Day 9 in Beautiful Bhutan - 28 November 2008 (a)

Making ourselves at home in Paro - marketing and cooking



This is the Sonam Trophel Hotel where we continued to stay during our 3 days' unscheduled extension in Bhutan - courtesy of Mr Chhimmy of Baeyul Excursions. This morning we went to the Paro Airport again but there was no flight to Kolkata so we returned to the hotel again - to spend another day in Paro. We volunteered to cook for dinner...

Ngoh and Khin outside the hotel entrance. We decided to go marketing for some of our ingredients in Paro town...

No, we did not have to go to the ATM to withdraw money but we did have to change for more local currency - ngultrum(Btn). The exchange rate between US$ and ngutrum was US$1 = 47 to 49 Btn during the time we were in Bhutan. This is a picture of the entrance to an ATM.

And this is what an ATM machine in Bhutan looks like...

A building with an elaborate facade in Paro...

This is a large prayer wheel in the centre of Paro town.
According to the Bhutanese Buddhist tradition, spinning such a wheel will result in the prayers flying to heaven.

The row of shop houses lining the main street in Paro. The shops sell souvenirs, handicrafts, general sundry goods as well as meat.

A group of men playing carrom along one of the streets in Paro town.

Su-lynn showing the young man the Singapore way of arranging the carrom chips...

Then she had a competitive game with...

Yeshi our guide. And in the Bhutan vs Singapore friendly carrom match - guess who won?

In the meantime, Ngoh and Khin were shopping for ingredients for our dinner. The Bhutanese consume lots of dried chillies like the lot in the background shown in this picture. They like spicy food. Bhutan gets most of its supplies of poultry meat, fish and other foodstuffs from India, its helpful and friendly neighbour. In return, Bhutan supplies India with Hydro Electric power - generated from the mountains in the north.

In the meat shop, the board displaying the prices of the different meat and fish as well as the weighing scale.. We bought 2 frozen chickens for our chicken curry and chicken chops dishes.

Waiting for our turn in the meat shop...

Dinner time...

Seen in this picture are from left - a friend of Mr Chhimmy working in Drukair; Mr Chhimmy, the hospitable and generous Managing Director of Baeyul Excursions (our local agent in Bhutan) and Mr _______, owner of the hotel we were staying in.

Khin, the guest cook in the hotel...

The soup - from chicken stock with shredded chicken meat, carrots and radish.

Yummydelicious chicken curry... made more spicy to suit the taste of Mr Chhimmy and the other "guests".

This dish was cooked at Hsiao Yun's request - French beans with minced pork.

Khin's speciality - chicken chop.

Chap chye (mixed vegetables) - we managed to buy Chinese mushrooms and black fungus from a shop that sold many Thai products in Paro town- to cook this Singaporean/ nonya dish.


End of Day 9 (a)