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Published: October 7th 2011
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Kandy lake We only did a couple of things in Kandy. We were feeling pretty lazy, and Ash has been increasingly under the weather. We saw a pretty incompetent doctor. Bit of a windbag, really, who seemed to think that Ash's nausea and exastion (which she had had for over a week at that point) were due to dietary issues, even though we explained that no, she hadn't been eating spicy food, and this had started in Turkey, so it can't just be Sri Lankan cooking. His suggestion was to pop 6 Aspirin a day for muscle pain (which she doesn't have). Hopefully we can get better care elsewhere.
Anyway, we saw the Tooth Temple (where the Buddha's tooth is currently stored), which was really stunning, replete with lavish wood and stone carvings, and a lot of intricate painting (all done by hand, of course). There is a lot there on the annual festival where the tooth (although it is probably a dummy with the original's location kept secret) is paraded around the city in splendid fashion, with a procession several kilometers long, according to our guide, takes 10 days, and involves dancers, musicians, dummers, plate-spinners, and dozens of elephants all draped
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the entire time we were at our guest house this cat was either asleep or grooming itself, always on the same chair in embroidered dustcovers. One elephant has the honour of carrying the tooth, and they lie out a path of pure white linen for him to walk on, picking up the strips after he has passed. The elephant who help this honour for about 50 years or so until his death in 1988 was called Raja the Tusker, he was declared a National Teasure, and when he died his remains were stuffed and mounted in a little shrine inside the Tooth Temple enclosure. There was also a room with tons of old manuscripts in cupboards, with intricately detailed bindings. And a lot of local people were praying in front of the chamber (off-limits) where the tooth is held. Three times a day, they open a little door to the inner chamber and people go past and pray. Unfortunately we missed the boat.
Our guide, who had originally volunteered himself without asking for any recompense, demanded 1000 rupees at the end of our little 25 minute tour. These sorts of shenanigans are pretty common just about anywhere. We said we were on a budget and gave him 500, since there is supposed to be no minimum donation and 400 is the
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giant monitor lizard recommended amount for a guide. In any case, it's not so much the numbers as the sneakiness of it that bothers me. The sheer number of people descending upon you to wrest you of your (hard-earned Saudi) cash is often staggering and frustrating in itself. In addition, there are unusually high entrance fees for most sites in Sri Lanka (sometimes being equal to the totality of a daily budget). The round-trip ticket for the cultural triangle is equal to the minimum monthly salary, and we haven't seen much resrotation or excavation going on to account for such prices. It's bad enough without people being deliberately vague, unfair, or dishonest. Yes, it's a poor country, many people live in unfortunate conditions. But you'll find no white man's guilt here in this regard. Cheating is cheating. I am a backpacker. I have a budget. I am not your money fountain. (Interesting fact: the government set aside 3 times more money per capita for defence than for education and medical care combined.)
That being said, the REAL human interaction that we've had, when money is not so involved, has been great, with people being friendly and helpful, especially considering we don't speak
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try saying this name 3 times fast... a word of Sinhalese. Many people speak conversational English (though this is not so surprising considering that English used to be the official language) and when they don't they speak enough for you to get by they find someone who does, and this person interprets without asking for any recompense and without trying to up the price.
We also visited a little square next to the tooth temple containing a mosque, a church, a Hindu temple, and a Buddhist temple. There is a world Buddhism museum behind the temple, but tired of paying entrance fees, we passed. I think it's supposed to be filled with statues donated from various countries (and therefore in various styles). But I don't think there is anything old or unmissable there. Besides, we saw that in the ridiculous museum in Dambulla. Old hat.
We met a French guy, Yan, who has been to many off-the-beaten-path countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, for example) and we teamed up with him for the next day. We went to a little sanctuary just next to the city where we saw huge trees, a nice pond, and a lot of monkeys. We still weren't tired of watching monkeys. It was
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tooth temple a nice way to spend the afternoon. Then we climbed up to the massive but relatively new Buddha overlooking the city (actually he faces the Temple of the Tooth). There were some tacky depictions of Buddha's life inside him (yes, inside him. He is huge enough that they built rooms in him, and stairs so that people could climb up his back and use him as a vantage point).
Other than that our time in Kandy was mostly spent eating, relaxing, and walking around the lake, trying in vain to spot the giant monitor lizard we had seen on our first morning there.
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