12th of the 12th

I am finally 10!! Today was my birthday and we are in Bangkok.

I got two dinosaur fossils, 1 Dzi stone still attached to the agate and amber with a scorpion in it.

I got to choose the meals for the day.  We went to Ranee's for breakfast and we had burgers for lunch. Mum and dad weren't feeling too good after lunch so we went back to our hotel. We had ice-cream instead of cake the day after.

Thank you to everyone that sent me happy birthday emails.

From Taiga

If it’s too good to be True, It Is!

Having finally made it out of Tibet and onto Nepalese soil, we had to track down the visa office in order to make our time in Nepal legal once again. Taiga's visa was free as he was still under 10 years of age, $25 for Steve's and my visa and Cody's visa? Well that cost $40. Go figure!

We were told by our Nepalese friend Kul that the cost of a jeep and driver to rent from the border to Kathmandu would cost 4000 – 5000 rupee. Being foreigners we expected to pay closer to 5000 rupee.

You can imagine my surprise when I started haggling over the price that I got the cost of the jeep down to 3000 rupee. One proviso, we shared with another man and we needed to leave straight away. Remember we had been traveling since 1pm the previous day; it was now about 10am the following morning.

As the jeep started up, there was one more catch, there had been a landslide rendering the road impassable. We would have to walk some of the way, but our driver had already organised a jeep for us on the other side.

As we climbed into the waiting jeep on the other side of the landslide I noticed the excessive amount of luggage our new companion was carrying with him and the care and attention he was receiving from the driver. Who was this guy?

After much questioning, I was none the wiser. His story was that he owned a restaurant in Tibet and was on his was to Kathmandu to visit family. Neither Steve nor I was buying it, but what could we do, we were exhausted and we were now making perfect time to catch our flight.

We went through numerous checkpoints, each time this guy gave varying stories and reactions. Sometimes he was very familiar, sometimes he hid his face and at one point when the police pulled us over he gave a story that we were a foreign family traveling together.

It wasn't until we were in our hotel room, that I noticed little round green seeds all over one son's bag. My son's justification was that the nice man must use these herbs at his restaurant. I think he was on the mark with it being a herb, however it wasn't one that was used in any restaurant we had patroned.

Coincidentally that 9 year old son was searched extensively at the airport.

x Lisa (now safely in Thailand Mum)

Landslide!