It felt great to wake up in a bed after four nights of camping. It was so much easier to get out of bed when it's not below zero outside the blankets.
There were two large groups taking up the rest of the hotel, and the restaurant didn't have enough room to hold everyone eating at once, and so we had to come back down 30 minutes later for our breakfast. Breakfast was pretty good - à la carte, as opposed to the buffet for the groups.
First on the list of touristing for the day was Buddha Dordenma, a 50m tall Buddha overlooking the city. This was quite impressive, even though we've seen some big Buddhas on this trip. The inside will eventually hold 125,000 statues of Buddha, which was about 50% completed and looked cooler to us than Pindaya in Myanmar.
Next was a stupa that you could walk into (one of two in Bhutan). This was okay; the cool part was all the elderly walking around chanting their mantras.
We then visited a heritage museum where we were dressed up in traditional garments and tried out archery (albeit only about 10m, not the 140m in competition). Heather hit the target; I was happy just to not maim anyone.
We rushed to the post office to get there before noon, under the mistaken impression it was Saturday. Turns out it was Friday, so we didn't need to rush. We got personalized stamps made up on the spot - they even have USB cables to connect to my iPhone to download the pic we wanted. Bought some postcards which we'll have to write at some point.
Had lunch, and then visited a couple factories. First was a paper making place that was way more interesting than the one we saw in Myanmar. This one was an actual factory as opposed to a made-for-tourists place.
The incense factory was really cool. I've never put any thought to how incense I made. Well now I know. Various ingredients are made into a pulp, which is squeezed into long strands about 1/4" thick. The workers then roll and cut to the final length, and it's dried in batches on boards. The finished product is packaged in bamboo containers for selling. It was fascinating, and smelled great.
Because it was Friday and not the weekend, we had to wait until 4:30pm to visit Trashi Chhoe Dzong, the highlight of Thimpu. (The king works there until 4:30pm so you can't enter till he goes home).
To pass the time we visited the Weekend Market, a well-organized market. Our guide was great at pointing out the various fruits and vegetable we had eaten. I was thinking it would be useful to have a guide take me through Loblaws or TnT back home in Toronto to explain what everything is. Half then stuff we saw in the market is sold at home, I just had no idea what it was or what to do with it.
Finally it was 4:30 and we went to Trashi Chhoe Dzong. It's an impressive fortress, and we were lucky to see the tail end of the changing of the guard.
For dinner we went to a place a little outside the centre that served momos (dumplings). I first had momos in Tibet about 20 years ago, and had a hankering after seeing a lot of restaurants advertising them. The momos were great, along with a bunch of other dishes.
Back at our hotel we crashed pretty early, around 9:30pm. I suppose this was late compared to the 8pm on the trek, it's all relative.
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