Good evening Singapore and welcome to episode 17 of Sleepless in Singapore. This is going to be a special episode to me at least because I'm recording this on May 7th and it is going to be about a trip to Bhutan which only is not even a week ago. You should be listening to this, or at least I published this episode on May 12th, which is Mother's Day, so happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you.

And also one more thing I wanted to say. After the last episode, which was about Taiwan, the last one or one of the last ones, I shortly had a chat with Sebastian who was part of that episode, the friend I made in I believe Taiwan first then Hong Kong and then we met again in Manila or might be the other way around. Might not have been Manila, might have been El Nido. Anyway, so I talked to him and he told me, hey, this is like super interesting, but also it is super interesting to have your perspective. Like you are remembering things that I have never even thought about until now. But on the other hand, you forgot things, or you didn't mention things, or you even sometimes get details wrong, like the kind of car we had, or the situation we had with the car in that episode, that I remember, and you don't remember. And so I thought that is very interesting. Obviously, it's all the last few episodes. They all happened six or seven years ago now. six or seven years ago now. And all I have are some very scarce diary entries and some pictures on my phone and my memory. So I obviously try to recreate and to tell the story as close to reality as I can. But apparently memories are often, if not always, flawed. So you're getting my perspective and other people might have a slightly different perspective.

And actually that happened twice now. Once with Philip when he told me, oh, that was like a little bit different. And now it happened with Sebastian. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I just find it very interesting. And I find it even more interesting that actually my friends are listening to this and then after that we talk about it and I feel like yesterday after talking to Sebastian I felt like almost I had to create another few minutes of that Taiwan podcast because he reminded me of so many other fun facts and other little stories and other things that happened on that Taiwan trip and that I did not have in the podcast that I thought that would be so interesting and that should be in the official version as well. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to re-record or add on records to the Taiwan episode. But I will add at least like a comment or an update to the blog. I actually don't know if I ever said that here, but I'm kind of recycling the whole episodes I record for the podcast. I'm kind of recycling them and cleaning them up and creating blog posts. Mostly, again, for myself to remember stuff but of course also for everyone who wants to read about it and maybe see some of the pictures so you can have the same pictures in your head that I have in my I will link the website in the comment section or in the link section of this episode on www.sleepless.sg. So you will find it there.

Anyway, that was a very long introduction. I'm sorry. But today, special episode, because it is about Bhutan. Bhutan was special in two ways. A I just said it only happened last week, so you will probably get the most accurate episode yet. yet but also it was my birthday last week and the whole Bhutan trip was Nat's birthday gift to me most amazing gift a whole week a whole trip including everything and and let me tell you about it now. So please relax, lean back or lie down, and let my voice be your guide to a restful night. We left for Bhutan on April 28th of 2024 after having a nice barbecue the evening before and also after waking up again in the middle of the night I think it was around 3 a.m. when in our condo we're living in this like high-rise building on the 40 plus floors so there was a fire alarm in that condo and it was loud and it has happened before for a few seconds and then it stopped again. So we kind of tried to sit it out. But after a minute or two of the fire alarm going on and not stopping, I thought it would be sad to burn up here just because I'm too lazy to go down. up here just because I'm too lazy to go down. So we dressed up and we grabbed our phones and we made our way downstairs. Obviously not with the elevators because every child learns if there's a fire alarm don't take the elevators. So we went down the stairs, 40 plus floors and pretty much exactly when we reached the second floor, which is like the main entrance floor here, the fire alarm stopped and we talked to the security guide for a second and he said like oh yeah somebody pushed the button but there is nothing so all good you can go back to sleep again and we went we called the elevator to go back up and there is a naked guy in the elevator and by naked I mean really absolutely naked apparently so I have been told from the people who were with me, he didn't even have a single hair on his body. So there's this guy, clearly a bit drunk, quite a bit drunk, completely naked in the elevator, apologizing and telling us that he's embarrassed. And he's just standing there trying to cover his private parts as good as he can trying to cover his private parts as good as he can with something that appears to be a label of a coca-cola bottle or like a like a wrap of a coca-cola six-pack or something like that i'm only telling all that because long evening with a barbecue, long night before because the barbecue kind of caught fire and that's a whole different story. And then when we finally went to bed to catch like five or six hours sleep for our Bhutan trip, again in the middle of the night we got woken up by that fire alarm and had this very interesting experience with a naked guy. Be that all as it may, we made it the next day, or the same day I guess, at, I don't know, morning time, we made it to the airport. And the thing is, officially I did not know where we were going because it was a surprise and I guess I might have known before or I might have at least guessed the right location, the right destination before. But only at the airport I was like 100% certain when we walked up to the counter of Druk Air, which is the official, like the national airline of Bhutan. Druk, I think, just means Bhutanese in Bhutanese. airline of Bhutan. Druk, I think, just means Bhutanese in Bhutanese. And that's where the journey started to become interesting because Nat was super generous. She booked business class flights on this like tiny airplane, like an A319, specially modified to be able to land in Bhutan. I will get to that in a second. And we walk up to that counter and we wanted to check in, like you always check in. They check our visa, which is fine. It happens like all the time for countries where you need a visa. And then they are writing our boarding passes with pen on, well, something that looked like a boarding pass but it wasn't printed it was like completely handwritten and also our check-in which usually happens on a computer was completely manual she had a list nice lady but she's had a list and our names were on the list. And check-in means that she, well, I guess, checked off our names and then we were checked in. And then we had a slight discussion with the luggage because I brought my camera and we both brought suitcases and from every other airline usually if you fly business it's two pieces of luggage and nobody ever cares if the size is halfway right nobody ever cares about the weight right so they cared and they weighed our suitcases and apparently the suitcases were 10 or 12 or I don't know, something around that, kilograms. And the limit for carry-on is one piece of seven, no matter the class, no matter what you paid for the ticket. 7 kg, kind of like AirAsia or the other cheaper airlines. Anyway, so checking in our both suitcases was not the problem and my very heavy like literally 25 kg camera backpack also did not turn out to be a problem because I put it down in front of the counter and when we left the counter I tried to sling it on my shoulders as casually as I can to pretend that it's very light. I mean, it's not very big, it's just very heavy with all the camera and lenses and all that stuff. So I was putting it on one shoulder and pretending it's super light and I walked away and nobody cared. And same thing for boarding, nobody really cared. So I guess I got away with that. Next time we will know. The plane I just mentioned is a slightly modified A319, Airbus A319. Because Bhutan, the national and I think also the only airport in Paro, is somewhere in the mountains, 2000 something hundred meters altitude. And when you land, you go right in between these mountains. You see a mountain to your left and a mountain to your right. And you go in like sharp left, sharp right, sharp left, sharp right again. Within these mountains. Mind you, not with a tiny like sports machine, but with a proper Airbus A319. And then finally when you go down you go down very quickly and on a not super long runway. And that is why only a couple of pilots even have a license to land there, and that is why they need specially modified planes. Very exciting. Sadly we did not see Himalaya because it was very cloudy and very foggy most of the week actually in Bhutan. But we did see that landing and coming in there was already impressive the second thing that was very impressive was the airport itself of course it's a tiny airport it's a tiny country Bhutan only has I think 700,000 people living there in the whole country. I think that's 1 8th of Singapore which is only one city on one tiny island. Bhutan is not a huge country but I guess it's a big enough country it's only got 700,000. So we landed there, tiny airport and we walked over and already from outside the airport building looked more like a, I don't even know, like a castle, like a temple. It was quite small, it was one story, and it had these beautiful wooden carvings. And literally just arriving there kind of put us in a different mood and in a different mindset. And then when we entered the building, I don't know if you've ever entered an airport and the first thing you noticed was silence. But we walked in there and it was so quiet, even though there were people. And even though the luggage belts were running, it just was super quiet. It was like almost serene in this airport building never experienced anything like that people were quiet everything had this like quiet atmosphere and also inside it was beautiful all the walls all the window, all the window frames, all the doors, all the pillars, everything was painted in tiny detail. Everything had carvings, wood carvings. And it was just very beautiful there.

Then, after arriving, we went out of the airport. We got picked up by our guide, Nima, and the driver, Uncle Wanchuk. And they greeted us with a flower bouquet and two scarves, which apparently in the local tradition are welcome scarves, like two white silk scarves. And a drink, some rice-based kind of wine, coming out of a wooden bottle, tasting... I don't know okay and one more thing we noticed right away is that half of the people half of these drivers and guides waiting for the other people and including our own driver they had very weird teeth. Everything was red and looked bloody, and only stumps, almost a bit like out of a horror movie. And later on we learned that chewing the betel nut wrapped in betel leaves with a lime is a very common thing to do in Bhutan. I don't know if you've ever tried chewing betel nut. I tried once just for a few seconds because, you know, I don't know, I wanted to try. It doesn't taste super nice, especially the lime stuff doesn't taste super nice especially the lime stuff doesn't taste super nice and it gives you a bit of a mellow high so judging by the amount of betel nuts our driver was chewing the whole week I can only assume he was high the whole week but he was a very excellent driver. He was super nice. And I think he was driving very well. So maybe you don't get that high. Maybe it's more like a calming you down thing. I don't know, maybe the opposite of caffeine or something. If you know, if you ever properly tried, not just a few seconds like I did, let me know. Kind of interested. Alright, so the two put us in the car and we had maybe a round two hour drive from Paro, which is the city where that airport is, to Thimphu, which is the capital city of Bhutan. And on the way we already were in awe of the nature. We took pictures out of the window. We stopped to take a picture of a Zong, which is like a Bhutanese castle. And when we arrived at the hotel in Thimphu, there was a very warm welcome again of the local people. Actually, there was a very friendly welcome, but we've noticed that people don't smile that much. You know, like in Southeast Asiaia in thailand in indonesia all these countries around here how how warm people are and and how big the smiles and and how overly friendly and and how loud and excited they greet you i feel like in bhutan, everyone was very friendly, no question and no criticism. But people didn't smile that much. Maybe because they had the funny teeth from the betel nut, who knows. But in general, even the people who I think did not eat that betel nut, they seemed a bit more... did not eat that betel nut. They seemed a bit more, um, I don't want to say cold because they weren't cold, but a bit more distant, a bit more professional in a way, a bit less cheery and smiley and giggly and overwhelmingly friendly, like we're used to that in the countries around here. Totally not a bad thing, just noticed that. So we had, well, that kind of welcome in the hotel, and then we walked around in the hotel. It wasn't like a super fancy hotel but it was so beautiful because again every wall, every pillar, everything in there was hand carved and painted and just looked absolutely impressive. And also it must be so much work. We had a nice room there and we changed clothes, we freshened up a bit and then we went to the first restaurant. It was evening by now, so it was our dinner place. And we went to the Zamba restaurant in Thimphu and we had dumplings which are called momos in that area. I had beef dumplings, there were chicken dumplings, Nat had I think some kind of cheese dumplings and they were very nice and we had a plate of very excellent fries never had fries like that but they seem to be like this double or triple fried fries with chili and some kind of like tomato chili paste or seasoning. Yeah, I don't know, but that was very delicious. And then kind of tired and also knowing that the next day we had a hike coming up, we went to the hotel. Thibaut-Singapore is like a three-hour time difference, I think. So by the time we went to the hotel and to sleep, it was already after midnight in Singapore. So we were quite tired.

And we had a good sleep and the next morning our driver picked us up again we had a not very exceptional breakfast just fried rice and stuff and then our driver took us to And then our driver took us to see some Zong again, some of these local castles. And also he explained to us that because on the way we were crossing the main crossing, the biggest crossing in the capital city of that country and there are no traffic lights there is on this biggest crossing there is a guy a policeman standing in a little again very nicely painted and decorated how would you call that like like a little hut or something where he can see out of his little windows in all directions and he was directing the traffic from that and our driver said apparently timfu is the only city the only capital city that doesn't have a single traffic light doesn't need a traffic light doesn't need a traffic light. Yeah, so that day we had our first hike. And as I already mentioned, Timbu is something around, I think, 2,400 meters, depending on where you are. And we drove up a little more even. And we started our hike at, I think, like 2,800, and we made it all the way to 3,500, and A, not being the best trained person there is, and B, being at an altitude that I am not used to, I really had a hard time. I was out of breath all the time, even when I was not moving that much, but especially when I was moving. And it was really hard, even though it was just like a 5 or 6 kilometer hike, it was really hard and I needed a couple of breaks.

But in the end we made it to a monastery all the way on top of there. And the monasteries in Bhutan are beautiful but they also are all actually very similar to each other, so I'm going to describe it once, and then for the rest of this episode, I'm just going to say another monastery. These little monasteries, they always have golden Buddha statues, very colorful wall paintings. They always have a lot of offerings. Offerings that to us sometimes seem funny because there's Buddha and the various gods and all that and the offerings people give are like bottles of milk or sometimes I saw cigarettes. It seems like very random offerings, oftentimes cookies or crackers or stuff like that, still wrapped in the original packaging. But hey, if Buddha likes it, who am I to judge? Up there we took some nice pictures. I'll try to upload some on the before mentioned blog later when I get to actually writing that article. And eventually we went down again and I have to say going down from that monastery was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I'm just trying to figure out what the monastery was called. And I can, but I'll try to figure it out and then also add it to the links. In case you're in Bhutan and you want to do the same hike. Because the hike down was the most colorful the most natural the most untouched forest like the right now and and here and for the last years in singapore and and the surrounding countries obviously we're more used to jungle and and that kind of green in Bhutan it was more like almost what we used from Germany or maybe Canada more like needle trees and more that kind of forest but just so pretty because they were like flowers everywhere, there were like little patches of grass everywhere and it was a really like sometimes tight and dark forest and sometimes it broke up a little and the light was coming in more. Yeah, you can tell I'm a little bit lacking for words. Because things like that are always hard to describe, even hard to take pictures of. I'm just looking at the pictures and the pictures mostly look like oh yeah it's a lot of wood and always these like pink rhododendron I did not know that a rhododendron can become like 10 meters tall but yeah on the, it just looks like that. But when we were there and we were walking down this, many hours walking down this path, sometimes not even a path, sometimes just across the grass or somewhere in between the trees, it was so pretty, it was so magical. I've never experienced anything like that. We felt like in a fairy tale or in a Lord of the Rings movie. Absolutely stunning. Totally worth all my complaining and crying and halfway dying the way up. Super, super special. At the end of that hike down, we made a stop at another monastery and these 108 stupas that were built a long time ago. You will come across the number 108 a couple of times in Bhutan. I think it's some Buddhist number with a special meaning. I read up on it a bit on Wikipedia, but it was too much to memorize for me. So I'm just gonna also link to that if you're interested. These 108 stupas, they were looking very nice. Very nice pictures there. From there we went down and we had a lunch at some random lunch spot. It was okay. And then we walked around a bit. We did some shopping because our guide told us it's appropriate to bring a little gift to the people we were staying with at night. We took more pictures, we stopped at another Zong where we were going to go the next day. But for that night we went to see a local family and we were allowed to stay with that local family and even though most of them didn't even speak english there was a very nice experience the lady was making food and even though i think we might not like all of the different dishes that are very common over there. She was an excellent chef and everything tasted very, very nice. There was this Bhutanese kind of pizza. They called it a Bhutanese pizza, actually, which was a rice base, like the pizza dough replaced with some kind of rice. And then there was egg and a little greens and salt, pepper and things like that. That I liked a lot. That was very good. And then there is always milk tea, which in the beginning I feel was fine I didn't drink it because I don't do milk but Nat was having a bit and I think in the beginning she was okay with it but after having milk tea for breakfast, lunch and dinner and every other occasion and every monastery visit I think she might have every other occasion and every monastery visit. I think she might have been a little bit fed up with the milk tea as well. And then there is one dish, which is technically also not a bad dish. It's chili cheese. It's a national dish. And I had it a couple of times. And like I said, it's a national dish and I had it a couple of times and like I said it's not bad it's not my favorite but it's not bad depending on the cheese they put sometimes it's a bit strong so if you don't like stronger cheeses not your thing for me it was okay but also after having that every time we went somewhere and even if we went to the nice restaurants later and we explicitly did not order that dish with the chili and the cheese they bring it to you for free oh yeah here you should try that and we thought like oh yeah we've tried that at least 10 times already but thank you very much and then while being in a in a quite poor country you also don't want to waste it so you kind of eat it and that also didn't help with the being fed up with it after a while so yeah food wise i think there are good things and not so good things in bhutan everything else really absolutely amazing that homestay the next day the lady showed us her garden and she's got everything she's she's got like all kinds of fruit she got fruit i've never seen before they have their own rice patties they have their own wheat fields i think she's got a cow to milk and I think maybe except for meat, she's got pretty much everything to live completely independent from anyone. Super cool experience. The same day we went on to see that Zong, that local castle we've seen the day before and go inside. And again, a little hard to describe, but absolutely magical feeling in there. Everything is super pretty. Everything is carved. I'm sure you're bored by now by me just describing carved wood, but it's just something we've never seen before. A lot of climbing up and down stairs in these like mountain zongs and monasteries and all that, there's always like a lot of stairs. So you go up a stair here and a stair there and then you have a beautiful view and then you always have these prayer wheels sometimes small ones sometimes big ones with a little bell we just went along and always did that. And also at the same day we visited the apparently longest suspension bridge in Bhutan, which for Bhutan I'm sure is a long bridge but in general it kind of looked like a suspension bridge, like a small one and then what was super fun our guide Nima he invited us to his home and to meet his wife and son and again these like very local experiences so much fun for us we archery, which is the national sport of Bhutan. I sent a couple of arrows somewhere in the hill behind the board, which I was supposed to hit. Then eventually, I think the last one I put into the wood, actually really powerful, I put it into the wood. They could barely get it out. Very proud of myself. And then after that, I got to milk a cow. I think I've also never done that before, but I managed to get some milk out of that cow's parts. There are pictures of that on my Instagram in the highlights. I think there might be a video too if you want to see me milk a cow. That day in the evening I decided I do not want to have chili cheese but some, you know, what I would say nicer food. And so we ended up at the restaurant of the Six Senses Temple. And we had a very, very nice, very interesting meal. And of course, we still got the chili cheese. But we also got this very, very nice, very fatty brisket and we got some asparagus thing. We got a couple of local dishes. We got a couple of foreign dishes. We got an olive oil cake for dessert. Very, very good. Really liked that. The next day in the morning we had a meditation class. So we met in front of what I think is the tallest sitting Buddha anywhere or in Bhutan. It was a giant sitting Buddha, a golden Buddha. And we woke up very early for it. And we were pretty much alone there with our meditation trainer. I think she came prepared to teach us yoga, but I wanted to meditate instead of yoga.

So she taught us a little bit about the local yoga, sorry, about the local meditation practice and how to focus on your inner images, how to focus on your outer images, how to focus on Buddha. We did that for an hour. I still have a very hard time sitting up straight for an hour. My back hurts a lot when I try to do that. I gotta say, the most I enjoyed when we were lying down on our backs, on these yoga mats she brought. And we were doing this practice where we focus on parts of our bodies and that way try to to, I don't know, be calm, relax, be open. After that we went for another hike and much like the first hike it was a bit difficult on me, especially then, especially because this one was to even a higher altitude, we went to hike up for almost 800 meters elevation gain to a total or to a maximum altitude of almost 4,000 meters, which I also think I have never done before. I'm not sure. I think the biggest altitude I've ever been to is probably somewhere in Switzerland, in the Alps, in Zermatt, if you go up the glacier, how high is that? Maybe also around 4,000. But going up there with a ski lift and then immediately going down, I can't say I ever really noticed how thin the air is up there. That hike, walking up to a monastery where we stayed overnight, by the way, I could really feel the altitude that monastery up there super cool experience we had an overnight stay that again organized everything there were a lot of monks we got some time to talk to them we got some time to sit in the prayers or just like the whatever they do up there. We were part of it for a day. We were sleeping not in the monastery itself but in a guest house like next to it, which was very simple like sleeping on the floor, no heating except for this like little electrical heater, which meant it was quite cold at night. I think outside it was two degrees. The food was extremely basic. I think mostly I had crackers. The monks were playing some horns. They almost looked like alphorns. I did not know that's a thing here. And then the next day, after a pretty much sleepless night, because it was cold and we couldn't breathe, I don't know, it could have been much nicer, even though I do not want to miss the experience, we got out and we got to hang our own prayer flags. You know if you see pictures of Bhutan or also the surrounding countries, they're all pretty Buddhist and they have these little flags on a rope, usually yellow, blue, white, red. Sometimes just yellow. But usually I feel like there are more of these colorful ones. So we put up these flags. I was climbing a tree. Now we have our own prayer flag in Bhutan. And then again the next day the way down, actually the next day the way down was for half an hour even further up, or up and down, down and up. But then eventually the way down was just as good as the day before. It was different, there were less flowers but there were more different kinds of green and more like little like this very very this like forest like out of a fairy tale again extremely enjoyable peaceful, beautiful after coming down I think I've mentioned that before, Philip and I, when we were traveling, we always had this tradition to try a burger. So after we came down, we went to a burger place. And we had actually a quite decent burger and Nat had a milkshake and a soup that's not Bhutanese but Nepalese. Tasted a little bit like peanuts but you couldn't really see any peanuts.

And also they had momos at that burger place. And I don't know if maybe they cater more to a Western palate or... I don't know why, but these momos were absolutely excellent. I think the best momos we had, and we had quite some momos at least like five times I think. So we tried to do some shopping and I'm not sure what we did that afternoon. I didn't take a lot of pictures but we've checked into another hotel and we got a massage which was okay. And then the next day we went for I think what was the highlight of the day, the highlight of the trip. We went for another hike, the third big hike, up to Tiger's Nest. And Tiger's Nest, I'm 100% sure all of you have seen before, not only because it's in the introduction or in the beginning of a Batman movie, but also, if you think about Bhutan, or if you Google Bhutan, this is the picture you see. It's this monastery in the mountain wall, in these cliffs, quite high up. and it is to Bhutan what the Eiffel Tower is to France, or what the Statue of Liberty is to the US. So we hiked up there, again quite exhausting, but being the third time I felt like it was a little better and I don't know if I slowly got used to my surroundings and the altitude and the training or if it actually is a little easier than the other hikes, but it wasn't that bad. We made it up quite quickly, by that I mean like in two hours or so. And again, inside it's like most monasteries. It's pretty similar. It's a big monastery. It's beautiful. But they are all quite similar to my untrained eye. I'm sure a proper Buddhist can see all the differences. I cannot. Doesn't matter. I thought it was beautiful. We went to the different rooms there. We left a lot of money there because you put like a little money here and there as an offering. And then because it was my birthday, we lit a butter candle. Which are these like candles that are made of fat yak butter. Lit this like quite big one for my birthday. And we took a lot of pictures and I think like talking about Tiger's Nest is pretty much boring compared to seeing Tiger Nest so I can only recommend you to go there to do it. It's absolutely impressive and magical. Or if you cannot go there, at least Google some pictures or maybe I'll upload some. I think I already have some at my Instagram. I can only recommend that you check that out. We went down, we went for another lunch and then we went for I think the last and most special event Nat had planned for my birthday, which was a birthday celebration and prayer or meditation in a temple, a Buddhist temple down in the city-ish. And we were sitting there. I got this, we both got these local clothes, a kind of a dress. Again, hard to describe best if you just look at one of the pictures. So we're wearing these clothes and we talked to that monk a bit and then they helped us inside and we were sitting there in the center of everything all around us monks and that was a very special experience i don't think i've ever done anything like that i kind of think in churches of the western religions you can do that but for the monks it seemed okay they all prayed and they were singing songs and i was sitting there and i had a big chocolate cake they organized and i was cutting the cake and the first piece goes to buddha and you know like to the offerings next to the other offerings and the rest of the pieces goes to the monks and everyone was singing and eating and we're sitting there wearing our local traditional clothes from Bhutan And yeah, that was something very, very extraordinary. Thank you very much, Nat. After that, I think we finally did some actual shopping because when I travel, I always try to find a little statue or a little something that I can keep as a souvenir. But I don't want to buy the cheesiest souvenirs. Sometimes it's a little hard to find something.

I'm pretty sure that also half of the stuff I have is not very authentic or not very original or not very real but instead just looking old. But that's fine. So in Bhutan I found a copper Buddha maybe like 10 or 15 centimeters tall and it's got this like ancient look but it was too cheap to be actually something antique or something old. I'm still very happy I have it. It's right behind me right now next to the other souvenirs I brought from various trips. So we did that and then we had a hot stone bath, which was interesting. You're sitting in this like wooden bathtub and without anyone being able to see you, on the other end, on your foot end of the bathtub, behind the wall, there is a guy. And if you shout hot or the equivalent in the local language i guess the guy is bringing a stone that's been in the fire for hours so very hot stone he's throwing it in and there's all like bubbling up and making your water hot. And you're in there sweating and there are some herbs or leaves or stuff floating in the water to make it smell nice. So we did that and we did some more archery before we finally headed back to the hotel on our last night. And at the hotel we caught another little ceremony which was like local dances and there were two people disguised as a yark and running around, which was very interesting and fun as well. And then the next day, our last day, we got up early, packed, showered, and took our Druke airplane back from Paro Airport to good old Singapore.