Bhutan 2013 Dec 22-28 (Day 5)

Today we were supposed to head eastward to Gangtey. As a friend had been there and mentioned that the journey there was very long and bumpy, and the main highlight there was just the Black-necked Crane, we decided against it as we were not bird enthusiasts.

As such, we checked out of Hotel Lobesa and headed westward, back towards Thimphu and Paro for an easy day.

For that, we had to backtrack, past Dochula Pass as there's only 1 road from west to east.

Panoramic shot at Dochula Pass

We reached Thimphu from Dochula Pass in about an hour and headed straight to the GPO for souvenirs. One nice souvenir you can get here is personalized postage stamp. You can actually paste it on a postcard and mail it to anywhere in the world for Nu30.

Personalized stamps from Bhutan

After getting our stamps for relatives and friends, we headed to Paro for lunch and a short walk in Paro.

After "shopping" in Paro, we proceeded to our next destination, the National Museum (aka Paro Ta Dzong). It was originally built as a watch tower and now holds a collection of art, relics, religious thangkha paintings, Bhutan's exquisite postage stamps, coins and handicrafts, together with a small natural history collection.

The grounds at the Museum

The picture show below was the actual museum but it was damaged structurally in an earthquake a few years ago. It is currently undergoing restoration works and looks so much more stately. You can even see the wooden scaffolding preventing the wall from from toppling over.

After this, we checked into our 3rd hotel of the whole trip, and also the best hotel of the whole trip, Metta Resort & Spa.

Main entrance of Metta

They decorated the tree with lights for Christmas

Our 2 bedrooms in the same building

Bathroom with warm air blower. Bliss in winter

Living area with a blower-type heater. So nice and warm

Bedroom

Even had kettle and cupboards in the room

The wife of the boss is actually a Malaysian and we had yummy food that we've been craving. They even had a dessert tray (mango pudding, cakes and cookies), which was missing in the other 2 hotels restaurants.

I was so relieved to finally able to feel nice and warm in our hotel room and had a good night's sleep. Tomorrow will be the most difficult part, but also the highlight of the trip, Tiger's Nest.