Bhutan Blog II (Paro-->Thimphu)

Another update, in the three-plus weeks it’s been since I put up anything. Actually, not that much has happened in that time, except that there’s been fun and games with a variety of things both work-related and not. I got a call from the State’s Attorney’s Office, either offering me a job or an interview (sounded like the former, for a variety of reasons including mention of pay, but that would be odd without the latter) now that I’d been two weeks at work. I managed to see Neverwhere with Laura on the third try, which was incredible and fantastic. Mr. Croup was what would happen if the eponymous V had been fat and evil; Hunter was badass and moderately sexy; Richard Mayhew was vaguely reminiscent of Neil Patrick Harris; Door played her character a bit too old. This past Tuesday I saw Billy Elliott with Kathy courtesy of Kirkland, which was also fantastic. There was an amusing failure to communicate concerning clothing and formality that resulted in me wearing a suit and being more formal than the ladies coming from their day at the firm. There were games and an increasingly friendly cat (she chilled on my lap for a good ten minutes last night while I was dithering about on the computer). Grades came out. Thursday involved hanging out with various folks after work at vaguely medieval dive bar. Friday contained nerdery, and we actually had a few people show (a nice change of pace); Saturday was rampant cleaning, Borderlands, the drinks portion of Kathy’s birthday party, followed by a game night wherein I successfully flouted GSF4; Sunday held coffee with a boy and starting to read what I now know to be an abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo (I discovered this halfway through, and am rather disappointed); Monday involved a lunch date with Destiny and a panel at Kirkland about the effects of gay marriage on society, whereat I seem to have set myself up as a go-to person for OUTLaw despite not being president. Yesterday I had my class, but more on that in subsequent posts. And now, back to Bhutan.

I should have mentioned in the last blog that we met what became B, C, and D (though it was never quite figured out who was which, as we always counted them as a group): Suzin, Lisa’s friend, and Caroline and [Amanda], their daughters. I can’t really give my first impression of them, as I did not write it down and do not recall it terribly well except as ‘oh. They’re here. Finally. Now we can go to the airport and maybe I’ll sleep on this plane.’

So, last time I left off, the plane had touched down in the airport at Paro. It was delightfully chilly as we got off the plane, and the sun was really damn bright. Someone else has a picture of the first thing I did in Bhutan: stand at the top of the deplaning stairway and take a picture of the airport’s terminal building, which was gorgeous and not at all reminiscent of any terminal I’d ever seen before. We got inside, counted off, went through customs, during which time Bergy nearly had to throw away his cigarettes (but didn’t after he swore he wouldn’t sell them). I went to the shop to by some postcards, and only after I did so did I realize that I’d left my sheet of paper with people’s addresses on it in Chicago. We started to exchange money, but after about a third of the line had done so to their heart’s content, they began to ran out of currency (Ngoltram--or, as we later started calling them, Jigmes or Wangchuks), so they started limiting our exchanges. The exchange was about 45 Wangchuks to the dollar. From there, we collected our luggage and went outside, where we met our guides and buses, and were met with white scarves as a symbol of hospitality. Most people looped them around their necks (they are rather short), although a few tied them around foreheads. We marveled at the luggage movement (from our hands to pile by vans to roof of vans with very little intervening time or--seemingly--movement). We then separated into two groups: those going to Paro to interview Dasho Lungten Dubgyur (the Chief Judge of the Paro District Court) and the rest of the group, who were taking the van directly to Thimphu, where we’d be staying for the next four days. The Legal Process and Constitution groups (less Shanna, who was not feeling well) stayed in Paro, and the rest went on to Thimphu.

A word about our guides. We had two guides and two drivers. Both drivers were named Namgay, though I didn’t learn this until later, and were differentiated from each other by references either to old/young Namgay or to Zala/Mango (Zala is the dzongka name for one of the two types of monkey that live in Bhutan). The guides themselves were named Dechen and Sonam. Dechen’s nickname is Egg, and I don’t think that we ever found out Sonam’s (anyone reading, do correct me if I’m wrong on that one). Each driver stayed in a particular bus, and the guides usually stuck with one, though they seemed to switch every few days, at least for a little while. Sonam was older than the rest (except possibly Zala), and the head of the touring company--Nirvana, which was awesome. He’d also been a candidate for the lower house of parliament for what became the opposition party, but--somehow--he lost. He seems to know pretty much everyone who’s in any way important, shy of the King. Repeatedly, when we expressed interest in doing something, or even just interest in something, he made it happen. Dechen was young--26--and seemed simultaneously both fairly shy and quite curious about us. The latter quality gradually overcame the former, and he seemed particularly interested in me and in Jackie. Next time, I’ll describe our drivers.

So. The rest of them left, and eight of us stayed behind in Paro, with the clothes we’d taken out of our bags to wear to the interview all stuffed into Sabo’s (?) oversized duffel (this can’t be precisely right, but it’s what I recall. I wrote down nothing about this particular detail). We were taken in the small van into Paro, past the first of the really pretty and amazingly badass cantilevered bridges (which were evidently built with the help of German engineers, I seem to remember hearing). When in the town proper, we first encountered murder dogs (all dogs in Bhutan are murder dogs. Sadly, all cats in Bhutan are murder cats. Cute as they all may be, and well behaved and polite as they all were, we were encouraged to not pet them because some portion of the mammalian population are rabid, and it’d be a touchy thing to get back to a hospital that’d have the immunoglobin or whatever is needed to de-rabify one from Bhutan).

We were taken to either someone’s house or a restaurant (I was never quite clear which), though the two are not mutually exclusive, and there we had lunch. In some ways it was one of the more authentically Bhutanese meals we had, insofar as there was butter tea (which Bergy REALLY liked, Sabo and I liked alright, and most of the rest of the people didn’t like that well at all), red rice, and chilis with cheese (evidently the not-quite-for-tourists variety, though I’m not sure we ever really got the honest-to-god Bhutanese variety), which are the principal features of a Bhutanese meal. Additionally, there were a variety of more-or-less Chinese foods, reminiscent of boiled or fried meats or vegetables with sauces. All in all, rather tasty. From there, we took turns going upstairs into one of a few rooms to change.

From there, we drove to the Paro Dzong. A dzong is a large square compound, part fortress, part monastery. They’ve been in continual use since they were built in the 17th century, as a defense against invading Tibetans. Many of them are still monasteries, and most of them also function as seats of regional or local government. Many courthouses are in dzongs—and that’s why we were going to the Paro Dzong, because that’s where the district court for Paro is, and consequently, where we were going to interview Dasho Lungten Dubgyur, the Chief Judge. Before the interview, though, we were shown around the dzong, and Dechen explained a great deal of it to us. There were murals everywhere, generally fantastic, and always related to Buddhism (even the yaks and the elephants). We were shown a Wheel of Samsara (suffering), and had its meaning explained; we saw the first iteration of the Four Friends, and had their meaning explained. Dechen also explained the gist of the prayer flags, and that we’d be seeing them pretty well all over.

After waiting a little bit for Dasho to join us (as well as his sister judge, who sadly didn’t speak much), the interview got started. It was a three hour interview, with two rounds of instant coffee (real coffee being unavailable in Bhutan except for one coffee shop in Thimphu) and tea cookies. Much willpower was necessary to not fall asleep in the middle of the interview--which was actually fascinating. Everyone got to take turns asking their questions, and we more or less ended up getting what we later found to be the party lines on a whole host of issues, but it was a useful first interview nevertheless--in part, I think, because it helped set us up as a mostly harmless group, if overenthusiastic and curious. We told people we wouldn’t publish their comments, so I really can’t give many specifics on the content of the interview, but it covered the range of each of our general topics and particular subtopics (legal process in Bhutan, the Jabmi/lawyer system and distinctions, the Constitution, its history, religion and fundamental rights within the Constitution, the vagaries of the executive and legislative power as spelled out [and not spelled out] by the Constitution, etc.).

After the interview, we watched monks from the monastery dancing in preparation for the upcoming festival (which started in Paro the day after we left the country). We were shown the computer system of the courts, and how everything was centralized, and how the books were kept, and how cases progressed. I took a few more pictures (this should not come as a shock), and we piled back into the little van--I was in the back left, bouncing all the way--and slept much of all of the way (it’s… about an hour’s drive? Hour and a half? Despite having made the trip the most times of the group, I never quite got a handle on it) to Thimphu. We got there, and it was dark, and I, at least, was groggy as shit, and then there was food, and lots of it. We were given our rooms (Morgan and I were in 209), and generally crashed (a note on evenings: I was generally lame and didn’t go out nearly as often as others. You may have to consult their recollections of the trip to gain insight into the shenanigans they got up to). And that was our first half day in Bhutan. At the risk of proceeding at a snail’s pace, I will end here.

“A choice may have to be made, not because language is vague, but because the Constitution embodies the desire of the American people, like most people, to have things both ways. We want order and security, and we want liberty. And we want not only liberty but equality as well. These paired desires of ours can clash, and when they do a court is forced to choose between them, between one constitutional good and another one. The court has to decide which of our approved desires has the better claim, right here, right now, and a court has to do more than read fairly when it makes this kind of choice.” --Justice David Souter (ret.), speaking at Harvard’s commencement.