Advertisement
Published: December 1st 2006
Edit Blog Post
Well I’m on holiday and ive decided to stay by the beach for a couple of days and soak up the rays, so ive based myself in the beach town of Hikkaduwa and on Saturday I hired a motorbike to go touring down the south coast.
Absolutely brilliant day. Now it’s been about 2 years since ive been on a bike and the last one I was on I crashed (sorry Mark), so I borrowed a little Honda 250 trail bike and hit the streets. It doesn’t take long to get into the swing of things, just do as the locals do; that is drive erratically (but with pin point precision) and use the horn for everything and anything, I mean that thing should be blowing like a trumpet. It’s scary enough driving on the streets in the back of a tuk tuk let alone solo on a bike, but it doesn’t help when the bike you’ve hired has shonky front and rear brakes. Of course I’m not one to complain.
I pretty much spent the entire day travelling the south raod and exploring the beach villages dotted along the coast, uncovering secret hidden bays and bustling city centers.
The local Crowd
Young boys watching the cricket in the tree Riding this stretch of land you get to see first hand the effects of the tsunami. Some of these areas where hit extremely hard and the reminiscence of the distruction is still quite obvious. Many of these towns are no higher that ½ meter from sea level so it literally wiped out everything. Grave sites are commonly scattered on the side of the road as a cold reminder of the events that boxing day.
The first major stop was Galle, a large commercial district known for it’s distinctive 17th century Dutch Fort. Within the walls of the Fort the old city remains untouched with building dating back to the Dutch era, an old light house purched on the hill and old ruins scattered across the barracks. There’s also a strange area for courting Sri Lankans couples. (now to explain the culture here is very different to the western world, on the streets the behaviour of men and women are very reserved. No affectionate kissing, touching, hold hands, nothing, actually its all pretty boring). So this area is kind of like “make out hill”, where young boys and girls come to play up on the grassy banks under the protection
Cricket Hopefuls
Yound kids playing at the Fort of their colorful umbrellas. And then there’s me taking pictures…… not real cool, but oh well.
Also here I met some young Sri Lankan boys playing cricket on the grass, and everybody in Sri Lanka like cricket, everybody. So I stoped to take a photo of them and they all came running over asking me where I was from. (Now I’ve given up telling people oi’m English, because they all recognise the Australian accent. So as far as everyone here is concerned I’m Australia…..laugh it up all!). The kids wanted me to come play and bat like ‘Ricky Ponting’ but unfortunately I could not honour Ricky in that way and regreatful declined (if they said the Great Feddie Flintoff then maybe. And do not mention the first test please).
After travelling further down coast, passing the temporary housing tents of the tsunami relief (which look now more permanent than temporary), I arrived at another well known bay/beach area called Unawatuna. Again another tranquil beach, flast turquoise waters, leaning palm trees…. Beaches here are what dreams are made of, who would ever had guessed. I had never related beaches with Sri Lanka, but they do not disappoint, and I
Make Out Hill
Courting Sri Lankan couples could resist stripping out of the bike gear for a quick dip.
Then on to Matra a commercial town on the coast. Although not much here there was an interesting Buddhist temple located on an Island just off the main shore. ‘Parey Dena’ (Rock in the water) which is accessed via a small footbridge link between the island and main land.
By this time I felt like I’d been fanging around the coast on the bike like it was Philip Island Grand Prix, full of confidence with little or no incident. That was until a certain zebra crossing, where the accelerator stuck and I failed to stop, ploughing through the crossing narrowly missing two older women. Obviously no my fault, (damn bike) but laughed it off and continued further down the coast. The further from Hikkaduwa I went, the worse the accelerator got, until ‘snap’, the accelerator cable brakes. Fcuk! Here I am stuck in the arse end of nowhere with a dud bike. I mean I can handle the dodgy brakes, but no accelerator, what the? After pushing the bike to god knows where, I was lucky enough to cross two Sri Lankan ladsto lend me a
hand. They rightly claimed that the bike was knackered (as I already knew) and that I needed to get it to the mechanic to be fixed, which just happened to be nowhere near. Any way between the 3 of us we came up with a temporary contraption involving wire wrapped around the accelerator to pull the cable. It looked dodgy and dangerous but worked……. for a while.
So I preceeded to head back with the intent of finding a mechanic not so far away…..although after riding for half an hour I figured I could make it back the other 2 ½ hours as the ‘DIY’ job was working a treat. I got cocky in other words, and yes it snaped again. This time I deserved it, but I was stuffed and still a long way from home. This time I came up with a method of pulling the accelerator cable (attached to a pen) with my hands, stupidly and extremely dangerous, but with no other options went with it. Carefully and cautiously I head back, oh have I mentioned it started to rain, no just rain but piss down monsoon style, thick chunks, the ones that hurt. So imagine
me, a bike, a bike that’s knackered, raining and soaking wet….tucker’s going to crack it right? Wrong! I pissed myself laughing and singing all the way back, thinking to myself you just have to laugh because things are bound to get worse down the track, guaranteed. Sometimes I even surprise myself. But seriously it was an absoluetly brilliant, classic day!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.074s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0442s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb
Lefty
non-member comment
2nd. Test
Well, since the 1st test is off limits, how about that 2nd. test huh !!?? And Ricky Ponting, he's up to 497 runs and we're only 2 tests in !!! Freddie Flintoff, he must be nearly pushing a hundred runs... No wonder you wanted to bat as Flintoff, you wanted the game to be more realistic !! love ya work and the photos bro..Lefty