There are lots of things to see and do in and around Thimphu, but no visit to this city would be complete without a visit to the Big Buddha, more formally known as Buddha Dordenma. This gigantic bronze statue of Buddha sits on top of a large Buddhist Temple, and has a very large courtyard for the gathering of the faithful. It is located high up on the side of the Wang Chhu valley on a specially built flattened area of land at the end of a specially built road. A massive effort that started in 2006 and was competed in 2015. The statue, which is made entirely of bronze, cost US$47 Million and was paid for by Rinchen Peter Teo a Singaporean businessman and the whole project cost US$100 Million. The temple under the statue makes provision for the Buddhist faithful to make dedications in the form of small statues of the Buddha housed permenantly in the temple. Currently there are 100,000 8 inch statues and 25,000 12 inch statues.

We were surprised to see the prevalence of traditional dress. The traditional garments are called Gho for men and Kira for women and they are very wide spread even for children. We learned from our guide that, while not legally manditory, traditional dress is expected in any kind of business, office work or school situation. So in the main streets of Thimphu it seemed more common than western dress.

We also found out from our guide that building regulations as well as current tastes ensure that while new buildings (of which there are many under constructions) may use some new materials like concrete traditional style is required.

The above two observations explain the next institution we visited. It is an arts and craft school where year 10 students are learning various of the traitional crafts such as wood carving, painting, weaving of traditional cloth, embroidrry, tailoring, silver smithing and more. Initially we wondered how these students would make a living with these traditional crafts but the drive to maintain traditional dress, religion and building styles will require many crafts men and women going forward.

The visit to the craft school was also interesting from the point of view of the discipline and concentration we observed. As I said above these students are year 10 which means 15-17 yet the work rooms were silent, there was no chatter between students, generally they were sitting on the floor doing their work in silence with deep concentration.

Lunch was at Swiss Restaraunt. There is a long story to this restaraunt but started with a Swiss National deciding to make Bhutan his home. We have seen that story in many countries.