Galle, Unawatuna, Mirissa

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So my next destination was Galle. It has a big ass Dutch momma fort built around the old town and has lots of European style buildings and alley ways within the fort. The wall protected it from the tsunami but cut the wave in two and so was worse for the people living on either side. Still, protected the nice buildings.
After the usual theatrics with my tuk tuk scam artist I found a reasonable hotel and went out to explore. Walking the walls of the fort was pretty good and I had a great view. Although to be honest I'm boring myself even thinking about it. There was a literary festival on at the time which is apparently regarded highly around the world. I thought I might as well check it out although it became apparent quite quickly that this was not for the average Sri Lankan citizen, more for Miss Marple fat flowery dress Europeans, saying frightfully frightfully next to smug looking authors and their legions of copper tongued sycophants sipping Moet.
I headed on up the road to Unawatuna and met a couple who were middle-ish aged hippyish backpackers from England, (hey, like me) who were pretty down to earth but had promised to go to some show or other at the festival to a friend ,and they invited me along. It was about I thought I might as well and we ended up in this hugely expensive hotel court yard surrounded by the quaffing upper classes of England. Straight to the bar then and a young lady approached the guy I was with before saying in a Tara Palma voice, 'oh, sorry, I thought you were someone.' The undercurrent implication was not lost on him, but it gave us a bit of a laugh. Unlike the stand up comedian that was on. You know it really is unfortunate for posh people that they have no sense of humour but words that sound like other words or have a double meaning are not humorous they are just a common grammatical fact. Using longer more complicated words doesn't disguise anything. I saw an ok stand up act about someone with bi- polar called 'call me if you feel too happy,' that was not meant to be funny all the way through but it was still a bit too pleased with itself.
Unawatuna started well. I found a cheap little place back from the beach that had a nice garden with monkeys swinging in the trees and monitor lizards (dinosaurs) strutting about everywhere. The beach is pretty clean and pretty but over developed to the extent there is hardly any beach left without sun beds or buildings on. It changed alot after the tsunami aid m ....blah ablah.
I stayed for a couple of days then moved due to mosquito issues at my guest house. The place I moved to was a vegetarian restaurant hotel with meditation courses and ran by some practicing Buddhists. I got up at 7 am to meditate with them a couple of times. The first time the whole ritual was narrated by an English women who had apparently studied for years to reach an advanced stage of Buddhism and was reading from some book or other in Buddhist scripture language and looked all worried like it was some big exam, which is was sort of. There was some elderly Sri Lankan guy there who was also clearly higher rank than us and everyone kissed his arse even though his phone kept going off during meditation. They began by doing all the chanting and worshiping of a statue, which I 'observed' then moved on to meditation in which we 'extended love and compassion towards all living creatures' whilst momentarily massacring mosquitoes. It was alright though, in a cringe worthy, dear God, give me a fuckin break kind of way. I thought Buddhism was about achieving a state of mind to see truth, seeing life all as one and reaching conclusions for yourself therefore against superstition but you find everyone dogmatically chanting to a bit of wood and worrying if they said some words in the right order to impress some bored old knob head.
Enlightened as I now was I decided to move on to Marissa, further down the coast. After a crowded journey on the local bus which cost about 6p (tourist price) I was considering burning my guitar. I came across lots of over charging guest houses and tuk tuk drivers taking me to an entirely different place than I asked. The hotel manager said it was 12000 rp a night and I said that was to much, which is why I asked to go to a cheaper place. I looked at my guide book and he said 'that one is full'. I said which one? and he said 'all of them.' I got my bags and walked off and then the driver said 'ok, I'll take you to 'Susies hideaway'' the place I originally wanted. So we drive back on exactly the same route we had just come from, whiz right on past a sign that says 'Susies hideaway' and into the gardens on another expensive horrible looking place. Some fat guy tells me he managers this place and Susies and that the other place is full. I laugh, he looks sheepish and I wandered off to find plenty of available rooms my guest house of choice. The joys of traveling. I stayed there for 10 days, the beach was beautiful and the people friendlier. There was a bit more of a backpacker scene and other lone travelers. (i would ask them 'you come alone!? oh, you no have wife? Arr.'.. Then look at them strange and shuffle off back to my cosy ideal,.) There were copious amounts of weed around and people were openly skinning up in all the restaurants all the time. Some 'arrangement' had been made with the local 'police' clearly. While this was great for the drug addicts amongst them it was not great for the standard of service. I waited over an hour for a cup of tea and when i reminded them they were like 'yeah we know a cup of tea, chill out.' How is an Englishman supposed to function without his afternoon tea? Did the Empire teach you lot nothing?
There were times when the pace of life was nice but when hungry or thirsty you start to lose the will to live. It would take 10 minutes to buy a pack of ciggies. If the food was ok when it arrived it would be not quite so bad but it was shocking. If i was waiting for an omelet for 75 minutes a chicken sandwich would turn up (maybe it was an egg when i ordered it). Another time I ordered a chicken and cheese sarnie at the phantom manager of every-where's place and after one and a half hours, still nothing. The table next to me were slunked down, head in hands, waiting even longer, hunger driving them to seemingly just give up on life completely. I walked past the kitchen on the way to the toilet and saw a frenzied hub of activity; one guy sitting down and smoking, chatting to someone else rolling a joint.
My meal materialised as a toasty that would have taken 2 minutes to make with just some sort of finely cut salty veg sprinkled in it. I called the 'waiter' (ha) over and he said 'oh yeah this was the problem...you ordered ..uh, chicken with cheese.. no?' Er well, yeah. 'Is mix up ha ha, no problem?, ok?' Reluctant to give up food of any form and waste another decade of my life waiting before being given a plastic cup full of rain water and a frazzle I concurred, that yes, there was no problem, yum yum. Oh and when i turned the sarnie over there was a fly squashed into it by the sandwich toaster. When paying the bill he proudly informed me 'I charge you only for a vegetable sandwich.' Wow, thanks, man. I left a big ironic tip to cheer myself up.
In Marissa I also participated in a spot of whale watching. They have only been aware of this emigration path for a year or so, so it is a very new concept in Marissa. I got a cheap price for a boat, they were charging 8000 (about 40 pound) at most places, but i found a local fisherman who said he'd so it on his little boat with a few other tourists. I had to get up at 6.30 though and found they had left without me. A passing tuktuk driver came and took me there in the nick of time. I was greeted by a tiny speed boat of 4 impatient looking tourists and a couple of locals. After giving me a Tesco bag as a life jacket and confiscating my harpoon I was given a disgruntled 'morning' by all and we headed off.
It was great when we had been out for an hour and a half and no land could be seen. (I might have pretended i was the boy in 'A life of pie' for a bit.)
We saw loads of dolphins together, about a hundred of them jumping in unison and making laughter noises. There was a rainbow effect from the water aswell and it looked amazing. After quite a while longer, with the sea getting rougher, the guide said 'no whales today, many many rough water,' and everyone got a bit of a cob on. Some daft American girl said she wasn't going to pay, even for the fuel, like a fisherman can dictate the behaviour of blue whales just because she'll give him fifteen quid. Then the French guy behind me tartly states, 'uh, maybezwe go too late uh..' and glances in my direction before nonchalantly crossing his legs and taking a sip of his coconut juice. There was a sharp knife near me that had been used to cut open the coconuts and I was about to ask if he knew what happened to the Frenchmen in 'The life of pie' ..then...excitement. Our driver spots one somehow, miles away and we speed off into it's direction. Beautiful, we see it surface and spurt water for about a minute, then the tale comes up and it dives down in a show offy kind of a way. Very exciting. A little later we see two whales together doing similar whale based activities. (I was throwing in pieces of french man to attract them, see. Whales liking garlic, of course)
But it's not all good murderous racist fun, just mostly.

Which means my updates are now only about 8 weeks out of date. Well, i will update soon, not here though, because i'm about to break this computer in a protest against the non choice giving spell checker. stick your z's up your arse.
hello?
oh, you've gone ...bye then...

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Comments

[Debbie]

Unawatuna
Write more Liam. You're too funny. Hurry.