Old email come blog

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Trip thuss farHey kids - first installment of travel toss. It's only been two weeks - you're probably not missing me, and I'm definately not missing you but here goes.

And there we were sleeping on an ergonomically designed piece of plastic furniture at 3am at Singapore airport - top sleep... Then we were off to India via Sri Lanka. Our itinerary suggested a mere 7hr stopover in Sri Lanka though - only enough time for a sri lankan curry
and a nap. Little did we know we'd be eating a lot more Sri Lankan curry. We were turned away from the airport at 1am and told to get our Indian tourist visas at the embassy in colombo before we could leave for India. Which at the time didn't sound too hard as we had a driver take us into colombo to a hotel next door to the embassy. At 6.30am we walked around the corner only to find 150 other people already lined up at the embassy (which opened at 9am). After some 6 hours and 4 different (fckin) queues we finally submitted our appplications. In the line we'd met a local businessman who believed he could get our visa's approved later that day. No wristies required. Unfortunately the process was different for non sri lankans and we had a 5 day wait which pretty much eliminated our India trip.

After a bit of swearing we settled on a Sri Lankan tour. We hired a driver and headed inland. We saw crazy old temples, mountains, tea plantations (madness), jungle, and went on a safari. Then spent a few days chillin on beaches. We thought it would be fun to take a 4hour
train ride back to Colombo. It wasn't. Later that evening at the airport we had a bit of excitement watching a few thousand people run down a set of escalators in fear of a bomb. We were waiting in a coffee shop at the time watching the panic unfold. Luckily enough we
bumped into an interesting couple that worked for the UN and we had up to the minute updates - as no one at the airports said/knew what was going on. Our flight was cancelled so another night in colombo at th expense of emirates. Finally we made it to the Maldives. A few days into the trip, and it's pretty much exactly as the postcards look - white sandy beaches, torqouise blue waters, and fishies. But the postcards don't show the big fat wogs getting around in speedos (nor people gettin a little rude in the waters... saw a gorilla trying an aqua-hump today...).

take it easy,
steve n teresa

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