After surviving my intitial night in Kathmandu, I moved to a southern suburb called Patan for a couple nights. This is Patan Durbar Square, and the view from my guest house window. An interesting place. At one point there was a dance competition, where people from different nationalities displayed their traditional dances. The Indians, Pakistanis, and Nepalis were all fairly obvious. Then came the Americans. It was a group of fat ugly white women, dressed up in ostentatiously fake arab costumes, veils and all, doing embarresingly bad versions of belly dancing. I can only assume that it was a misguided attempt at stating American multi-culturalism by stupid uber-liberal expat NGO workers who have probably never danced before. I haven’t felt so embarresed to be American since we invaded re-elected Bush. fortunately, by this point, my beard was so long that most people just assumed I was Muslim, so my obvious disdain for the performance was most likely mistaken as directed towards Americans making fun of my people, rather than embarresment. The Austrians were next, and stole the show with quite an amazing dance performance that earned them a standing ovation and made me feel even worse.
