Random Bits

I’ve been taking more photos than I have been writing, but I want to share some random thoughts, along with photos of some of the lovely places we have been in this incredibly picturesque country.

Spring

It’s been wonderful to see some of the fields that surround Paro and Pangbisa, where the law school is, turning green with the spring rains and warmer weather. We do a lot of walking through the outskirts of Paro town, and it’s so nice to see people out planting in the fields. Often women, planting rice. There is not yet much in the way of spring vegetables in the markets, but there is lots of wonderful freshly-harvested asparagus. We have been happily living on asparagus for the last few weeks since the harvest has become more plentiful. It's been a very welcome addition to our diet.

More fiddleheads in the market!

     

 

Dzongkha

This language sounds wholly unfamiliar to me. I think by the time we first went to Cambodia, I had heard a lot of Khmer already, so it was not impossible to start picking up words and phrases the more time I spent there. But Dzongka is so unfamiliar to me that I have a hard time hearing specific sounds and groupings of letters. So I mostly just listen to the rhythm of it, but I have learned a few things. Kuzuzangpo is hello, and you can amend it with the honorific la, which is just a word of respect (much like bong in Khmer, for my Cambodian friends), so the more respectful hello is kuzuzangpola. Thank you is kadenchey, or kadencheyla. I’ve also learned that ama is mother, and apa is father. I was told that the matriarch of the animal rescue project we visited, which is run by an amazing European couple, is known as “dog mother”, or rochiama, which helped me figure out that rochi is Dzongka for “dog”. Probably one of the more useful words to know after hello and thank you.

 

Dzongkha and Tibetan are very similar, and many of the Buddhist texts in the temples and monasteries are in Tibetan. I’ve been told that if you know one language you can easily pick up the other. I just don't know either.

 

The Randomness of Global Development

In a country which had no paved roads until the 1960s, and first got TV and the internet in 1992, there has been a lot of technological catching up, and I am surprised when I come across highly developed technology. I think it has as much to do with what other countries think Bhutan needs to have, or what help Bhutan asks other countries for, and what they will pay for. So sometimes we come across very weird contradictory processes that keep my head exploding. Like the biometric fingerprinting at Immigration that is similar to what is done in the US, in the midst of a convoluted process that relies on hand-written pieces of paper being carried from office to office, from floor to floor, and goodness knows what happens if you lose one of those papers. Or mBob (mobile Bank of Bhutan), the very sophisticated app that nearly every merchant uses for transactions, even taxi drivers and market stalls, while doing business at the bank itself depends on carbon copies and glue sticks. I was told that the mBoB came into existence in response to Covid, and it’s the perfect response to the desire to eliminate contact, but why stop there? 

 

The SDF

Bhutan controls tourism through the use of a Sustainable Development Fee, which is a daily fee that visitors pay to both help fund the tourism industry and limit the numbers, and types, of tourists. In tourist season, which we are now in, the fee is $250 USD/day. Which means a week-long trip costs an additional $1,750 on top of plane fare and all of the expenses of traveling around. Before Covid the SDF was lower, and you were required to buy a tour package, but all meals hotels guides transport etc. were included. You can still book a tour, which many people do, but you have to pay the more expensive SDF on top of that. 

 

But apparently you are still expected to have a guide if you are a foreigner. Because we are working and have work permits, we don’t have to pay the SDF, but we are always asked “where is your guide” whenever we go anywhere that charges a visitor fee, as many of the temples and parks do. We say, “we don’t have a guide, we live here, we work at the Royal Law School (as if that should mean something)” and pull out our hard-won work permits, which draw puzzled looks without fail. The guard at the entry gate will look at the card, ask us what it is, we explain, they will stare at it some more, then say they have to call a supervisor. The supervisor comes, we go through the same thing, they get on the phone, maybe someone else comes out, we stand around some more, and eventually they let us pay the foreigners fee and let us in.

 

We have debates about whether this is about not wanting us to get away with not having to pay the SDF, or not paying to hire a guide, or whether it is as much about control. This is a very regimented country - neither of us has written about that very much yet - so sometimes it is unclear what processes are about control for the sake of control, or unwillingness to take responsibility for making a decision to let the chillips (foreigners) into a controlled place, or just obeisance to hierarchy since that is what has been the controlling structure of the country for so long and what most people are used to and comfortable with.

 

Our work visas also restrict our travel around the country - to go anywhere outside of the Paro district, where we live and work, and the Thimphu district, which is the capital, we need a pass. This involves getting a letter from the dean of the law school granting us permission, and then having someone take the letter and copies of our visas and passports to some office in Thimphu and getting a letter that grants us permission to travel. Then when we pass into a different district, we have to stop at the immigration checkpoint and get the letter stamped; on return we hand the letter over to immigration. Makes spontaneous day trips nearly impossible.

 

But even with the chillip shuffle, we have gone to some amazing places. Last week was a school holiday (again) so we went with our friend David to Punhaka, a more central part of the country, which was the first capital in the 1600s. It is at a lower elevation, so the climate is warmer and vegetation semi-tropical. The Punhaka Dzhong, which sits at the confluence of two rivers is considered by many to be the most beautiful Zhong in the country, and it was really beautiful. But we were staying in a smaller town nearby called Wangdi so we also wandered into the dzhong there, and discovered a lovely structure and space that had just reopened a few months earlier after being completely remodeled from a fire almost 10 years ago. It seems as if every dzong we visit has had a major fire event, some more recently like Wangdi, some much longer ago: candles and incense maybe. I've started noticing that they all have fire hoses strategically placed in many parts of the buildings; the recent remodel at the Wangdi dzong included very sophisticated fire equipment. 

Punhaka Dzong

  

 

Wangdi Dzong

Dogs in the mist at Dochula Pass. I thought they were cows at first!

There is so much more to tell, and plenty more to show, but I'll stop here for now.