Thoughts on Bhutan

Thoughts on Bhutan

December 25-29, 2017

• The men wear skirts as part of their professional dress.
• Bhutan is beautiful.
• Thimpu is the capital city and it is well planned and laid out.
• There is no litter on the streets.
• There are only 770,000 people who live in this small country.
• The Buddhist temples are grand.
• The food is delicious.  I had a dumpling filled with mash potatoes for dinner.  Life doesn’t get much better than that.
• Parliament has a night ceremony to lower the flag.  They are escorted to the flag pole by colorfully dressed Buddhist monks.
• The king lives in a small palace which is within walking distance of parliament.
• The Buddhists here have their own high Llama, similar to the Dali llama.
• The largest Buddha statute in the world is in Thimpu, the capitol.
• There appears to be a thriving economy. I don’t see any beggars or poor people.
• No one says, “God bless you” when I sneeze.
• The government mandates that 66% of the land mass remain untouched so that they can maintain their zero carbon foot print.
• I’m finding that this country is more expensive than other Asian countries.  I’m not buying anything here.
• I walked amongst acres of rice pay fields. I never realized how labor intensive it is to harvest rice.
• I have walked up so many damn steps.  Every temple is situated at the highest point of the valley. So, it’s lots of steps up just to get to these temples.
• I think I have seen enough Buddhist temples for my life time.
• Many people speak English here however I do not see many tourist.
• I had butter tea today.  I wonder who thought putting butter is tea was tasty.
• I also had red rice. I didn’t taste much of a difference with white rice.
• The young monks have cell phones.
• The Divine Madman was a teacher who believes that his penis subdues his oppressors.
• The sun is so damn intense.