Seat of Our Pants » Expats

Check-out Stand Three

Jaime — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:01:55 +0000

We live in the area of Kathmandu that is outside the tourist-rich Thamel district (see the picture below – yikes). We’re not so far outside the tourist area that our activities at the local grocery store need be stared at by these ladies.

No, they weren’t buying anything. Their job, as far as I could tell, was to crowd the check-out stand and comment on our purchases. Just another Saturday night in Kathmandu for the Engstroms.

Deep in the heart of the Thamel district - Kathmandu

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What NOT to buy in Nepal

Jaime — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:58:10 +0000

Without realizing what we’d done, Martin and I just bought the world’s most expensive Guinness bought from a grocery store. The $10/can price tag went unnoticed because we were buying a big load of groceries and just figured it had added up.

Um, no.

A receipt review at home showed us that our four big grocery bags were filled with $40 worth of beer and $10 worth of other groceries. Ouch.

So, here’s my little piece of advise to those of you traveling in Nepal who want to buy ale – don’t buy Guinness, ever.

Our Last Week In Nepal We gave ourselves three months in Nepal to get started...

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Kathmandu Expat move #1 – Figuring Out How to Buy Food

Jaime — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:39:50 +0000

Grocery shopping may seem like a no-brainer but we’ve spent the last two days figuring out how the food store system works here. Fortunately our landlord was nice enough to have stocked our fridge with a few necessities, which got us through the worst of the confused time. We’ve learned some, but I’ve gotta admit – we’re still not savvy shoppers. Not by a long shot.

It seems the products we buy are dispersed between three different stores. One shop sells only fruit, another only vegetables. There is a rare hybrid of the two which sells both, but we’ve only found one and haven’t been able to find it again (the streets are narrow and maze-like around here!). The third shop is larger and sells all things that are not fruits or vegetables.

Kathmandu general store

Meat is a whole other story. It’s sold from a garage door type store (one minute its a wall with a door then the door lifts up and viola! its a store). Refrigeration, though available, doesn’t seem to be used. Why keep meat chilled, really? Bleh. You get the picture. You now also know why we’ve opted to be vegetarian while we’re here. Neither of us can stomach buying the meat, let alone eating it.

Kathmandu meat store - if you look closely, you'll see they offer goat's head

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Livin’ Large – Our Kathmandu Apartment in Video

Jaime — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:29:58 +0000

You’ve been begging (not really). You’ve been pleading (actually no one – other than my mom, hi mom! – has said a word). And it’s finally here! The much anticipated (m-hm) video of our new Kathmandu apartment!

Enjoy. Sorry to keep you waiting (not really).

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Kathmandu, Nepal – Home for Now

Jaime — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:34:23 +0000

As Martin and I have both hit on in the last few posts, we’re going to live in Kathmandu for three months. The bags have been unpacked, the fridge has been stocked with delicious food and we’re working toward making this apartment a creative wonderland.

Well, that may be overstating things a bit, but what we are doing is settling into life here and trying our best to wrap our brains around not traveling for a while.

In a nasty turn of events, I’ve been nearly bed ridden with the dreaded traveler’s tummy – so the exploring has been kept to a minimum. It should clear up in a few days, but isn’t that just the way the world works? We’ve been on the road for almost 6 months now and I haven’t had any trouble with my stomach. The minute we settle down for a spell, I am debilitated.

Anyway, my next adventure is meeting our neighbors – and though that may sound incredibly boring, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I am terrible at meeting people and almost never give a good impression on the first go. So my mission here is to bake the neighbors some cookies and try to bribe my way into their lives.

I’ll keep you updated on that and the many other adventures we’ll have just as soon as I can leave the vicinity of the toilet.

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It’s Official!

Jaime — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:38:45 +0000

We’re moving into a great two bedroom apartment today in Lazimpath, an area just north of Kathmandu city. We’ll fill you in on the details tomorrow, but for now I wanted to put up a photo of what I’m most excited about – the kitchen.

Though it might sound fun, eating in restaurants for 6 months straight can become very boring. We’re going to cook up a storm in this place, oh and try to write a couple novels.

Stay tuned for updates on life as a short term expat in Kathmandu!

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House Hunting

Jaime — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:39:14 +0000

We’re in the process of trying to become short term expats in Kathmandu and I must say that its proving harder than I thought. We arrived, hoping to find notice boards, signs or publications with rental listings, as we’ve seen in other expat-heavy locations. We’ve found none of these things.

We’re most likely missing something. I’m sure there’s an obvious way that people do this, but since we operate the way that we do (most often rather awkwardly), we’re at a loss.

The one source we’ve found is this site, which lists properties for rent. We’ve stalked the agent (in the photo above) that runs the site and though it is a festival day, he was nice enough to show us two places today.

Big house exterior

One was a three bedroom mansion which was FAR too much house for the two of us. The second one was billed as a full service apartment (it has a cleaning service, full time security guard, etc) but looked more like a hotel than most of the hotels we’ve stayed in. We’re trying to get away from living in hotels for a while – it’s sort of the point of this house hunt.

Exterior of full service apartment

Neither place seemed right, so we’re looking again tomorrow. Until then, we’re drowning our house hunting sorrows in a healthy dose of day drinking. It’s festival day, after all!

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