a quick death, or those which would provide a slow death. I thought the "worst" device was a large cage. A person would be put in the cage, and the cage would be hung, usually at a crossroads in the town, and they would stay in the cage until they were completely deteriorated to only bones; what a slow and painful death. At the other extreme, I thought the guillotine would have been the "best" option.

As you can imagine, the exhibit was thought provoking as well as emotionally draining, and you had to ask yourself if people are the real instruments of torture. 

San Diego

Traveling to San Diego for business, a conference.  The security line at CLE was crazy crowded this morning, worse than I have ever seen it..flight was CLE to Houston to San Diego.  Talked briefly to this nice guy on the flight from Houston to San Diego...found out when we were disembarking the plane it was Drew Brees, QB for the New Orleans Saints.  I am not a big sports fan so I didn't recognize him...just a nice guy on the plane who lives in San Diego. 

What a beautiful city!  I am spending 6 nights here and plan on taking advantage of all my free time and experiencing the city.  Dropped my luggage at the Omni and spent the rest of the day walking around the historic Gaslamp Quarter.  Lots of restaurants and stores catering to tourists and locals.  It is really nice to see so much outdoor dining and a variety of cuisines.  A large number of people actually live in this part of town so it is a nice mix.  Mussels, fish tacos and Caymus Conundrum for dinner; a bubble bath, and off to bed early...I don't do well with time changes.  Check back tomorrow...going to the Museum of Man in Balboa Park to view the special exhibit "Instruments of Torture"!