At 11.30am we took a horse and cart to the other side of the island to catch the ferry. 12noon the ferry left and we got to Bali at about 1.45pm, luckily our boat ticket included a transfer to our hotel, so we then hopped in a mini van. We had picked a hotel in Seminyak as it was near to the airport and our flight was at 6am the following morning. The minivan dumped as at the side of the road and it took us about an hour to find our hotel, nevertheless we made it. Now this hotel was on Agoda and had a special offer of $260 rooms for $25, I happened to earn enough Agoda points to get this room for $9, so happy days.
I am not sure that if I had paid $260 for the room i would be that impressed but for $9 it was lovely, and a swimming pool. We literally had time to find some food and hit the sack, with this being Bali the first thing we came across was Maccy D's. So why not, after over a month of rice it made a welcome change, and they deliver, how novel!
The alarm went off at 2.30am, the taxi picked us up at 3.30am and we were dropped at the airport at 4am. At this point we had to wait for about half an hour for the airport to open and then it was all systems go. We boarded on time at 6am and 3 hours later landed in Kuala Lumpur.
We then had a 3 hour wait before our next flight, this was filled by trying to get hold of passport photos and dollars to pay for the Nepalese visa. We were successful with the dollars but not the photos, and trying to find something to eat was a nightmare, unless you wanted Dunkin Donuts! Added to this they would only take Malaysian Dollars, which I had to withdraw and then got stuck with....
When we boarded our next flight to Kathmandu we could not believe how many people there were, the plane was massive. Once we got seated we realised that the whole plane was full of either Indian or Nepalese men, there were a lot of leather jackets, vests and mullets. This was quite amusing until we took off and then loads of them got up and started walking around and opening the lockers. The stewardesses shouted at them but to no avail and this carried on for the whole ascent.
The descent into Kathmandu is meant to have amazing views of the Himalayan range as well as being quite dangerous. Kathmandu is literally surrounded by mountains so the plane has to go over those and then make quite a steep descent into the airport. This is a similar arrangement to Quito in Ecuador and that was fun, so I was looking forward to this. Unfortunately as soon as we started to descend my ears were killing me. I always have problems with the descent due to uneven pressure in my ears and apparently according to my doctor, i have "very little tubes". Suffice to say it is never much fun but this was completely different I had a pain in the side of my head and it felt like it was going to explode. I was in absolute agony and came very close to asking for help, i was in tears, a total mess. So obviously as Craig was trying to make sure I was ok we both missed the views on the descent. Usually as soon as we land the pain goes away but this time it didn't, and I felt very off balance.
We managed to get ourselves the visas, our bags and get into a cab without to much incident. By this time it was really chucking it down, which being monsoon season we had expected. In the taxi my head and ears got no better and by the time we reached the hotel i was quite scared. Weirdly although it was really raining when we left the airport 10 minutes down the road it was totally dry, this was out first introduction to the crazy weather of Kathmandu. Although i was in pain, i did notice that Kathmandu looks a lot like India, dirty, crazy, smelly, noisy, I was really looking forward to it.
By the time we got to our hotel it was about 5pm local time and we had had a long day travelling. Added to this my need for quick food, painkillers and sleep we ended up in the restaurant next door to the hotel. They promised the best chips in Kathmandu, so chicken and chips it was. Though it was served in a very pretty leaf bowl.
When we got back to the room we just managed to get a couple of shots of the views from the window. The room was pretty cheap, right in the centre of Thamel (the backpacker district) and not bad at all.........
So we now have one month in Nepal before going onto India, so lets start exploring Kathmandu.....................
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