Airport Security

Today I went on a very short (work related) mini-break down south, to the hot and tropical Indian boarder... it was great! Very few cars... rickshaws everywhere so nice and peaceful...

...flat... would you believe so flat it reminded me of the bodge... not sure how many people would think the photo below is Nepal? The international image of Nepal is so focused on Everest and the Himalayas... but down south its flat as a pancake!

and clean... lovely lovely...

Anyways my flight down there was delayed due to a suspected bomb on a Qatar airways flight coming in from Doha, which caused the domestic and international airport to shut down for a couple of hours. Turned out to be a total hoax, however I was amused by the following quote in the paper about the it "Officials said security has been tightened following the incident". Ok so I wasn't flying international, but domestic security involved the lady prodding my laptop bag and asking me if I was carrying any knives. As I am not my 8 year old cousin who always seems to be armed, the answer was negative. She waved me through without looking in the laptop bag or my backpack. tum de dum... not sure airport security was tightened here! They do sort of scan your luggage when you go into the airport, but I'm not totally convinced about that process either...

Along the same lines I was chatting to a lady on the plane, and she was telling me how she once was on the same plane as the US ambassador to Nepal. Now America is not the Maoists favourite nation, and embassies in general, and US embassies in particular are like forts. Ambassadors have security guards etc. So anyways ambassador man gets on the plane with his security people, but the lady I was talking to said no one even looked in her bag... how lax is that? You would really think security would be tightened in such situations... but apparently not!

Crazy country!