Katmandu living

the van de Wiel/Schou Hansen family blog


It has now been quite a long time since I last published a post here on the blog, but things have been quite busy here in Nepal leaving us no time. First of all we have had almost a month where we constantly had visitors - first Lieke’s parents came and after that we had our old friends from New York, now living in Hong Kong, Simone and Dominic with their kids Max and Jack. In-between I managed to get a bad infection in my knee and had to get admitted to the hospital for 4 days – However we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here so lets step back a bit.


At the end of March Lieke’s parents came to Nepal as a part of their Asian roundtrip to visit all their expat children and grand children. When they where checking out tickets in the Netherlands they found out the best connection to Nepal would be over Hong Kong, which made it possible for them to visit Lieke’s brother and his family at the same time. So they arrived here in Nepal after having spent 4 or 5 days in Hong Kong first, which turned out well for us as they had already recovered from the worst part of the Jetlag when they came here. Much time was used on enjoying the grandkids but we also managed to see some of the sights in Kathmandu.


While Opa and Oma was here I managed to develop some kind of infection in my knee and though trying to ignore it I ended up going to a doctor on the second day – After looking at the knee he admitted me to the hospital right away for bed rest and antibiotic IV – It was very strange – I have never been admitted to a hospital before in my life (I was even born at home so this was the first time I had to spend the night) and this was quite a cultural experience. No food was provided so I had to get Lieke or one of the Didis to come to the hospital 3 times a day with food. I didn’t get any visitors from all the “western” we have gotten here, but pretty much every Nepali that I have ever met came to the hospital (this includes our night guard which I hardly ever see as he is on from 22.00 every night). I had gotten a deluxe suite in the hospital, so though it was at times hard and I was in pain, I could unlike at home enjoy electricity and television 24/7 – So I came home fully updated on all my sit-coms.


With a short overlap with Oma and Opa (we have now tested the house for capacity and we managed to easily fit 6 grown-ups and 4 children here) Simone and Dominic and their kids Max and Jack came to Nepal in the beginning of April. With them we made an overnight trip to Nagakot and also managed to visit Bakhtapur, besides some sightseeing in Kathmandu. It was nice to catch up with them – last time we were together was in Mexico where we met up at clubmed. We still hope that we will be able to visit them in Hong Kong later this year.

Lieke and the kids in the hotel pool - It was 38c while we were in Bangkok so we spent quite some time in the pool

The kids at the Grand Palace

After the Ciafardinis had returned to Hong Kong we took off for Bangkok. Due to the state of the health service here in Nepal (which I have now had a first hand impression of) it is fairly easy to get medical evacuation from the UN for procedures that is not done in Nepal. Last summer while we were in the Netherlands we had Liva tested for growth hormone deficiency. As you need at least two test to fully prove or disprove deficiency, and they do not do this test in Nepal, we got a trip paid to Bangkok (that is, Liva and me got it paid – we had to pay for Joop and Lieke combined it with a trip she was on the Kuala Lumpur). We of course almost had to cancel the trip because of the riots on Bangkok, but luckily the “red shirts” decided to stop their protest 5 days before we left. Much of the time in Bangkok was of course used in the hospital where the whole family got checked up for all our ailments (The kids for GHD and me for my knee). Luckily the hospital was very nice and had everything you could ask for, including a McDonalds which was a hit with the kids. We also managed to see some of Bangkok – We went up the river to see where I used to live, saw the old grand palace, went to a IMAX movie, saw the children museum and the Aquarium and even managed to go the Build a Bear workshop. Besides that we did lots of shopping – the deals were absolutely amazing. So all in all we had a very nice trip – However, the best part of the trip was that both kids were found to have sufficient Growth Hormone. So the doctor has now told them that they have to eat better, which of course gives Lieke and I much more ammunition when they don’t want to empty their plates.

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