Just some of the local people we passed along the way to Namobuddha. I'm always amazed when I'm walking in what I think of the middle of nowhere, and nobody bats an eye at what must look like a pretty strange sight. Certainly if the folks carting those big baskets were walking down the main street of Monroe there'd be plenty of gawkers. But equally strange was my experience in Manila, where I lived for three months in college. The point of this story is not to highlight the fact that my parents let me go live in Manila during the tail end of the Marcos regime, with martial law, a communist insurgency surrounding the city and daily riots and violent clashes with the army. All that, and the lack of electricity and the fact they had no way of contacting me and that I didn't have a way to get home because flights kept getting canceled, is completely irrelevant to the story. My point is that the Philippines had a long history as a US colony and later as a base for the US military so there was a huge American influence there, but wherever I walked in the city I'd immediately attract a crowd of kids calling me Joe, as in GI Joe. I couldn't figure out how the kids could maintain their enthusiasm for this when they saw foreigners constantly, in complete contrast to the Nepalese reaction. That's my point.