The people waiting at the embassy gate were mainly Israel tourists looking for visas. I guess they are the among the only westerners (I know they live in the Middle East... :-) that need visa for entering Thailand. When I said I was the guy that had lost a sack in a taxi, they conduced me to the consul, who handed me the sack and told me I was very lucky. The taxi driver had delivered the sack some days after the loss. He might have been induced by the Thai air ticket. Absolutely nothing was missing. The driver had not leave anything else than his name and an address that seemed incomplete.

After leaving the embassy I went to Darbar Marg, to obtain some cash for the last hour shoppings. It took me more than an hour and a half, as there was some problem with the telex or whatever they used for confirming the authorizations. The bank looked quite modern and well equiped, nothing like the other banks we had seen.

I had still time to do some shopping before went to meet Maria Jose in Tashi Deleg. I spent quite some time talking with a shop keeper nearly in front of the Immigration Office. He was one of the only nepalis that knew about my country. He seemed very well informed, although he thought that Portugal was a rich country. He had some difficulty in understanding how a country from West Europe, formerly a colonial empire and, above all, with such a large maritime coast, could not be rich. I guess we weren't very good in growing rich by means of our colonial explotation... I found very interesting his conviction that sea means wealth - one must not forget that Nepal is land locked and that should have served as excuse for less successful economical politics. Well, maybe sometimes that isn't only an excuse, I guess that not having access to the sea and being sandwiched between two giants is far from being an advantage or something easy to deal politically. In certain situations, this kind of isolation may proof worse than for islands - these don't need other countries to go anywhere, just boats. I loved Nepal, but I think I wouldn't stand being far from the sea too long - although I was born and spent my childhood and youth 200 Km away from the seaside, I miss the sea a lot if I am too long without seeing it.

After lunch we went to see Swayambhunath, also known as the temple of the monkeys - in fact there are lots of them, and quite bold also. The temple and a number of stupas surroundig the main one stands on the top of a steepy hill overlooking the whole town - one has an excelent view over the town from there that seems like a reward for the climbing of all those stairs. However, the place lacks the mistic atmosphere of Boudnath - I'd advice anyone to see Boudnath after visiting Swayambhunath to avoid a little sense of delusion induced by the visual similarities between the two which has no correspondence in the ambience.

We spent the rest of the afternoon doing some shoppings and wandering around. We had already decided to make most of our shoppings in our Kashmiri friends' shop. They deserved it and the trust we had in them spared us the bargaining. If you want to pay them a visit, the name of the place is "Crafts de Classic", it's shop nr. 9 in Chhetrapati, Thamel, near J.P. School, not far from Sherpa Guesthouse in the direction of Darbar Square (South). You can mention you knew of them by me, I'm sure they'll remember the portuguese guy who lost his passport. I bought them a leather jacket, a small carpet, a shawl for my grandmother and some minor things.

We went to dinner with Mansoor, one of the Kashmiri brothers, at the fancy restaurant of Hotel des Annapurnnas, in Darbar Marg. We had invited the other brothers too, but they couldn't come. We had an excelent meal of indian food and a good time too. We weren't used to such luxuries, specially in Nepal - in fact we were the only persons with a "normal Nepal tourist look" in the place, as most of the others customers were dressed quite formally (some even had ties :-). We talked a lot about the situation in Kashmir, how is life of people there and their food. Mansoor was a nice company. In spite of all the luxury, if I remember it well, we paid less than 2000 ruppees for the 3 dinners - a fortune compared to our other dinners, but that would be the price of any meal in a common portuguese restaurant (a little bit on the cheap side, I should note).