Traveling is hard work, so sometimes it’s nice to take a vacation, and do nothing. That’s what we did in Pokhara for an entire week. The typical day went something like this:

8:00 am - Run to toilet for morning diarrhea
9:00 am - Breakfast of muesli fruit curd at the Lemon Tree. Read newspaper.
10:00 am - Trip to toilet for mid-morning diarrhea.
11:00 am - Drink huge tub of fresh orange juice for $1. Read book.
12:00 pm - Cheese sandwich at a sandwich shop.
1:00 pm - Browse bookstores.
2:00 pm - Afternoon snack of a dubious baked good. Read book.
3:00 pm - Check email.
4:00 pm - Read book.
7:00 pm - Meet up for dinner.
10:00 pm - Read book.
11:00 pm - Bed (no nightlife in Nepal).

It’s amazing how fast the time goes when you do nothing.

Towards the end of our stay we asked about flights to Lhasa, and to our horror, discovered that China has totally closed Tibet due to SARS. Strange, since there are no cases there. This threw me for a loop, since I was going there next.

Back to Kathmandu. An excessively large dinner at Fire and Ice. We managed to spend $17, an impressive feat. I ate so much I was bloated and ill. Plus there’s my continuing stomach problems. I went to a doctor and pooped in a cup. Apparently, I don’t have Giardia. I did have white blood cells in my sample, so the doc thinks I have a bacterial infection, and gave me three antibiotic pills. I’ve taken two so far, and still feel ill.

I spent some time thinking about where I would go next. Then I remembered that my original plan was to return to South East Asia. A couple months there, then hopefully SARS will have blown over, and I can go to China. It’s easier to visit Tibet from inside China, so this could work out better in the long run. It stinks that I wasted $30 on a Chinese visa though, since mine will have expired by the time I go, so I’ll have to pay another $30.

So I bought my ticket to Bangkok today, and leave on the 11th, four days before my Nepal visa expires. I can’t believe I spent two months here. I look forward to returning to Bangkok. Delicious food, Thai massages, and the monsoon await me!