Another City

Saturday I went to a nearby city. The day was quite an adventure. We left our city really early (well early for me), I was up and out the door by 7:15, in an auto to the bus stand, and on a bus leaving the city by 8am! My friend Charlotte and I went. Neither one of us had been before, but we were meeting up with another friend in the city for the day as well (she'd left at 5am!) First of all we got on the non-air conditioned bus, but that was ok as it was still early morning and the weather here is perfect. So we left the bus stand, were on the road about 10 minutes, stopped to pick up more people.... travel about 10 more minutes, stop to pick up more people... We quickly realized that what should have been a 3 hour ride was going to be a bit longer! After about 2 hours we pulled into the 5th? bus stop, and everyone got up and was getting off. So she and I looked at each other, we're not there, so what's going on? Snack break, and potty break. Well yes of course when there's no potty in the back of the bus. So we get off, and find the bathroom. We have to pay about 2 cents to go in, ok that's fine... but there's no western toilet in there... only squatties. Now up until this point I have magically been able to skip out on the squatty experience... alas perhaps it was time. In case you don't know what a squatty is, it's basically a hole in the ground, porcelain though, but you have to get really low... i managed to NOT get any on myself... too many details perhaps, but it's the small successes here sometimes! =) So we get back on the bus, finally made it to the city.

We walked and found the palace, the biggest tourist attraction of this city. We got to pay more than the nationals... oh yes because that's how they do it here... we paid 5 times the price they did, not to mention having to pay for them to store my camera which was not allowed inside, and my shoes which I had to take off before going in. There were walls and columns painted in gold, beautiful stained glass ceilings, and all kinds of things. After the palace we called some other friends to learn where to eat lunch. They go there each weekend so they know the good spots. We settled with this really neat restaurant on the roof overlooking this busy square. At this point out other friend joined us. After our tasty lunch of national food... my new favorites... yes I've found favorites! Which is a huge praise seeing as I hated the food when I first got here and now I crave it!
Next was this hill just outside of town where there's a huge temple. We found a nice auto driver to take us round trip. So we got up to the temple... it's not that exciting looking at a temple dedicated to all kinds of g'ods, full of id'ols. The biggest thrill was the fact that there were tons of monkeys up there! How sad is it that I took more pictures of monkeys than of the temple! haha. But they were so cute! And all the babies were crawling on each other and their parents, crawling up tails, hanging from ropes, all kinds of fun!


After this we came down the hill via a different road and halfway down there's this bull statue thing. So we had to go have our picture taken at that... and then another picture with our mus'lim auto driver... there's potential there... pry for him, that our conversations we had would lead to something... we got his address and plan to send him some materials.
After all this we got on a public city bus to ride out to this garden place... it was supposed to take 30 minutes, but an hour later we arrived! That bus ride was quite uhh interesting... we were on the back row, and each bump we hit was felt severely... one really bad bump my right shoulder hit the handlebar over the window, and then the next bump I hit my elbow/funny bone on the window ledge... needless to say we were quite ready to get there. Here's the highlight of the whole day... at the entrance is the tallest guy in this country... I had to pay to get my picture taken with him but it was so worth it! He's 7'8"!!!

Then we walked forever to see this fountain show that lasted about 10 minutes, and that was it. We hoped we could find a bus back to out town from there but were afraid that we'd have to go back to the other city first, adding extra travel time. So as we were leaving there was this guy hollering our city name, we said, "yes, we're going there!" and he led us right to a bus! (again a non-air conditioned one, even though there are a/c ones available, for a heavier fee of course) Again we had to stop on the way home for "dinner"... well dinner wasn't just grab a snack and hop back on... we were there for at least 30 minutes! We got back to our city at 12:30, but then had to find an auto to take us to the other side of the city. The first auto wanted too much, not unusual here, but the very next auto accepted the normal fare! So I made it home a little after 1, but was so nasty from the whole day that I had to take a shower before I could get in bed!
But the day was full of many firsts!!!