Nate and Kara fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu with a 14-hour layover spent in airport lounges via Priority Pass. They arrive in Nepal during the dry season, get a hotel upgrade, and note earthquake damage to local temples before heading out to trek.
Good morning. Kinda.
Thank you.
Well it's about 5:30 in the morning. We've given up on sleep because it's about 10:30 New Zealand time. Probably got like three or four hours of sleep tonight. But our bodies are going to be so messed up from the six hour time change from New Zealand to Nepal anyway. I don't think it's going to matter. We have five more hours here in the airport so probably one or two more lounges. Then we have a four hour flight to Nepal. We get to Nepal at lunchtime. So I think as long as we can survive from lunchtime until time to go to bed, that should give our bodies time to reset.
Hopefully.
At least that's the plan.
So all of the lounges in the Bangkok airport that we can get into at the priority pass are Lewis Tavern lounges which are like nice but we've now been to four. So there's one here, the Omen Air first class and business class lounge. I've heard good things about it. So we have one more lounge that we can try out before our flight and that's where we're heading. We have the hardest time navigating the Bangkok airport. This place is huge and there are no trains, at least not that we found.
I think we saved the best lounge for last. Look at all these weird snacks. There's this like hash brown potato thingy, something that looks like a cheese stick. Fresh hummus, crackers, meat pie.
This way.
We have successfully completed our 14 hour layover in Bangkok. Split our time between five different lounges. Four of the five or the CIP lounges and then one was the Omen First Class Lounge. If you're going to spend your time here and you have the priority pass, the Omen first class lounge is probably the best as far as food goes. It's a little small. You want to go to the biggest lounge? I think the best CIP lounge is the one that's by Gate G2.
It has pizza snails.
Carrying way too many pizza snails. We'll just be honest. Did you do it with the excuse that we were about to be hiking Everest so you could eat whatever you wanted?
Sam.
We just made it into Nepal. It took us maybe like an hour and a half to get through customs. But Itrek Nepal, the company that we are trekking with sent somebody to help us through which made the process extremely easy. Way better than just showing up and having it figured out ourselves.
They're all rolling our bags and taking.
Us to our car and now we are heading to our hotel and we were just told that we got an upgrade.
I love you, Nepal.
We just got dropped off at our hotel. The guys are bringing our bags to our rooms and this is our view for the next two days.
This is the room.
This is nice.
All right.
And the balcony is just right over there.
Perfect. So you have a garden facing what a view.
Beautiful.
That's the downtown tallest and highest temple. And when we walk, we go from there by this road. We can go all the way to the city.
Also, this is our first bed in a really long time. I think I'm just going to fall asleep.
Well, big comfy bed got us. Just took a little power nap. Now we're about to meet up with Cherie and go out and see the city.
He's going to take us to get some more passport photos taken because we need them for our checking permits. And then we're going to look for some more batteries for our camera.
So as you can probably see behind me, it's like, really dusty. And that's because it's the dry season here in Nepal. Apparently there hasn't been a big rain here in six weeks, but we're supposed to get one in the next two days. And that's going to be a really good thing because if they do end up getting a big rain, that's going to clear up everything. So the views will be way better.
This is what this temple looked like last year before the earthquake. This is what it looks like now.
How rough?
Pretty rough. Hey, these people look like we normally do.
