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Published: July 12th 2010
Hello from the 'teardrop' island of Sri Lanka, which I must say has made quite an impression on us! It takes the craziness of South East Asia to a whole new level and is certainly helping to prepare us for India! The people are really lovely and friendly (even when they are trying to scam us) and make the generally wonderfully hospitable S E Asian's look like they all are all joyless supermarket checkout chicks (no offence anyone).
The weirdest thing is, even though Sri Lanka is becoming more frequented by western tourists we still feel like celebrities whenever we go anywhere! We are constantly being stared at and the service and hospitality we are offered is just ridiculously amazing!
We have both started playing a little game where when we are stared at by yet another curious local, we flash them a smile and see if we can get a smile back. I am pleased to inform you that about 95%!w(MISSING)ill give us - not just a smile - but the biggest grin back! (My personal favourite is the toothless grin from some of the older locals).
After an exchange of smiles we are often
asked the standard questions "where you from?", "how long Sri Lanka?", "whats your programme today?" etc... When we say "New Zealand" the reaction always amuses me - it almost looks like relief! It will then almost always be followed by "good country" and then a mention about our cricketers. Adam of course then gets excited and exchanges a bit of sporty banter (while I zone out) and a few times has gotten the other person quite excited when they notice his resemblance to Daniel Vettori - the NZ cricket captain. Only twice has rugby been mentioned and once, amusingly so, one local trying to get us to stay in his home, told us how his niece was living in the French speaking part of New Zealand (which of course was news to us but we didn't have the heart to tell the guy we think he had us confused with Canada!).
One thing we are finding though, is that Sri Lanka seems not that well set-up for backpackers just yet. I think they are more used to getting fairly well off tourists on comparatively shorter holidays. This may also be why we are feeling like a bit of a
novelty as most visitors hire a private car to take them around and only frequent major tourist spots and their hotels, whereas Adam and I have been out wandering and exploring each new city and town as we arrive - no matter how remote it is.
Unfortunately, it also means that we are finding the country relatively expensive, things like entrance fees to tourist attractions, decent eating places and clean rooms with no bed-bugs are ridiculously expensive compared with South East Asia and are all contributing to blow our daily budget right out of the water. There is also, unfortunately, a general belief that all tourists are extreamley wealthy and therefore they are entitled to rip us off or ask for money as we can obviously afford it. This means that we have decided to make our visit here a bit shorter than originally planned, so that we don't run out of money!
Anyway, I'll take you through where we have been and what we have seen and experienced here (so much in such a short amount of time!)
We arrived in Colombo (Sri Lanka's capital) quite tired, after a reasonably gruelling journey from Vietnam via Malaysia, which
Making offerings to Buddha
Poson (June 25th) at a Colombo templeinvolved us staying awake for 30 hours! The crazy things you do when on a budget! We started the journey with a 4am start to get to Hanoi airport, arriving in Kuala Lumpur around lunchtime. Our flight to Colombo wasn't due to leave until 6am the next morning so we got the bus and monorail into the city to check out 'Times Square' shopping mall and stock up on some essentials (shampoo, panadol, long pants for me and a new camera etc...). We returned to KL airport around 10pm and managed to get a couple of seats in front of the large TV setup in the departure lobby that was playing football world cup games. I grabbed a luggage trolley - piled our bags on top of it, set it up at my feet so I could stretch my legs out, draped my sarong over me and read my book while Adam watched the game. ... I was quite comfortable and thought I would be able to get some sleep like this until the unfortunate happened. About midnight we were asked to leave the inside of the airport for a couple of hours, as it was to be fumigated, so
Enjoying free curry!
Thanks to the generosity of Sri Lankan's celebrating Poson we reluctantly trudged outside with everyone, away from the football, aircon and relative comfort. Instead we played cards on a couple of uncomfortable plastic chairs we managed to get, in some random outside area in front of the arrivals hall. Oh well, before we knew, a couple of hours had passed and we were allowed back in again, only having to hang out for an hour or so more (coughing and spluttering from the residual fumes) before we could check in for our flight - hooray!
So yeah - when we got to Colombo at 10am the next day after beginning our journey, we were pretty shattered. We checked our guidebook and unfortunately discovered that there wasn't much in the way of cheap accommodation in Colombo, however on reading a booklet from the information desk we read about a reasonable sounding place that was in our budget, so we got a cab and promptly headed there. The cab ride itself was a harrowing hour's drive which was an immediate skite by Sri Lanka 'you guys thought South East Asia was mental on the roads? Well, you ain't seen nothing yet!', sharing narrow shoddy roads with buses, trucks, tuktuks &
motorbikes is bad enough but when you add dodging suicidal dogs and giving preference to unphased cows, it gets truly crazy! When we eventually turned up at our carefully selected hotel, we quickly realised this was not really the place for us as it was down a long dodgy alley, surrounded by derelict buildings just behind the train tracks; oh yeah - and our cab driver told us that this hotel was used to hiring it's rooms hourly not nightly! And this was in an 'official' Sri Lankan tourist accommodation guide!!! So our driver took us to a place for more than what we were planning to spend, but it sounded nice enough...well it wasn't, and we figured if we were going to have to pay twice our accommodation budget for quite possibly the most scummiest place we had seen on our travels (and we have seen some bad places), we might as well indulge and triple our budget to stay at a nice hotel. So our very kind driver started taking us around some of Colombo's nicest mid-range hotels, unfortunately the first 3 we tried were all booked, as you can imagine by now we were feeling tired
and Jetavanarama Pagoda
The largest in the world at 120 metres high and 176 metres deep. At its time of construction (273-301 AD) it was only rivalled in size by the great pyramids in Egypt frustrated, and were not in the mood to be taken down some random road behind a lake that he now seemed to be taking us down. We pulled up in front of a large white fence with a big closed iron gate and a sign that said 'private residents only' - where the hell were we? He honked his horn and a smartly dressed security guard let us in and we realised that behind the scary looking fence was a beautifully renovated colonial home with white walls contrasted against plenty of immaculatly landscaped lush green foliage with a very inviting upstairs open restaurant, and they had a room! Finally! It turns out this bed and breakfast renovation had been done by a famous Sri Lankan Interior Designer called Taru - even better! It was also not as expensive as any the hotels we were rejected from - haha to them! So we thanked and tipped our driver for bringing us to this peaceful oasis, checked into our gorgeous room, had a shower in quite possibly the most stylish bathroom I have ever seen, had a delicious lunch upstairs overlooking the lake and then collapsed into the best bed we have
slept in yet and promptly fell asleep until 8am next day!
When we had checked into this place we were informed by the manager that the next day (June 25th) was the 2nd most important sacred day and subsequent festival in Sri Lanka - Poson. It is held on the fullmoon and commemorates the introduction of Buddhism to the island. We seem to have a knack for unknowingly arriving in countries right before major festivals. So we excitedly wandered off into the city after breakfast to see what celebrations we would stubble across. Well, most of the population actually go on a pilgrimage up north to Anradhapura (later in this blog) for this 3-day weekend, so what we encountered was virtually a ghost-town. Eventually we got talking to a nice local man who explained where the nearest temple was that we could go to see a ceremony and then hailed us a tuktuk to take us there. It was really cool and an amazing thing to see all of these local people dressed head to toe in white and so entranced in the ceremony and importance of the day. Our friendly tuktuk driver came into the temple with us
and explained what was going on. We kept asking him how much this was going to cost us and he kept saying 'no worries - later'. Okay - rule #1 for travellers is NEVER get into any type of non-metered transport without agreeing a price first. I have no idea how we got caught making this massive mistake, but what we could we do now? He was a really nice man too - he pulled over on the way to our next destination to buy us a king coconut each (you drink the coconut juice straight from them - very refreshing and tasty). We were heading to a park where tsunami orphans were fund-raising with baby elephants as part of Poson - or so we thought! Of course this sounds ridiculous typing it now and it is clearly a scam, but at the time we thought this sounded great - so we were a little confused when we pulled up outside a gem shop and ushered inside. After having a polite look then spending a considerable amount of time insisting we didn't want to buy anything, we eventually got out of the place. By now we had realised that there
were no orphans and elephants and got our man to take us back to our accommodation, which he took a wrong turn and dropped us off at a nearby major road. He of course gave us a ridiculous price for the service but Adam very sternly negotiated down to only half the amount.
Feeling a little dejected by this relatively negative impression of Sri Lankans, we were about to be surprised by receiving the exact opposite experience and be totally overwhelmed by the Sri Lankan's friendliness and kindness. As we walked back to our place via some random side streets we passed a long queue of locals outside a large marquee with tables inside. As we passed an official looking guard in a dark green uniform asked us if we had had lunch and before we knew it we were being ushered in the 'back door' of this makeshift dining hall and being sat down on some chairs while free curry was being fetched for us! It was insane; everyone wanted to come and talk to us, making sure we were okay, refilling our plates, giving us free bottles of water - one boy even took our photo! We
were blown away! Apparently they do this every Poson festival in random places throughout the country and people of all religions, classes, race and walks of life are entitled to join in and receive the free food. Amazing, and a great way to return to our room, with full bellies, huge smiles and a memory of an awesome experience that will last forever! It certainly made us forget about the gem-scam!
The next couple of days in Colombo were pretty much spent just chilling out, eating and visiting random shops, so I won't bore you with the details.
So then we headed North by train to Anradhapura, pretty much in the centre of the island. The train ride started early (6am) but got us into the town at a good time to find somewhere to stay and then check out the huge markets lining the streets in the town centre (much to Adam's delight). As Anradhapura is the base town to Minhitale where the main Poson celebrations occur, these markets had closed off streets and been set-up specially for the week around the festival. It was awesome to go to a market that was for local people -
Local cuties
We met this cute brother and sister while stopping for a rest from cycling around Anuradhapura not just aimed at tourists - even Adam enjoyed wandering through!
The next day we got on with the purpose of our visit here - to visit the ruins of the huge expansive ancient city that used to be the capital of Sri Lanka some 2000 years ago. We hired some rusty bikes form our guesthouse and spent the morning exploring the ruins at our own pace, marvelling at how much older this place was than any other ruins we had seen before (3rd century BC) and stopping to be entertained by several large monkeys playing amongst the remains of a once glorious monastery! We returned in the afternoon rather worn-out from 7 hours cycling along dirt roads in the dry heat so had a bit of a nap before finding somewhere for dinner. We decided to walk to a hotel who's restaurant had been recommended in the guide book. Well, to get there we ended up walking down some tiny pitch-black streets in the middle of the countryside being followed by a gang of stray dogs. Thank god for Adam's head-torch, I think it truly saved us - no one likes having a blindingly bright torch shined in
their eyes, and apparently neither do dogs! The food was not really worth the walk, but we did get to watch the Netherlands beat Slovakia in the football world cup so Adam was happy! After the game we headed home, this time walking the longer but safer way - down the main road.
Just as an aside - we have found it great to be travelling during the world cup, as it is a good common topic to break the ice between people of all races! The next day we caught a bus to Dambulla, for the ridiculously low price of only $1.40 each for an hour long journey. Dambulla is a very small town which happens to have some amazing cave temples to explore. We found a guesthouse which was only a 10minute walk away from the temple and its museum - perfect! On the way up the hill to the cave temples we passed a jolly looking Sri Lankan man playing with some of the monkeys who hang around the walkway. He saw our camera and excitedly came up to Adam and asked if Adam could take HIS photo! This was different, but of course Adam
Elephant image at base of a gold stupa
At base of walk up to the Dambulla cave temples obliged, showing the man the resulting picture straight afterwards. Well, this was the most exciting thing he had seen all year by the look on his face, and he promptly called over his entire family (who had been walking further down the track) including mum, dad, wife, son, sister etc... etc... to see his image looking back at them on this tiny screen! They were also suitably amused and Adam then had to take their photo too - they had no idea how to pose for a shot or what to make of it but we all had a laugh and we have a wonderful photo to keep the memory of this brief but fantastic exchange. Oh yeah - the temples were great by the way!
Heading back to our guesthouse, we realised that again we would need to find somewhere for dinner as they did breakfast only. So we headed out to explore the town and find somewhere to dine, we ended up walking the entire length of the town and couldn't find anywhere to eat, which wasn't an ideal bug and rodent hangout or where we could even figure out what they were offering, so we ended
Impromptu family portrait!
On walk up to Dambulla cave temples up skipping dinner in the end. Oddly enough, we were able to find a high-speed internet cafe - go figure!
We arose the next morning at 7am to hungrily devour our breakfast, then jump in a tuktuk to take us to Sigiriya. Again - another amazing ancient site, only 12km from Dambulla. This time the remains of a huge palace built on top of an enormous rock. The climb up was very steep and a little scary as some of it was just dodgy steel stairs perched against a sheer cliff face, but the view at the top was amazing. We had a 360 degree view of the surrounding forest and the spectacular ruins of the water and boulder gardens below.
We had heard about a famous Sri Lankan architect called Geoffrey Bawa, who has designed many hotels and buildings throughout the country, his most famous being just outside of Dambulla. It is called 'Kandalama' and it is an extremely modern 5 star hotel designed in such a way that it appears to emerge out of the surrounding forest. Since we hadn't had dinner the night before, and it was on the way back to Dambulla, we decided
to treat ourselves to a buffet lunch there. The hotel was amazing - really huge with 3 swimming pools and even its own shop! The design was super modern with sterile finishes, geometric lines and large open spaces, cleverly integrated with natural living rock and surrounding forest, complete with monkeys climbing the staircases!!! And the buffet lunch was amazing - expensive - but we certainly ate our moneys worth!
Our lovely tuktuk driver waited for us while we ate and then took us to the best place on the main street to catch a bus to Kandy from. He offered to wait and help us get on the right bus, he assured us that the 'intercity' bus we wanted to get (same type that got us to Dambulla) whizzes by every half hour & is pretty empty at this time of day - supposedly. The 'intercity' is a smaller bus which has AC and comfortable seats, however after waiting for 45 minutes the one that turned up was full, so we decided to just catch the next public bus that came past. We felt bad for our kind driver, who I don't think anticipated waiting this long, and we
were quite concious that he hadn't eaten since he picked us up at 8am and it was now nearly 2pm (plus we think his wife kept calling him on his mobile to find out where he was!)
Well, all I can say is that it was an interesting 3 1/2 hour journey. The bus was rickety, uncomfortable, crowded, hot, noisy and made continual stops to let people jump on and off (it doesn't really stop as such - people just kind of run up beside it and jump on or almost land on their face jumping off) BUT we got there unscathed and it was certainly an experience, AND it only cost us 75 cents each!!!
The guesthouse we found in Kandy was nice enough. It was up a hill behind the lake at the centre of the city and we had a private balcony that looked down over it. The manager was a bit crazy though - harmless and nice enough - but always smelling of booze. He would gloat about his expensive TV and tell us how all he like to do all day is watch movies with a drink. He would also tell us about
Looking through
Entrance to Dambulla cave temples how proud he was of his successful son, daughter, nieces and nephews and what they were studying, what important jobs they had and where in the world they were, this was actually rather impressive and really sweet. One particular morning he got quite emotional as he told us that he had just heard from his daughter that she had got accepted into Monash University in Melbourne, that he had already celebrated with a few shots of whiskey and then, quite randomly, he started gushing about how much he liked us, took our photo on his phone and when we tried to leave politely to go into town he told Adam how much he loved him and kissed his hand! I think he was just caught up in the excitement and booze but needless to say we made sure we stayed out all day so we could avoid another awkward and strange encounter!
So anyway, Kandy is a nice city with quite a few old colonial buildings and cute narrow lane-ways that have been turned into a bustling town. Apart from providing a refreshingly cooler climate and picturesque mountain scenery, Kandy is known for temple of the tooth - a
Deep in concentration...
A monkey focused on his food in Dambulla temple which houses what is believed to be a relic of Buddha's tooth. We went to explore the town on our first day and to do so, we had to walk around a large lake, well, who knew that walking around a lake could be so intriguing and surprising? We saw stalks, pelicans, kingfishers, several varieties of heron, crows, enormous ducks, heaps of fish and several enormous lizards. And I mean enormous - they are called 'water monitors' and they have long blue tongues, black & yellow bodies, are about a metre and a half in length and look like they have a small child in their belly! Unfortunately, along with all of this amazing wildlife we did see a dead body lying on the side of the lake. The police had covered part of the body with a rug and had made an attempt to secure the area by hanging a single strand of what looked like fairy lights randomly on the footpath above, which they casually stood beside chatting to each other like they were discussing where to have lunch - quite different to how police in Australia or NZ would handle the situation. A very disturbing thing
Kandalama hotel
Designed by Geoffrey Bawa - this is only the reception part, hidden amongst the surrounding forest to see, but one we will unfortunately have to get more used to with heading to India.
Anyway, of course we checked out the temple - it was really quite spectacular. We also met another nice old man, Mohamad, who took us around some of the lane-ways and streets showing us some cool old buildings and the cheapest places to eat, shop and buy tea. He also took us to a reputable gem shop, now I say reputable as it is hard to find such places in Sri Lanka, often people end up buying really expensive pieces of glass. I was sceptical at first but soon realised that this government certified place was run by a true gem enthusiest. His shop was small and his super friendly cousin was the only salesman. He actually owns a couple of gem mines and when I inquired about one particular white sapphire proceeded to explain how to tell it was genuine and then actually showed me. I got to look at it through a light refractor, then through a microscope and answered every single one of my questions until I was absolutely certain this was the real deal. It was important to
Kandalama hotel reception area
Where contemporary architecture meets nature me, as I had a bit of money aside to buy a white sapphire (for sentimental reasons related to my grandmother) and the stone I had found was perfect, in colour, shape and of course price. So I now have a beautiful sapphire to get made into a ring when I get back home - very exciting! I hope Mohamad got some commission too!
Unfortunately for every genuinely nice old man there is always another few seemingly nice old men out there who are willing to try anything to get you to give them a couple of dollars. And we got suckered in by a good one the very next day...
Again, we were just wandering through the town when a friendly looking older Sri Lankan man started chatting to Adam - turns out he has a sister in Christchurch (or so he said), so anyway, it starts to rain and he invites us in to nearby cafe for a cup of tea to wait out the rain - so we pop into a rather nice looking place in a grand old building and continue to chat. He tells us he is a Sea Captain based in Colombo but
'Lion Rock' Sigiriya
On top of which are the UNESCO world heritage listed remains of a palace (including swimming pool!) built between AD 477-495 lives in Kandy and who works 3 days on 3 days off and we chat about this and that while enjoying a cuppa and picking from a selection of small pastries etc... placed in the centre of our table. Suddenly I remembered something I had read in our guidebook about common scams: one of which being invited to share a drink & a chat with a kind local and when the time comes to pay they have conveniently left their wallet at home - leaving the unsuspecting tourist to foot the - rather inflated - bill. Afterwards the local goes back to the place and gets his cut of the profit. Crap! How did we fall for this one! What could we do? We were here now and we did need lunch anyway. Then the 'Captain' tells us that his Father owns a tea plantation and he would like to send us some tea if we would just give him our address. Ah huh! I remembered reading this one also - he will next ask for some money for postage and needless to say the tea will never arrive. Luckily Adam explained that we didn't have a current address but
thanks for the kind offer anyway. Haha - dodged that one!
Looking a bit disappointed the 'captain' asks for the bill, when it comes he reaches for his pocket, but Adam told him not to worry that we would get it. I realised Adam was still thinking the guy was just a nice old man - he isn't quite as cynical as me, and I don't think he had read that part of the guidebook. Luckily the bill was only a mere $3.50 for 3 cups of tea and 6 pastries - so it wasn't an inflated price, and why not shout the guy as he showed us the place the guess?
But then he tries scam #3 - again, one I recognised a similar one from our guidebook - this ones the best. Apparently on the coming Monday the navy (who he works for remember) was going to have a festival day in Colombo to help raise funds to build homes for tsunami orphans, we could even read about it in Sunday's paper (yeah right), he would like to put our names and where we are from in a magazine the navy puts out to show that people all
Sigiriya ladies
Paintings inside a small cave on the side of a Sigiriya rock around the world support this worthy cause. Adam delegated the paper to me and I wrote our first names and where we were from on it - humouring the guy, as I knew he was full of it - they have proper organisations that fundraise for these kind of things and they don't wander streets and get details on peices of scrap paper in their pockets. He then said to us - " I will put you down for 100 each?" - that did it, I was not going to give anyone money who was using a horrific tragedy and the terrible consequences for some people to make a bit of extra cash off kind hearted people. I signalled to Adam not to give him any money and that I would explain soon. Adam very quickly (and cleverly I thought) told the guy that we like to make our donations to charitable causes on-line as that way we can claim back the tax! It did the trick - the guy realised we were on to him and he wasn't going to get another cent out of us, so he promptly shook our hands, said goodbye and fled the cafe! We
Curiousity
Monkey on the steel stairs climbing up Sigiriya could of got more annoyed but really no harm was done and we learnt to be a bit more weary next time!
After Kandy we hopped on a train for a 7 hour ride back through Colombo and on to Galle on the South Coast. We found a fantastic homely guesthouse called 'Fort Inn', right inside the old city area. Galle is divided into 2 parts - the 'old city' is inside the old Dutch fort, built in the 15th century and of course the 'new city'. The fort is where all of the tourists stay as it has the biggest concentration of accommodation as well as the city's museums. Due to it being a world heritage listed site, the roads have remained narrow and renovations are carefully done to ensure buildings retain their character and as much original features as possible. Our bright and cosy bedroom was on the 3rd floor of a narrow terrace-type house with a fantastic view over the street below - perfect! I can't forget to mention the wonderfully friendly and happy family who live in and run the guesthouse, they made it so easy for us to get trapped there - which we
Queens hotel - Kandy
Right in the centre of the town did for 3 days! This is a long time in Galle as all there is to do is wander around the fort's random streets, visit the museum and explore various boutique & antique stores, all of which can be done in a day! Adam had a bit of a head-cold so it was a good place to rest until he got better. We found a great restaurant/cafe in a 300 year old home that had delicious food for a reasonable price, so we spent quite a bit of time there too!
When Adam was better we headed to our next destination - Unawatuna beach, a mere 10 minute tuktuk drive away! We again found a great place to stay, that had a massive balcony overlooking the beach itself, where we had breakfast brought to us each morning! How good is that! And a cheap price too :-)
Unawatuna was a great surprise - some people had told us it was too touristy and had been overdeveloped. But it really didn't strike us that way - there was just the right amount of choice for eating and sleeping and the beach itself was fantastic! It is fairly narrow but the
One of Kandy's lake residents
A huge 2 metre long water monitor lizard! golden sand is not covered in litter (like most S.E.Asia beaches), the water is a comfortably cool temperature and there is just the right amount of waves to be fun but still safe - Bliss! We enjoying getting as much beach time as possible, as we knew we would not be near the ocean again for at least the next 2 months.
After a chillaxed few days at Unawatuna we headed back to Colombo to fly out to Kathmandu in Nepal - country #9 - another amazing and fascinating culture to experience!!!
Kinda sad we really didn't have the time or money to travel SriLanka as thoroughly as we would've perhaps liked too, but at least we covered the places we most wanted to see, and we got an idea of the vastly different scenery & experiences this relatively small country has to offer. Besides, it gives us an excuse to come back one day!
Till the next update....
Take care
Luv Gee & Adam
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