:: One People, Many Cultures ::



::Living Together in Respect and Friendship::

After a month of luke-warm trickles for showers and washing up in cold water, we now have instant hot water from every (hot) tap in the house. It was a combination of problems.

1. The thermostat on the water heater had blown out, possibly due to the other problems.

2. The washer on the outlet of the water heater was too thick and had to be cut down to let a decent amount of water through.

3. I’m embarrassed to say that I caused the last and was so close to realising the cause, but never made the final step. It was clear from countless experiments that the hot and cold water feeds were mixing somewhere near the water heater. I assumed bad plumbing, but then why hadn’t the previous tenant ever complained? In fact it’s because we have 4 taps in each of our showers. One hot, one cold, one for the shower and one for the tap underneath. I was delighted to have a shower with preset temperature – just set the hot and cold taps and use the shower tap to adjust the pressure. Now you’ll immediately realise that this was where the water was mixing.

So obvious in hindsight.

Another good day. The weather remained beautiful as Marie and her parents left for their trip. I had brunch (the meal you have when you’ve eaten breakfast hours ago but it’s too early for lunch) with a fellow Aussie who has plenty of tips for running a company as an eternal traveller, then went shopping.

It’s time. After a year in Bhutan, I’ve never fired a bow. Archery is the national sport and I’ve loved archery since reading Robin Hood as a kid. I was going to start just after we arrived, but what with the knee and all my other projects, it just didn’t happen. Now we live closer and I work near the archery ground. It’s time!

Of course I choose to use the traditional bow rather than the Reflex bows most Bhutanese use now. It’s more ‘cultural’ in my opinion (though I’m not sure I can justify that view) and not so dangerous.

It’s also a lot cheaper. The bow is two sections of shaped bamboo joined by a bamboo rivet and bound together with wire. It’s drawn with a piece of ordinary string and the arrows are baby bamboo with feathers and a metal tip that needs to be glued on. The bow, string and 4 arrows cost 600 Nu – something like A$18.

I still need to glue the tips on, but then I’m in business. I wonder if Robin Hood ever wore a gho.

After the last week, it was time for something happy, and the weather provided. Instead of the persistent rain and angry winds, today remained sunny with a warm breeze all day. The clear skies revealed the value of the recent rains as the near mountains are looking greener while the distant mountains tower over the top, streaked with white. The view from all over Thimphu is gorgeous, but from higher in the hills it’s spectacular.

Tomorrow morning, Marie takes her parents off to Trongsa to see the dzongs around the country. The journey will take them over Dochula, the pass above Thimphu and if it’s still fine, I envy them the view. Marie will take our best camera to try to get a shot for the site.

Insurance was also painless. It looks like someone is working on reducing bureaucracy here at last. The other success today was that we found a way around the limitations for buying tickets on Drukair.

One of the problems that Bhutanese companies have is paying for items in foreign currency. I don’t think that the problem can be as big as they make out given that there is so much international aid here, but to some extent there is a problem. The solution is to get tourists to pay for everything in US dollars – the chosen international currency.

Unfortunately, those restrictions are extended to all chilips living in Bhutan. Druk Air tickets can’t be bought outside of the cities they fly to/ from, so we must buy the tickets for our visitors here, but we can’t buy air tickets unless we pay in USD. But where do an Australian and a European get USD from? Until now, we’ve had to ask all our visitors to repay us for their tickets in USD. Cash, since we can’t use their travellers cheques.

That hasn’t been a major issue until now, but our guests have been young and carefree. Marie’s parents are a different matter though, especially since they were recently mugged in France. They turned up with Euro travellers cheques, causing Marie and I to panic about how we’d pay for the tickets for my family to visit in June.

There’s always a solution, and a trip to the bank and Druk Air revealed that Marie can write a cheque to Druk Air in USD and the bank will honour it. I’m not sure that the economics work out. It’s a Euro account in a local bank (hence in Ngultrum) and when the airline cashes the cheque, it must be paid in Nu.

Ah, but now Marie tells me that when she tried to implement the idea, it took an hour to cash the cheques and since we can only get $500 per month, that’s all the bank would cash. A return ticket generally costs $750.

I guess we’re still stuck.

I had to get the Bhutanese version of a pink slip done today. In Australia, the load for such work is spread out through the year as everyone registers at different times, but in Bhutan, everyone has to do it in the same month. That means a rush and long queues. I found that by going immediately after lunch, I managed to cut the time spent in those queues dramatically.

First stop was at the taxi stand, across the bridge from town, for an emissions test. In a country that has a national policy of Gross National Happiness, one pillar of which focuses on environment, this makes sense. But when you count the total number of cars in the city is under ten thousand, it seems like overkill.

Second stop was the fitness test, where we got to project our emissions into the air in the long, slow (but moving too fast to turn the engines off) queue to the test area. The test itself was a simple check that lights were functioning correctly. I coped with the first request to switch my lights on, but got confuse after that. At the request for ‘parking lights’, I switched my lights down to the first notch, but this wasn’t what they wanted. After repeated requests to put on the ‘parking lights’ and repeated assurances that I was, someone reached in my window and switched on the hazard lights. Semantics can play such a big part in communication. The last light check should have been easier to work out, but calls for ‘back’ or some such actually meant they wanted to check the reverse lights.

It was a relatively painless affair, but I still need to renew the insurance and registration.

Once again I couldn’t write last night because the power to the internet failed, but I have more to write about this morning anyway.

Today is ANZAC Day, when Australians remember those who fell in the war and look to a future where such hostilies never occur. We have no war memorials in Bhutan, but it’s becoming a tradition for Australians, New Zealanders and their Bhutanese friends to visit Changangkha Lakhang (a monestery behind our new home) to light butter lamps and pray to the Bhuddist gods.

It was a small turnout today due to late notice, but the feelings of peace and of friendship between cultures was strong. Two Australians and three Bhutanese shared the lighting of 101 butter lamps before entering the temple proper to make donations of butter and incense.

And finally we headed to a local hotel for a Bhutanese breakfast of fried rice and ezay (chili sauce) to debate the origins of ANZAC Day, lest we forget.

Consider this a late message from yesterday. Marie’s parents arrived in the morning and it promptly started raining. I guess the rainy season’s come early this year. They’ve moved into my study, and I’ve moved onto the living room benches. Unfortunately, the wireless router we use to connect to the internet is still in the study and we have more power problems than just blackouts.

Our last house had at least one multisocket plate in the wall in every room, capable of accepting European, Chinese and two types of Indian plugs. Here each room has two sockets, but they only take the least used of the Indian plugs. I’ve had to buy six adapters to get the basic items working. Only the oven didn’t need one. But having an adapter in the wall, a power board plugged into that and the other items plugged into that is an electrical engineer’s nightmare. If I got up from my desk too quickly, some part of the chain would break and everything would lose power.

I guess that’s what happened last night when I sat down on the living room bench to write. Marie’s parents, who’d gone to bed early after a 4am start to catch the plane, probably rolled over in their sleep and that was the end of my internet connection.

Marie’s parents arrive tomorrow, so today is cleaning day. We haven’t given the place a thorough clean since we arrived and it really needs it. Bhutan is a very dusty country before the rainy season.

While on a trip to the supermarket to buy some cleaning products, I bumped into Marianne and her monkey. Marianne is a French woman who, along with her Dutch man Heinrick donates her time and money to looking after the stray animals in Thimphu. She brings biscuits to town every day to feed the dogs and looks like the Pied Piper with the dogs trailing her everywhere she goes. Many of the dogs have been at her place for surgery and recovery and at last count she had 125 dogs living with her.

There are also numerous cats and recently about 15 monkeys. The one she had tucked into her jumper today was recently collected by the Crown Prince and brought to be looked after, but was being picked on by the other monkeys and couldn’t be left alone.

I’ve agreed to put together a web site to help advertise her work. Heinrick’s taken a new assignment that doesn’t pay well enough to keep the shelter running and they now rely on the donations of tourists. The site, when it’s up, should make that process easier.

I missed yesterday because I was trying to create a new design for the site. I thought I had it, but when I tried using real content it looked ugly. Back to the drawing board.

The power was out last night, so although we have our water this morning, we can’t heat it except on a gas stove and I don’t know how long it would take to heat enough to wash with.

The good part is that the clouds have cleared, giving a great view of the surrounding mountains which have been graced with snow while we had rain. I’ve taken a couple of photos, which will make it onto the site once I have the design to work from.

This is my second post today. Consider it an attempt to make up for the lack of posts over the weekend. Actually, I feel compelled to write to mention that we have no running water. It’s the second time in as many days. Quite a shock for someone who’s never lacked water more than a couple of days in his life.

We had frequent power outages at our last place since it was well out of town. They were frustrating, but manageable. We knew where the candles, matches and caving lights were, and could always cook on gas. The power is much better in town, but we’re not prepared for water problems. We have no water stored for cooking, which is probably a good thing because then we don’t risk urgent toilet use.

In hindsight, we should have been prepared. One of Marie’s colleagues lives in cheap government housing with new amenities, a good view, but not enough water pressure to fill the toilet. They have to carry buckets up from the flat below. Another expat couple have given up on showering for the lack of water pressure, now washing from a bucket.

In Bhutan, water comes from the mountains in such quantity and with such force that hydroelectricity accounts for more than half of all export income. That water is stored in tanks on each roof, or on a tower outside, to fall into the house. The same principal works in Europe and probably did or does in Australia, but here the tanks aren’t high enough to provide the pressure and the the public supply must get closed for emergency work more often than in my other homes.

I hope it starts flowing again soon or Marie will start to stink.