week 2: beginning of the end.

Ahh the saga (finally!) continues...

The bus ride back to Thamel (city centre of Kathmandu) was tiring, but interesting. There was a paper published a while ago now, which claimed that people that met under circumstances where your flight or fight response was active (aka jumping off a bridge) tended to be friends quicker and closer. The same article also claimed that opposite genders that met during such times, tended to find the other more attractive.

Maybe that was the reason for my infatuation with Stina. Or maybe I'm just justifying my Asian semi-fetish. Whatever it was, I was definately intrigued and couldn't wait to see her that night. And what a night that was.

But, yes - the bus ride back: The fucking retards who were singing at the top of their voices with their mobile phone ghetto-stereo had shut the fuck up after the adrenaline rush. Hence, there was peace! We met this Israeli dude, we shall call him Kam. We also met a Melbournite, but let's forget her - she wasn't fun.

Kam was fun though. Jimbo and I talked to him about random crap and his job at Oxfam etc etc. At the end of the bus ride, he told us he was staying in the city centre and that he would show us an awesome restaurant for dinner. It was all vegetarian. Riiiight. We all know that meat and I have a sacred relationship that rabbit food can never impose upon. Well, that was the case until I entered OR2K.

OR2K was an Israeli restaurant. Kinda. It was less "restaurant" more "hippy-decor-and-low-tables-with-people-smoking-weed". Yep, as you entered the door, you also entered a space thick with the smoke from marijiuana. To say that the place was "trippy" would be an understatement. Think old Arabian carpets on the floor, worn in with the years of psychadelic foot stomping, mixed with surrealist/trippy art work on the wall and throw in giant toy moths hanging from the ceiling with UV lighting and you've got yourself one hell of a restaurant.



Needless to say, Jimbo and I wondered if dinner meant "getting high". Strangely enough, it just meant dinner. Looked like Kam was a regular, the waiters greeted him like they'd known him for an age. Later, we discovered that the waiters were the ones who were high and greeted random people (myself included) in the exact same manner.

The food WAS all vegetarian, but hey, I was willing to try anything to experience what this place had to offer. We ordered hummus and some random noodle dishes to eat and... Oh. My. God. It was delicious! Dear readers, you know that if *I* of all people approve of vege food, it has to be something special. It was. I was instantly in love with the place!

We would return here, many a times to chill and enjoy the smell of weed. We would mainly chill because the waiters were so high that they forgot to give us menus, or to take orders. So when one of us went up said asked "Can we please order?" they happened to reply with "Order? Whoa. Yes. Order!" (Whatever that meant)

But anyway, after the magnificent vege dinner (did you ever think those words were going to be used in this blog?) we headed off to the bar that Stina and her friends were going to be at. Yes, there are bars in Nepal. And clubs too. But they usually involve naked women.

To be concluded next post...