The Easy Life

It took days, due to airport closures for politics, then for weather, but we escaped Lukla, the end of our trek to Goyko Peak and over the Renjo Pass. Getting a ticket out of there was finally negotiated by giving someone on the street money, them going to an Internet cafe to purchase a coded air ticket, and then having us take a picture of the computer screen with our phone as proof for boarding. Somehow this worked.

Lukla is touted "the world's most dangerous airstrip." Hardly. They haven't had an accident since 2008 or so. In Alaska, we crack up planes every moose season just for the sake of saying someone went hunting. It is a steep mountain airstrip that looks tricky though.

Trekking around Everest is the Nepal version of going to Alaska on a cruise ship-- beautiful views with minimal local interaction. We were glad to escape.

We landed in Thailand to some serious relaxation and excellent food to replace a horrible diet of bland Trekkers' carbohydrates.

The food is so good, we took a cooking class to learn how to put more coconut milk in our lives. Our teacher got married a few months before we did in Cambodia--a traditional wedding. She showed us the pictures. She and the groom had FIFTEEN complete costume changes. We figured that we got off easy.

We travel everywhere by rental scooter, fueled by coke bottles along the roadside.

We asked for helmets when we rented the scooter. They said "don't worry, you will NEVER see the police" -- (we were more concerned about our heads). On our first day riding, the police stopped us and asked where our helmets were. We shrugged. He walked around the back to write down our license plate-- we didn't have one of those either! It was the cops turn to shrug-- no license plate, no ticket?

We scooted away. Mexicans in Arizona have gone to jail for lesser crimes.

Thailand is that chill. The worst food we've found was a kidney bean popsicle, and even that was surprisingly edible. It's rained everyday, but we still have sunburns. The people smile and laugh constantly, and the air at sea level is oxygen saturated. After Nepal, this is cruisey.