"a funny city"

"Kathmandu is a funny city.  When you first arrive there from the West, it seems like the most ramshackle and unsanitary place imaginable: the buildings are poorly constructed of old brick, and there are weed patches growing out of the roofs; the hotel rooms are bare pits; all the food you can find tastes like cardboard, and often makes you sick; and there are sewage heaps here and there in the mud streets, where dogs are scavenging.  It really seems primitive.

Then you go out for a month or tow in the mountains, on a trek or a climb.  And when you return to Kathmandu, the place is utterly transformed.  The only likely explanation is that while you were gone they took the city away and replaced it with one that looks the same on the outside, but is completely different in substance.  The accommodations are luxurious beyond belief; the food is superb; the people look prosperous, and their city seems a marvel of architectural sophistication.  Kathmandu!  What a metropolis!"

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Escape from Kathmandu