Blogs from Sri Lanka, Asia - page 78
January 2nd 2006
It was a dark and stormy night. The day before had been windy - trees down, power outages everywhere. The plane gained speed. San Francisco is behind us as we race west toward Sri Lanka and three weeks of classes and adventures. Seven of us to study biology and sociology of this island country. Just being in a new country is an education. What is different? What is the same? To start with the people; they work, they have families and friends. The first people you meet are in uniforms - airline staff, immigration, and security. Outside you meet the cabbies, the bus drivers and luggage-handlers. Then there is the air. At first it is av-gas then trucks and badly tuned cars. Finally the smells of the countryside arrive. For me in Sri Lanka it is ... read more
January 1st 2006
We combined my birthday with a New Years Eve Party. We decided that rather than subjecting our guests to our “not-yet-refined” Sri Lankan cooking skills, we’d have a good old fashion Kiwi BBQ on our roof. Easy and simple, yet effective. This also meant less standing over a hot stove in a very hot climate, and as it was my birthday as well it suited me. So Murray started looking for a BBQ. Our options seemed to be a small rectangular thing about 1 meter off the ground and big enough for maybe 20 sausages, and a round thing similar in height that could probably fit 8 sausages, both particularly unstable. So Murray decided to build one. This turned out to be rather interesting, consisting of many shopping outings, with various bits of things congregating by ... read more
December 31st 2005
Hello Friends and Family, It’s the countdown to the finals days until I depart for Sri Lanka. I have been so excited and anxious for the past few days. I tried so hard to not get sick before my trip, but I got a sore throat the last 2 days. I hope it doesn’t develop into anything else. I have been trying to fight it off with airborne. I am in Lake Tahoe right now and it started snowing today. I hope we don't have any trouble getting out of here. I have never gone on a vacation for more than a week, so packing was a little bit tricky. Fortunately, the weather over there is totally opposite from what it is in California right now so I was able to pack light. In fact, I ... read more
December 29th 2005
What follows is simply a copy and paste job of all the stuff I (or at times Alex) managed to write while in Sri Lanka last Christmas. Sri Lanka Part 1 This is the first chance that I have had to get online since we got here. We are 4 days in to what is so far an amazing trip. Glorious news. We were on an Emirates flight when December 25th kicked in. This meant that the stewardesses took off their already silly hats (they look like they have toilet paper hanging out of them) and replaced them with even more ridiculous rudolf antler hats and wandered around taking pictures of families and saying things like 'Merry Christmas.' The pilot at one point claimed to have seen Santa fly by. This was obviously brilliant. We spent ... read more
Dambulla, Sigiriya, Anuradhapura and the Sacred City
Published: February 27th 2006Asia » Sri Lanka » North Central Province » Anuradhapura
December 28th 2005
We left Days Inn at 8am ready for our long guided journey to Anuradhapura via a Hindu temple, the cave temples of Dambulla and the rock fortress of Sigiriya. The intricately decorated Hindu temple was first; its tower adorned in Hindu deities was a sight to behold. After a couple of hours we reached Dambulla, and after paying our entry our guide left us to climb to the top of the hill and to the temple, after completing the 45 minute stair climb we were quite tired as you could imagine in such heat and humidity so we took a quick breather before exploring the numerous temples which were carved into solid rock over 2000 years ago! Reclining Buddha’s were in every chamber, hundreds of Buddha’s in different poses carved from solid rock were surrounded by ... read more
December 26th 2005
Boxing Day for me normally means eating left-overs from Christmas (especially ham), relaxing at the batch, looking over and over at the presents, spending time with family, soaking up the NZ sun, enjoying being on holiday, etc, etc. Last year, Murray and I were at Eden Park watching the New Zealand Black Caps play the Sri Lankan Cricket team. After the game had finished news broke of the Tsunami that had hit part of Asia, including Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan cricket team aborted the series, and the daily news showed pictures of the devastation the wave had left. In the days that followed the news reported about missing persons and a creeping death toll, and then stories started flooding in about how people survived the elements. It was an emotional time for the world, as ... read more
December 24th 2005
We arrived at the Days Inn, greeted by our host, Dan. A Sri Lankan who lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas, but has his home and small businesses in and around Kandy. A warmer welcome we couldn’t have wished for. The accommodation was perched high above the city on a hill, clad in rainforest, filled with monkeys and lots of bugs. Christmas Day!!!!!! Woohoo! We got up and had our breakfast then booked ourselves in for Christmas “Lunch” at the Earls Regency hotel in Kandy. We then gave each other our presents. Charmaine got a gorgeous pair of 18ct White gold and Semi Precious stone earrings and Darren got a piece of material about 4ft wide, and 10ft long, sewn together into a tube at the narrow ends, great! Just kidding, it was a traditional ... read more
Colombo and the pre-Christmas mayhem!
Published: February 27th 2006Asia » Sri Lanka » Western Province » Colombo
December 20th 2005
We were taken, first thing in the morning to the Tropic Inn proper. After a hearty breakfast of toast and Ceylon tea (well you’ve got to!) we were shown our room. The room was lovely with Aircon, cable TV and wireless internet; it was great, especially for the price. Our first day and we were jet lagged so just a stroll down the beach and up to the main road sufficed. We found a big shop, bought some snacks and two, very tasteful, flashing, Santa hats (for Christmas day of course). That evening we ate in our hotels restaurant, it was nice and very reasonable too. We spent the night calling our families using Skype (best invention since the interweb!). Next day was spent sleeping and being generally confused as our jet lag hit us like ... read more
