How's the Serenity.

After being continuously hassled on the streets of Hong Kong and being convinced that the taxi ride from the airport in Bangkok would be my last, I deicided that I needed to relax. So I blew off the "tourist ghetto" of Thamel in central Kathmandu and headed off for two nights in Bodhanath, the Tibetian enclave about 6 km form the centre of town. It is quite an amazing place. It has the same little alleys filled with people hocking their wares but replace the foul sewer smells of Kowloon with sweet smelling incense and the dodgy hustlers with Buddhist monks. At the centre of town is a massive buddhist monument and at dusk the whole community comes out to circle it in clockwise direction, they just stroll around spinning the prayer wheels and chatting. Even the stray dogs in this place have a look of calm contemplation on their faces. The Hostel I'm is run by a monastry and the lousy monks next door woke me up with their drumming and tibetian horns, but it's really quite hard to stay angry at a bunch of monks.