Kathmandu: A Stressful Morning

We woke up this morning needing to book our flights and hoping to be able to finally post our blogs. Frustratingly, the blogging app had been playing up for days and this morning, the Internet still wasn't working. And neither was the hot water. Not a great start to the day.

We spent the first part of the morning, with the help of hotel owner, trying to find somewhere with Internet that worked. One company's Internet was down, another hotel's reception was deserted so we couldn't find out their password, the electricity in Thamel was off so the Internet at some hotels wasn't working. Inconvenient at best. We were running out of hours.

Around 7am we figured we would find a place to eat breakfast and cross our fingers that their wifi might actually be on. We settled on Hotel Mandap where, thankfully, the wifi was not having problems. We jumped on the AirAsia site ready to book our flights when we realised they had doubled in price overnight. Our stomachs dropped and so did our moods. As if we weren't having a stressful enough morning as it was. We ate a big breakfast and decided our next priority needed to be contacting Budget Direct, our travel insurance providers, to see if the extra cost of our flights would be covered.

My phone wouldn't work. Chris' phone wouldn't work. We found an Internet/call centre and their phone wouldn't work to call the Budget Direct number either. In one last hope we tried yet another call centre place to find their phone wouldn't work either. Thankfully, the boss had a few ideas up his sleeves and got us to use a headset and his desk phone to finally get through to the Australian number. Chris' stress was in boiling over as he tried talking to one of the consultants at Budget Direct. I took over and was passed between three separate staff members none of which could tell me exactly which of our extra expenses would be covered. You'd think that Chris getting sick and needing to fly home early is exactly why you buy travel insurance in the first place but they were making things difficult.

I got as much information as I could and it was recommended that we visit a doctor to get a letter stating that Chris had AMS but that it was safe for him to fly. Off we went again. Guided by our hotel owner we visited a doctor who checked Chris out and wrote us a letter stating that he was too sick to continue our holiday and would need to go home. Next stop...Internet cafe.

As the Internet was still not working at our hotel we were forced to visit an Internet cafe. We rearranged both of our flights, checked in online, printed our boarding passes, booked a hotel in Malaysia for our overnight stay and finally felt like we were making progress.

Once all of these errands had been completed we figured we deserved a break. We went back to Cosy Cafe, settled into the pillows surrounding the low-sitting table and had beers and lunch. My spaghetti bolognese, with the pasta made on the premises, was delicious, as was Chris' lasagne. The owner took photos of us and was excited to become Facebook friends so he could share the photos with us.

After lunch it was souvenir shopping time. We spent a couple of hours wandering the streets of Thamel with all of the other tourists and bargaining hard. We found exactly what we needed and, slowly, Anando did too. The afternoon was enhanced by our meeting with the man who wrote the trekking guidebook we had been using. Such a coincidence! He was here promoting the newest edition of the book and even gave us a sneak peak. He and his wife seemed like lovely people and it was a great part of a challenging day.

A final dinner, Cosy Cafe, Kathmandu

We hung at home for a while before venturing out again for more food. Our time in Kathmandu had absolutely revolved around food. We returned to Cosy Cafe yet again and had vegetable pakoras, pizza and Chris had the spaghetti bolognese I had enjoyed earlier. Anando ordered a pancake for dessert and, as we decided to make a move home, a heavy downpour of rain started.

We braved the wet streets of Thamel and went to bed, knowing this would be our last night in Nepal.

 

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