Hotel Green Park, Part II

Remember this place?

In the Himalayas above Pokhara, the first rays of dawn illumine Macchapucchre

Yes, Nepal.  I live here.  Remember, that’s a lot of why the puppy has been so sick.  Kathmandu sanitation not so good.

(Again, today, Alaska’s marginally better, still happy and playing and stomach slightly improved.  Hooray medicine!)

Back before our little Alaskan Himal got so sick, we spent a few days away from her gazing at the massive Himalayas all around Pokhara.  And I put up a post about the exterior of the Hotel Green Park, where we stayed.  Here’s the companion post, for its interior.

We actually stayed in two different rooms while we were in Pokhara.  Apparently, since we arrived later than they expected on our first day there, they’d assigned the room reserved for us to someone else.  The next day, they offered to move us into their nicest room.

Really, the two rooms weren’t that different.  And they were neither awesome nor terrible.  The “nicer” room had a better view of Macchapucchre Himal, though the view from the first room had been impressive enough.  It also had an actual tub in the bathroom, as opposed to the simple spout and drain for showering in the first room.  Still, both cost only about $20 a night, and at that rate, absolutely nothing in the US could beat them.

The queen-sized bed in our room at the Hotel Green Park. There was also a double bed against the opposite wall.

The bed was a little too hard, but not so uncomfortable as to keep us from sleeping.  The sheets and blankets and pillows were clean, and warm enough even in the chilly nights.  (There was neither heat nor air conditioning, but there was a ceiling fan that cooled things off nicely in the heat of the day.)

A coat hanger, chairs, and working color TV with cable.

The TV worked fine — except, it was initially missing a remote.  When we let them know about the problem, instead of bringing us a remote, they brought us a different TV… with a remote!  Both TVs functioned just fine, with good quality images, and I watched a Bollywood movie and parts of various soap operas in Hindi.  We also watched CNN and the BBC.  Quite a luxury for us, since we can’t even get television signals in our house here in Kathmandu!  (We live far enough outside the city center that the cable lines don’t yet run this far.  Apparently, we live in the urban sprawl part of Kathmandu, where productive farmland lay not too many years ago.  I do feel a twinge of guilt over it, though we didn’t build the house here or even pick it out, and we’re certainly crowded in with plenty of Nepali neighbors on every side.)

The most… interesting… part of the hotel room was the bathroom.  Ants had somehow tunneled their way up to it, though we were on the third floor.  And the room wasn’t quite clean enough for my standards, and the toilet splashed alarmingly with every flush–good to make sure the lid was down before touching the lever!  But, again, for $20 a night, it wasn’t bad.

Um, the mirror's cock-eyed, and so's the toilet lid... but everything works!

Yes, there's a bathtub too.

So, overall, for $20 a night, in Pokhara, Hotel Green Park’s definitely a decent place to stay!

Nepali of the day:

himal:  snow-covered mountain

bahira:  outside

bhitra:  inside

kotha:  room

sutnu:  to sleep

sutna kotha:  bedroom

charpi:  bathroom/toilet

Hotel Green Park, Pokhara

[BTW, the bandh was over by Friday.  As usual, daily there are small protests around the Kathmandu Valley, but no Valley-wide bandh since Thursday.  I haven’t heard any real resolution to the issue in Nepali Politics 104, but perhaps just the government’s assurance that they would investigate the issue has calmed the grievances.]

My ever present problem here is that I take more pictures than I could possibly post; yes, we have days of fairly boring routine, but each occasional trip supplies enough pictures and events to keep me busy for days and weeks.  I never finished putting up the details of our trip to Bhaktapur, for example–and we’re going there again in 2 weeks, and I’ll probably again end up with even more to post then.

Over the weekend, too, we ascended halfway up our Pretty Mountain Hill (which is actually named Shivapuri, remember?), and I have limitless pictures of that trip, too.  Not quite as bad as Pokhara, though–I have 800 pictures just from the first 2 days there, and trying to choose the best to post, and the way to describe the events, is bewildering.

At the very least, today I want to make sure I include some information on our hotel–especially since the hotel itself doesn’t have its own website.  So, though we had a good recommendation from a friend, I was a bit leery about heading to a $20 a night hotel, sight unseen.

The hotel where we stayed in Pokhara, the Hotel Green Park.

But it actually turned out to be perfectly fine.  The building exteriors were kept up well…

One of the twin buildings that make up the Hotel Green Park.

…and the courtyard garden was absolutely gorgeous.

A view of the courtyard from a second floor walkway.

And how was the interior?  Well, given that the internet has been acting up again, and I’d prefer to go to sleep before 11 (especially if the goofy puppy is going to wake us up twice in the night again, like she suddenldy did last night), you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow!

Nepali of the Day:

hariyo:  green

koTha:  room

-ko:  possessive particle, like adding ‘s to a word in English

sasto:  inexpensive

mahengo:  expensive

Hotel Green Park-ko koTha-haru ekdam sasto chhan.

Hotel Green Park sundhar chha.