Yet Another BofH

more Bhutan notes

Thimpu Pizzeria sells a tuna/mushroom pizza, just a few blocks back from the main drag.

Our bus driver was either extremely lucky or had amazing skills to safely reach us to various destations.

Zero straight highways exist, besides the under construction one outside of downtown Thimpu.  Be prepared for long winding roads, pray you’re not prone to getting car sick.

Traffic consists mostly of cows and dogs; other cars rarely stop.

The only real tourists seem to be Japanese and some Europeans

Airport men’s bathroom has a single stall

You get to walk outside of the terminal to “verify” your baggage, then promptly walk back in the terminal to wait for departure.

Bhutan Photos

www.flickr.com

Tri-Band isn't good enough

- GSM coverage exists within atleast Paro (airport) and Thimphu (the capital, pronounced "ti-em-pu") but in the 900Mhz band.  My Nokia 6620 tri-band is only useful for 850/1800/1900Mhz, dam. Bangkok had a 900 network.  A few of my fellow conference attendees say Skype is useless with the latency.  I'm debating to buy a phone downtown and just swap out my SIM (I've already verified this works), hmm.

- The country has 6Mbps symmetric homed back to Hawaii via Intersat.  six megabits!, in theory some US households have this am mount of pipe in their basement.

- Apparently two classes of Goa's (traditional robe-like dress for men) exist, one made out of synthetic fabrics from India and one from traditional wool? local fabric (being much more expensive).  Most men wear this outfit complete with dress shoes of varying quality and long dress socks (usually dark in color).  Besides the military forces and airport officials, it's unclear who's exempt from wearing this.

- Previously the government ran the only authorized "Bhutan Tourism Corporation", but privatized to local agents a few years ago.  Now one exists called "Bhutan Tourist Corporation", nice.

- iPhoto (even the latest version) is slow and very lame when you fill with hundreds of pictures, crashes a lot.

- The hotel came complete with fresh fruit (very sweet mini tangerines, some apples), the shower is hot (even if the tub is cheap plastic, not fiberglass and has bumps on it), decent restaurant (serving traditional food, Indian and Chinese - I'm addicted to the cheese dumplings).

800ms from home

I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing.  However, since I couldn't find any bloggers in Bhutan (atleast some with quick Technorati'ng); I'm going to do a little "stream of consciousness"...

- Paro is an International Airport; I'm fairly sure Druk Air doesn't even have any domestic routes.  The landing is truly amazing, hard sharp turn right, left, right ~10ft away from the mountains and live power lines.  Smooth flight, too cloudy for decent overland pictures.

- Bringing two passport-sized photos was a waste, no one wanted them.  The same women collecting visa fees moved a few doors down to the Bank of Bhutan once everyone clear customs.

- Tourists on our flight are either Indian or Japanese

- Labors are building a cement/rock wall around the airport - by hand.  Plucking out large rocks from below, axing them down to size and mixing cement.

- Originally I thought our driver was taking a backroad or shortcut to Thimphu, nope the main drag really is one lane with limited passing and plenty of constant turns.  Standard protocol of tapping the horn a few times for blind turns (plenty).

- The parallel river is roaring a nice stream

- The mountains immense, like being @ the bottom of Donner Lake looking up @ the Tahoe's, but much larger.

- We're listening to (what I think) is a mix of modern and semi-old Bhutanese music.

- This truly is a country where once "destination resorts" take over, it's game over. Flee why you can!

- Only shop ad's I see are for Pepsi and Neste

This entry originally written on the mini bus over to Thimphu.

Lost in Translation

I've spent the last few days in Tokyo, doing a lot of knowledge transfer for work and a little touring.  It's not a real vacation, since I'm tattered to conference calls and such.  It's amazing how strong the tech expat community is, "Oh, you know xyz from abc too; I maintain blah # of FreeBSD ports, ya, I started an ISP in 190x, etc".  Here's random pictures from Flickr (which apparenty has nightly downtime windows, lame):

www.flickr.com

BBQ

Lots of food.. pictures me and miyagawa

Expert Knob Twiddler

This is too cool.. re-worked Aphew Twin classic songs without the 1 and 0's.

Blue Calx - Digital c/o Aphex Twin or Analog, c/o of Alarm Will Sounds <promo blurb: a young 22-piece new music band featuring voices, strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussionists, takes on twisted techno master APHEX TWIN in ACOUSTICA>