We Didn’t Expect This in Bhutan! (hiking tigers nest)

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. Hi, we're Stephen, Jess, Hunter and baby Koa. And welcome to the grand finale of our experiences right here in Bhutan. Thought of as one of the last authentic countries in the world. Look at this, Steve. Oh, wow. The culture of this place is unique at every corner. Is he so big, Hunter? And visiting a traditional school shows us Hunter fits right in with the Bhutanese kids. The uniqueness doesn't stop there, because this nation is simply breathtaking. The national sport here in Bhutan is archery. But that's not all. So if you type the country Bhutan into Google, one image pops up. Tiger's Nest, a monastery suspended at the top of a mountain. For years I've seen this photo and I never thought I'd be visiting it. Wow, is that it up there? Wow. It looks so epic. It's experiences like this that you can only get in Bhutan. Good morning to another beautiful day here in Bhutan. Steve, come this way. When we woke up this morning, we opened up our blinds to the most beautiful view. We have the mountains behind us covered in rice terraces. And we just saw they were hitting the gong down at the temple below. And we saw all the monks running from their house into the temple. Had to come down to check out the temple before we left. So beautiful. Should we go inside, Hunter? Should we check it out? You know we're about to go inside a temple when there is a pile of shoes out front. Oh, and the giant temple. Wow, that was absolutely incredible. Of course, with the temples, you can't film inside. But there's about a dozen or so monks upstairs, all students, all kids, playing drums, horns, chanting. Hunter was getting into it. She started dancing because she was just feeling it. Wow, that was absolutely incredible. So this morning, we're actually going to go check out a local Bhutanese school. Let's go get some treats. Let's go get some chocolates for the kids. I just love, though, how the local supermarket, everything's a bit of a trek. I feel like it's just a room in someone's house. You can hold that one. Very helpful. I love chocolates. Now we go down to the school. Should we go find our friends? Yeah. Have you got so many little treats? You're very kind. How many lollies do you think is in there? Two. Two? There's two jars, but how many do you think is inside the jars? Lots of them. Nice to meet you. My teacher here. Oh, hey. Thank you for letting us come and visit. He's a teacher at the school, Hunter. Nice to meet you. Hello. I'm Stephen. Stephen. Thank you for letting us come. Welcome to our school. This school was established in 1961. OK. So we've come down to a local school. Hunter wanted to meet all the kids and give them a little treat. Say thank you, everyone. Say bye-bye. OK. We can go in. Say hello. Good morning. Say bye-bye. Let's find more kids. Oh, good morning, everyone. Nice to meet you. We've flown all the way from Australia. She really wanted to give you all a little treat. Are you ready, Hunter? Yeah, we can give it to you. Here they all come. Oh, they're all running down the main road. Let's go. So we've arrived just before lunch break. So they're all leaving their classrooms. And we are following them to see where they have lunch. Hello. So everyone's just broken for lunch. It looks like that they come and line up. And the food's all cooked for them. And they're all grabbing their meals. There's about 800 students here. It is a massive operation. And even just to feed all of these kids, I couldn't imagine how big that operation is going to be. Wow, the small lunchroom to fit everybody in. Hunter was like, where's my rice? Can I please join in? So she's having lunch with the kids. OK, you've all done. You're going to be clean. Place 102 of all the places to feed cows. I love how it's like all the girls come check out the baby. Yeah, they think you're pretty fast for three. You want to do it again? Say, come on, everyone. I can't believe she's gone pretty fast. Hunter, guess whose house we've come to for lunch. Who do you think's house this is? The driver's house. It is the driver's house. This is a good guest. The driver has kindly invited us to come to his house. So welcoming. Beautiful spot as well. Oh, he has like a million dollar views. So nice. We have got some potatoes with some, looks like some curry sauce on there with cauliflower. We've got beans and carrot and ginger and chili, rice of course, chili and oh no, spinach and cheese and chili. And then if there isn't enough chili, we have a gigantic four sized cup of chili. I feel like these have been like the go-to meals that we've been served if we come to someone's house. Of course, if you eat meat, I think normally there's also a meat dish. Yeah, we've been really enjoying the food. It reminds me a little like some places where there's been like dal and curries. So it's got like that Indian influence, I feel like. But yeah, it's been really tasty. So the national sport here in Bhutan is archery and just brushing up on my skills, you know, that we learned in Mongolia. And we're just going to do a little bit of archery today. We're just at our driver's house. He casually just has an archery station set up. He's probably training for the Olympics, I reckon. Whoa, oh, that's a good job. I'm going to do it. You want to do it? All right, so I'm going to help you. Ready? Hunter, look at your target. And let go, Hunter. Good work, Hunter. Oh, no. Whoa. Good work, Hunter. I'll be shooting for my own target. All right, where are you aiming for? This way. This way, OK. Count me down. 1, 2, 3, 4. Let go. Maybe we need to pull it back even further. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. OK, and top. Oh, here comes the master. The master archer, let's see. He's going to shoot all the way to that one. Oh, see, I think these are some of my favorite days of travel. You really don't have anything planned. It's not like you're going off to see a landmark. We literally just woke up this morning, went to a school. Now we're just hanging out, doing some archery. Like, there's zero plans to get anything done today. But you're just experiencing it all. And it's just great. What? No way. That's 10 points for that one. How did you get that? Hunter, look where he... No way, that's so good. Otherwise, you would have lost it in the rice field. So the competition is 145 meters from here to the first target. And they got pretty close. You got it. Oh, wow. So good. This one is my first arrow. And this one is the second arrow. Two arrows are in front. So good. Those limes or whatever they are, Citron, what do you call them? Pomelos, I think. So we just checked into the most beautiful guest home. The owner was just telling us that it is actually owned by her grandparents. And basically, the way it's built is that there's a temple. And then he had two wives. I think she said two sisters that he married to. And so one side of the house is one sister. And one side of the house is the other sister. Yeah, we just checked in. It is another farm to table, which I think has been our favorite kind of thing to do here in Bhutan. You might just love it because it just feels so traditional, so authentic that you're really staying. Also, we're going to be able to make an entire... Oh, we have so many of these now. Let me get the book. History class with Hunter. All right, where's the king of Bhutan? Can you tell us what you read? What's it about? Come show us. Which one's the king? Oh, him a king. Oh, okay. Him dressing up like a king. He's dressed up like a king? Yeah, I have a video on him hat. Oh, he does have a really cool hat. So I thought this would be just like a quiet, relaxing day. Whoa, want a pomegranate? See what's inside, Hunter? Package of toast. What's in the gigantic bowl? This is Bhutanese pizza. Oh, Bhutanese pizza. Yum. Oh, wow, they make it with the base as rice. That looks so cool. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. That looks awesome. Hunter, they made us Bhutanese pizza. That looks so unique, Steve. There's something cool about this place as well, is that all the rice they use here is from the rice terraces just down there. They just harvest them, have their own rice. They actually store them just like in traditional days underneath the house. There's a bunch of rice grains under there. Tuck in. Oh, and there's the pomegranate. Yum. What does it taste like? Should we try it? So you get the little piece of pomegranate and you eat them and they pop in your mouth. You like them, it's juicy. It's got a little seed in the middle though. So you kind of just like pop the juice and spit out the seed. Can you get the juice out? I don't like the seed. We'll have some pizza with it. Can you show us how you're meant to eat it? Yeah, you just pick it out. Wow, that's so cool. All vegetarian. And the paste is made up with perilla seeds as the base. And a little bit of salt and an omelette on top. And the paste is made with a lot of butter. But it's very tasty. Yeah, it sounds tasty. And Jordan, the vegetarian, she's the one who made the pizza. Oh, thank you very much. Oh, I'm excited to try it. Let's see. It's called a mengi. Mengi. Very flavorsome. That's yummy. Thank you. That's really yummy. Yeah, yummy for us. But good. It's yummy, isn't it? It's quite cool because the guest house that we're staying at, they have their own temple. As I said before, the house is kind of divided. So the temple in the middle and one house on one side, one house on the other. And we haven't been able to film inside any temples. But because this is a private temple, we're allowed to show you guys a little sneak peek of kind of what they've been looking like. So you see you've got a Buddha here and then all the walls have been painted. They've covered them up just to protect them. So I'm sure they're getting quite old now. But you can always, you can see that all the temples, they're like beautifully colored, all painted from the ceiling all the way to the walls. So impressive that they can have temples like this within their homes. It's a three story temple. And we're just asking, this is a very just middle class family. But of course, they still have quite a dedication here to Buddha. And yeah, it's amazing how large their houses are. They're huge. Yeah, so big. And that's what I asked. I said, was this like a kind of like a well-off family? And she just said it was middle class. So they worked for the king. I think afterwards, the king let them choose some land and they built here. That's cool. So all the paintings, this is what we've been seeing. It's usually depictions of different stories of Buddha, beautifully painted. I'm sure I can show you guys a little bit here because it's more to protect from like the flies and the bugs. You can see how beautiful the paintings are. They said they haven't touched these. These would be like 80 years old. Wow. Look at this state. Oh, wow. The people from the community come. That's gorgeous. Is he so big, Hunter? Look at his beautiful face. It was built with the house. Late 40s, 50s. Good, very gentle. Let's see. So cute. Put this in here. Then you can leave it here. Oh, no. See you. Safe trip. Hey, everyone. We just wanted to quickly say a massive thank you to Squarespace for their continued support of our channel. So if you are new around here, Squarespace is the amazing all-in-one platform where you can easily put together a website or blog. We've been easily putting together blog posts thanks to Squarespace's award-winning template designs. So if you are new around here, interested in setting up a website, a link below so you can get a free trial plus 10% off your first purchase. Now let's head back to the travels. Good morning, everybody. We've woken up for our official last morning here in Bhutan. It's misty. It is moody. It has got a nice chill in the air. I'm excited for this morning because we have probably the thing to do here in Bhutan. The one thing we've been looking forward to the entire trip and we've saved it for lucky last like a yummy dessert. It's going to be so worth it when we get there. It's really cool. So they're going to tie you one, okay? And then you get to hang on like a backpack. Is it cool? Show dad, show your backpack, yeah? Thumbs up. You ready for the hike? Look at your cool little backpack. So if you type the country Bhutan into Google, one image pops up, tiger's nest. And today it is our last day here in Bhutan. And I think we've saved the best for last because today we're going to be hiking up to tiger's nest. Now this monastery is built 900 meters above the ground. It's a 6.5 kilometer return trip. A lot of elevation, 3000 meters above sea level. And ST is kindly assisting with the package. Let the hike start. And Mr. Koa bear, this is a win in the future. If you're ever feeling a bit sad and you're like, dad, you don't do nothing for me. Buddy, I carried you to tiger's nest. I'm using my umbrella as a walking stick. If you guys are inspired to come to Bhutan and inspired after this vlog to come to tiger's nest and you feel like you can't do the hike, there are horses and donkeys you can hire to take you up. But this year, it's all about seeing what limits we can do as a family. Wow, is that it up there? It looks so epic because this is like our first overcast cooler day today. And you can just see it in the mist up there. How epic is that? Oh, this is like, for years I've seen this photo and I never thought I'd be visiting it. But this also almost feels like Taj Mahal pyramid vibe. Do I look sweaty? Yes, it is raining. So maybe it's a bit of sweat and a bit of rain. But we are almost halfway there. To be honest, I know I'm not the one carrying Hunter. It's not as hard as I thought, but I am not carrying that much. I feel like if I was carrying like a big backpack or a Hunter or maybe a Koa, it would be a bit trickier. How are you doing, dude? Is he happy? He's happy. We're almost halfway, guys. There's a cafeteria and I feel like a nice cup of tea. The tea's been really good here. Hunter, want to spin around the pro wheel? He likes the colours of the pro wheel. Didn't say I hiked to Tiger's Nest? It says I hiked up to Tiger's Nest in Bhutan. Tea time. Honestly, I know we don't get a view today, but it is fine. I would much rather be hiking when it's overcast with a sprinkle of rain than in the beating hot sun. Because I don't know if you guys have been at elevation, but at 3000 meters, you're a bit closer to the sun and it is a lot hotter. So this is much more enjoyable. That's the best tea I've ever had. That's probably average tea. We've been hiking for an hour and a half. It tastes so good. Do you want to know where we're hiking to? Can you see the building up there? Have you been too silly? Hunter, I'm just happy you're here. Sillies and all. I'd rather you be silly than with me here. Why do mugs make it look so easy? She said she had to take her shoes off because her feet are tired from walking. Yeah, she's the hardest worker here. Have you even taken one step today? No. I think the mist is starting to move. Wow, look at this. I see a little bit of that. Yeah. I see it over there. Yes, I want to go there. You want to go there? Let's do it. We're at the first viewpoint and even though we are above the clouds, we get a little bit of an updraft where the clouds go. They free up the tiger's nest and it's just so incredibly beautiful. It's like one of those Taj Mahal pyramid moments that Jess was saying. It is incredible. Now it's gone. Clouds have just covered it up. Wow, look at it there. I still can't believe I'm actually looking at it for real life. Wow. It looks so cool. You've done it. Yeah, we did it. It's absolutely incredible. First of all, just the marvellous feat that this building is. This monastery on the side of a cliff top. It's 900 meters down. What makes it even more incredible is they built this in the 1600s to get all the material up here. Spot number five, four, six. At the base of tiger's nest. Okay, and this is where we're going to have to leave you because this place is so sacred. And as you know, you're watching the videos, we cannot take cameras into any of the temples or monasteries. So if you want to see what's inside, you're just going to have to come here yourself. This is the closest we can show you guys to tiger's nest. We're going to go enjoy about an hour inside. Can't wait to see it. We'll see you guys on the other side. I don't even know how to describe that. That was absolutely incredible. So worth it. It was like you expect, because this is one of the most coliest of places here in Bhutan. One of the top places you just would expect pure elegance and class, but it is so modest inside there. It's like multiple temples. I think I went in about six different temples and all of these little rooms. We went to the main temple and maybe 10 people could fit in there. I wouldn't say the Apple Watch is the most accurate of trackers, but I know a lot of you use Apple Watches. It was about 5.43 kilometers from the bottom of the Valley up here, me walking around here. So now we've got to do that, but back down. Good boy. Carried my boy up. Now I'm going to carry my girl down. Are you going to sleep now? So special. So you've probably been seeing all through our videos, these prayer flags everywhere. And if you wonder what they are, each color represents the different elements and you always see them either by water or up in the mountains or the hilltops, because either the water or the wind then takes away the blessings. Is that right? And takes it all around the world. So like the wind and the water takes the prayers. And so what we're going to do today is we're actually going to hang some between the walkway so we can bless people as they're walking up to the monastery. Beautiful. Look at this, Hunter. Now, every time someone walks underneath, they'll be blessed. Very special. That looks like a maze. I love how we just come to a random farm. This is where it's held. So on our final night here in Bhutan, the best way to end a 11 kilometer hike is through a traditional hot stone bath. Oh, this is so relaxing. Oh, it's on the muscles. Wow. So we've essentially come up through a random farm here in Paro. It is very traditional. It is essentially just a hut here. And there's this incredible lady out back just behind me. You can might hear her cleaning up. She just has this fireplace and inside she's taken stones from the riverbed and she heats them up on the fire till they are boiling hot, till they are red. And then she places them essentially behind this trap door is another smaller bath that almost like seeps the hot, like the water into the hot tub that I'm in. And then they put petals and medicinal plants in here. So it's just meant to cure my sore legs, my aching back, everything from a hive to tiger's nest. This should, we should be nice and relaxed after all this. So then the lady will come and knock on the door and be like, hot stone, hot stone. And you can say yes or no. I said yes. And whoa, it is getting, oh, oh, oh, yes. Too hot? Too hot. Okay, it's good. No more stones please. Do you want to hop in? Um, I want to hop in that bath with you. Okay, I can hop into that bath. Let's do it too. One of your tiny fingers. It's nice and hot. Yeah. Wow. We did 16,000 steps today. With a 690 meter incline. We did good. So we've just been gifted, which is so kindly, some traditional dress. So currently Stephen is in a gop, I'm in a kira. And how absolutely cute do the kids look? Hunter, what are you wearing girly? I'm a queen. You are, you do look like a queen. So sadly, it is pretty much our final night here in Bhutan. And as you guys have seen, we've been staying at a lot of homestays, a lot of eco lodges, a lot of, I don't want to use the word basic, more simple, which is of course what we absolutely love. But as you can see this stunning building here, we've come to Xualing, which is a purely 100 cent built, run and operated by the local Bhutanese. Thankful that this is where we're going to be spending our final night here in this absolutely incredible country. And honestly, these traditional dress are so warm. They're just so cozy. Hunter, what are you making? And does it look like the one just here? Yeah. It looks so good. Dad, they look like sushi's. They do look like sushi's.