First Impressions of Bhutan

Nonnie and I arrived at the Bangkok airport at 4:30am, checked in, and went to the AirFrance lounge for coffee and croissants before boarding our flight to Paro on DrukAir.  The flight was very comfortable; the food was good, and the attendants in their traditional dress were lovely.

On the way we stopped at a military base in some sleepy little town in Darjeeling (India) to let a few passengers off and then thirty minutes later after flying over some spectacular mountains we dropped down into the Paro valley and landed.  As we came down I could see tree covered mountains out of every window.

The drive from Paro to Thimphu took about an hour - the hospital sent a very functional vehicle to meet us and the young driver was calm and careful.  The road was in good condition and followed a river most of the way,  All of the buildings were made of concrete and looked solid, built to last.  Most of the buildings are decorated with interesting painted symbols along with shutters and small architectural details.

Thimphu is the capital city of Bhutan and is proud of the fact that it lacks traffic lights, although I couldn’t see where they would put one.  In the center of town there is a policeman in a booth, but maybe more for photos than for traffic, in any case he is a handy landmark.  There were lots of shops selling souvenirs and handicrafts, but I saw very few foreigners on the streets.

Nonnie went into a five star hotel to rest in the lobby and use the lady’s restroom.  The cost of a room there is $450 per night.  Last night we went to dinner at a local restaurant and the total cost for three of us total was about equal to seven dollars.  Obviously there are two economies at work here and tourists who pay $250 per day see the fancier one.

The hospital where I am working is huge and looks like a monastery.  It too is  concrete with wood trim and lots of exterior pipes and wires.  There are six floors and the medicine ward is on the fifth floor - the elevators are only for patients who can’t walk. In the wards there are six beds in each room with both men and women are in the same rooms.  The medicine team rounds on all 36 patients, many of whom are very complicated.  The overall feeling of the hospital is best described as orderly chaos, but the people are very friendly and helpful.

We share our apartment with another doctor, a family practitioner from Alaska.  The apartment has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a decent sized kitchen, a dining room, and a living room.  Below there is a nice wood floor - above there are horrible neon tube lights.  Last night I counted six dogs sleeping on the stairs leading to our third floor apartment.  As I look out our window now I see cloudy skies, corrugated rusty metal roofs,  rather dingy looking apartments, and on the unpaved road leading up to our building a dozen dogs are sleeping.  So far they seem to sleep all day and bark all night.

So far Bhutan is interesting but not paradise.  That part of Bhutan is somewhere else.