Week 54: Sri Lanka

Well, it's been a while since I've gone anywhere of interest.  I did do a home trip in between, but not too much of interest I don't believe.  Vegas, Denver, Oklahoma, you know, all the same.  I saw a friend off for his bachelor party in Vegas, we partied quite hard, got a penthouse suite, and I loss quite a bit while gambling.  Drank quite a bit, slept too little, saw some shows, including "Absinthe" which was quite the show.  It definitely wasn't a children's show.  In between each act were dirty joke skits that even make ME blush, (spoken by the girl in the picture).  She went through every sexual act I can think of with a sock puppet.  And that's quite a few.  The keg stand on tightropes was cool, and women in little clothing climbing out of balloons, and the couple spinning really fast in roller skates was quite cool also.

So innocent, until she speaks.  The guy was just as creepy as he looks too.  Awesome!  

The $20 whisky bacon with the $15 dollar scotch on the way to a 85 dollar haircut/shave was quite nice too.  But hey, it's Vegas.  You gotta splurge a little bit.

10:00 AM, don't judge.   

Denver and Oklahoma were great, always a good time to meet up with friends, spend time with family, and relax.  No need for details there, hanging at the mall, just dance, and cooking/eating enough to feed twice the amount of family members present.  Yum!

I may or may not have an entire cupcake in my mouth

Anyways, came back to work, and then randomly, timing worked out such that I could go to Sri Lanka!

Sri Lanka:  Also known as the tear drop of India, known for its paradise environment, massive tea farms, beautiful beaches, and elephants.  Food fare is similar to India, a bit more spicy, but strong curry base.  That's what I knew about Sri Lanka before I left.  Everything else was based off a 45 minute Q&A with one of the guys who lives there, and Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations."  The guy gave a bunch of recommendations as to where to go, and commented on whether we were trying to do too much in the 4 day/3 night trip.

Day 1:
I went with a fellow co-worker over to Sri Lanka.  Worked until the last minute, leaving the compound at 6:30, I got back at 5:45, still having to pack.  No problem, only a 4 day trip.  Got to the airport, lines were ok, not too long, maybe a couple hours of waiting, which is not bad at all.  We decided to fly Sri Lanka Airlines, and the flight was quite ok, despite the poor reviews online.  Someone made the joke that I'd be sitting next to a goat or a chicken on the plane.

He flew first class. 

The only thing I thought was interesting was that there was no individual air vents. The attendants were quite nice, even with the large number of people that were there.  Very patient.

So it got a bit warm on the plane.  Food was rice and chicken in a curry sauce.  It would not be the last time we had curry on the trip.  With the time change, we ended up in Sri Lanka at 6:00 AM the following day.  So it'd be a waste to not start the trip after sleeping 3 hours on the plane.  Let's go!  First location from the airport would be Kandy.

So driving in Sri Lanka is probably the most stressful thing I have ever encountered for driving ever.  All roads are single lane each direction.  There are two types of vehicles in Sri Lanka, fast and slow.  If you're a slow, people will pass you in the other lane.  Normally not a big deal.  However buses are the fast vehicles.  Well, they THINK they are.  And that's where it starts.  There's just something disconcerting about a bus full of people coming at you full speed.  We actually had to swerve off and stop a couple of times in order to allow the bus to complete their passing.  Eek.  So with that all in mind, the average speed of travel was probably around 55 kilometers per hour.  Kandy was 120 km away.  That's two hours in the car swerving and braking, and more swerving.  Not a good place for people who get carsick.  I had quite a bit of Dramamine in order to keep from retching everywhere.  It worked though.

1.  The bus isn't going to stop, and this is a 2 lane road.
2.  Notice the confederate flag on the "Tuk-Tuk" on the left

The trip was beautiful, I do admit, and it would have been a shame to miss some of it, such as the untouched jungle, or the small huts towns selling coconut and pineapple, or the thousands of dogs hanging out in the streets, humping in the ditches.

No, I didn't take a picture of dogs humping

Schools were quite prevalent, and I was surprised and glad to know that the literacy rate for people 15 years and older was 92%.  Quite high for a third world country.  And it showed, everywhere I went, people spoke English  with great pronunciation  and understood our Texas accents.  Half way up to Kandy was the elephant orphanage.  Most likely just a big collection of elephants, but it appeared that they were taken care of, had plenty to eat, and there were quite a few moms and babies.  Always a good time.  There were multiple locations, the baby pen, the baby feeding area, and the general congregation area for all the elephants.  The elephants are kept at bay with spears, so there was a gap between us and the elephants, unless you were feeding the babies.

Yes, cute.  

Feed me

Approved

Elephant Headlock!

So Sleepy

From there, we went to the river for the elephants to go bath, and have drink.  It may have appeared quite staged, but the elephants didn't seem reluctant to do it.  The babies might have, but I think that's more fear of water.  Once again, great scenery, and photo opportunities.


  

I probably wouldn't buy napkins here

In between waiting for them to bathe though, there was a dung paper factory.  It's exactly like you would think.  Elephant poop is something like 90% fiber.  Once you clean it, you can shred it, color it, press it, and make paper.  The store didn't stink actually.  So that was nice.  I wonder about the poor guy who has to go collect the feedstock.  That's probably the elephant dung paper factory intern job.





So 2 hours to Pinnawella Elephant Orphanage, and another 2 hours till Kandy.  Drive was the same, dodging vehicles, sketchy food places.  We stopped at a random gas-stationing looking pit stop area off the side of the road after an hour or so.  Aaron hadn't eaten the airplane food, so was pretty hungry.  The method of presentation was actually very different.  There's a tray of sandwiches, which is presented and put in front of you.  You then eat as many as you'd like.  The water tasted very local, and I was a bit worried afterwards, but I had an OK chicken curry croissant looking thing. Anyway, after we had picked over all the sandwiches and touched them all, the guy took the plate back and charged us for all that we ate.  I tried not to think too much about who else had touched all the sandwiches.  I think it ended up being a dollar a sandwich.  You get what you pay for.

Not available for purchase at the gas station sandwich shop

We finally made it to Kandy, had lunch, including Lion Beer, which is made in Sri Lanka.  The normal beer is quite nice and light.  Perfect for a hot day on the road.  Air conditioning is only in select places, although the temperature outside probably got to a high of 90F, nothing more than that.  Always humid though of course, being so close to the ocean.  Didn't recognize the temperature until our tour guides' car wouldn't start.  We had all ignored the fact that the Honda Insight he was driving had its lights on.  Whoops.  The van that finally jump started us had it's battery behind the driver seat.  The van was a manual transmission on a slope.  That made it very interesting to park the van as close as possible to the car as possible.  This is with 10 people standing in front of the van, behind the van, in the van, etc...  I think at one point, when the driver was trying to back out, the guy standing in front of the van came about 2" from being pinned between the van and the wall, when the van slipped forward as the driver engaged the clutch.  Eek.  Hazards left and right.  Glad it worked out though.

We made a quick detour into the massive botanical garden in Kandy.  But we're guys.  So that lasted maybe 45 minutes as we made a fast round around the park.  It was Valentines Day anyways, didn't want to make it any more weird than it already was.  Lots of cool trees, pretty flowers, bamboo, people bathing in the river, monkeys, and thousands of bats.  Yup.

Bottom Left Hand Corner

I'm not leaning.  Promise.  

Kandy was a tourist city for sure, the main attraction being the Temple of Tooth, where one on Buddah's original teeth is held in a shrine.  Not for display of course.  We got there a bit late, so it's not nearly as impressive at night, but the surrounding area, and the interior is quite exquisite.  And still in working fashion as well.  That means shoes off!

Prior to entering the temple, we went to go see the cultural dance show, which included many different Sri Lankan dances, with some plate spinning, and fire eating/walking at the end.  Quite the show.  Dark though, so I didn't take pictures as nice as I could have.  But I got a few good ones.  The energy of the room was quite nice, everyone was happy, and sincerely glad to be there, dancers and tourists.

By the time we got to the temple, it was dark, and we had limited places we could go to.  We made the best of it.  At night time, it's not nearly as busy for tourists.  It's more for people actually going to temple.  And there were quite a few of them as well.  Most who entered the temple bought flowers to donate to the temple, so that they could make displays to present to the temple.

The first hall had the story of the tooth.  Seems that the tooth was taken every time a new king came into place, and different temples, each more ornate than the last.  Then the British took it, and once stable gave it back.  Quite lovely.  Glad I got my socks dirty for it.

So for the night, we were both tired of chicken and curry for meals, I think we had a rice and curry dish for each meal, including the flight over.  I had even had a chicken curry sandwich for lunch.  So we decided to go all out, and have... pizza.  It was pretty good.  Stuffed crust = awesome, no matter where you go.  What was odd is that it was beef pepperoni, but pork really isn't banned over there, maybe just expensive I don't know.  Great way to spend Valentines Day.  I tried not to make eye contact with Aaron too much during dinner.  We could have gotten the special of the day, a pizza a stuffed bear, and one dessert to share.  Oh well, next time, haha.  

I keep forgetting that a place such as Pizza Hut is "foreign and different," so everyone there was getting a kick out of the novelty of a pizza.  Anyways, after dinner, it was straight off to bed, can't blame anyone, we were freaking exhausted.  

Day 2:  Sigiriya

We got up about as early as I was willing to, around 9:00 AM, and had some breakfast downstairs, complementary of course.  It was nice, I should have tried the fish curry, but after considering the long drive we had to make that day, decided against it.  All the fruits in Sri Lanka are incredibly, the pineapple was probably some of the sweetest I've tasted, all the juices were freshly squeezed, and the tea (surprise) was just delicious.

We made a pit stop to do some jewelry shopping while we were there in Kandy.  Being the first customer of the day, and feeling very cheap, I thought I got a good deal on the jewelry.  Important part was buying as a big group.  Apparently group discounts are easier to haggle than individual sales items.  We both bought star sapphires at the store, which are unique to only a few locations, Sri Lanka being a large exporter of them:

Not that big of course!

So after an expensive haggling session, everyone was content, and we made our way to Sigiriya.

So there are many spice gardens, all who specialize in their own concoctions based off of those spices.  Basically, if you have any ailment, they have something for you.  If you don't know where your spices come from it's pretty neat . Whether it works or not, I don't know.  They were being sold at tourist prices.  I bought a bottle of bug spray (citronella oil) for 18 dollars.  Did it work, well yes.  Buying a can of "OFF" probably would have worked just as well.  Oh well, stimulate the economy.  Some pretty cool stuff, red pineapple for example.

Not This

More like this

Plus whatever this is.  Cures insomnia.  PERMANENTLY.  j/k.  

The guys showing us around were not as yellow as the painting

We finally got to Sigiriya around 2 pm or so, and it was quite epic, even from afar.  The road entering the building was all dirt, and it had rained for the last couple of days.  Quite bumpy and beat up, but we saw more monkeys, and got to drive around the outer moat of the Sigiriya fort.  Both our driver and guide mentioned that the moat used to be full of man-eating crocodiles.  They were unsure if there were any more left.  It was easier just to put a sign up saying no swimming.  

We're going to the top of that!

It's recommended and kinda pressed upon you to have a travel guide take you all the way up the fort and back down.  He usually has some good insight to what things are, and it was only 10 dollars.  Why not?  We sprayed ourselves down with the $18 bug spray and made the way up the fort.  

So first thing that was mentioned was the 1200 steps to get to the top.  I asked if the first km to the entrance counted.  Nope.  We walked through the first gardens and the giant summer pools.  The king had 500 wives, and according to this article I read, was nothing more than a giant sex castle.  Hmm, not enough soft things to sit on for me, or laydown on.  (http://www.remyc.com/sigiriya.html ).  There was actually running plumbing also, water from the mountain down to the ground.  Some of it still was working actually.  Impressive.  

Oh, the things this guy's great-great-great-great -great grandfather has seen.  

This was the east pool, the other still hasn't been excavated.  

It still works!

We continued the hike and walked past, what I considered an old romping area, which when the Buddhists came in and took over converted to a meditation area.  They had to paint over all the pictures of the top-less women in the cave.  Apparently that's distracting during meditation.  

Many of the pictures on the wall had "fallen off,"  

The vendors were definitely out in force today, and we encountered quite a few of them.  One of the guys tried to sell me a wooden treasure box.  It's quite cool, looks like a book, but you slide a few things around, and you can open up secret compartments.  The guy would not leave me alone, asking for something astronomical, 120 bucks.  It was solid ebony, so it was quite nice.  Beautiful.  I didn't need it, I told him that, and I told him 60 bucks, jokingly.  He followed us for 15 minutes slowly dropping the price.  I continued to tell him I didn't want it, so I wasn't going to budge on price.  Eventually he hesitated, and that's when I pulled out cash.  I showed it to him, say here it is, take it or leave it, and walked away.  Easy.  Done deal.  Did I pay too much?  Probably.  But hey, stimulate the economy right?  It is a third world country, and he did try to haggle with me for, at this point 20 minutes.  I was happy.  Aaron got something similar, but not made from ebony for $45.  He thought he paid too much.  I agreed. :-)

So we continued our way up, the rock getting bigger and bigger, the temperature staying nice, but getting a bit drizzly.  Hmm, might not be the best time walking up a rock mountain made of rock stairs.  Eh, what's the worst that could happen?  

The guide said it was this big!

Noise may provoke hornet attacks...

We continued the climb up, there were more monkeys who were actually quite tame, I got some nice pictures, and we continued to go up.   

Next stop was a preserved cave of all the pictures that had fallen away down stairs.  I can tell why they were distracting. What was nuts is that we were standing on a metal railing, that had been installed for people to see.  This was originally just a wall facing out.  The king had people climb up on rope ladders and paint all these pictures so that he'd have something to look at, when walking up his fort.  

I found it interesting that in each of the pictures, the women are different color tones.
The green one on the bottoms is a bit odd.  

Continuing on up, we walked on the original path up, which was a staircase with what they called the "mirror wall."  It was a highly polished piece of stone that was quite reflective.  Back in the day.  Unfortunately once the fort was opened for the public, many people decided to be a part of the wall, and imparted what they thought about fort.  What was nice, is according to the guide, it was mostly positive comments, and very few "for a good time, dispatch a courier to..."   

It was a clear shot to the next stop, which was the entrance to the king's court.  There used be a giant Lion's head on top, which makes sense.  Otherwise it's giant paws for some odd reason.  Before that, i took a picture of the next spot on the trip, in Dambulla, so that I could tell how far away we were from the other location.  

It's the gold thing in the middle. 

It's raining quite heavily at this point

The original stairs at this point were too slippery for anyone, and the officials had put in a metal stair case from this point to the top.  I was grateful, as it was super slippery for those coming up or down, and it's really not wide enough for both people to do the same.  Anyways, we made it to the top, and did the obligatory walk to the highest point on the mountain, with a jump of course :-)

The view from up top of course was breath taking.  You could see for km's all around you, and it was quiet, serene, even the tourists that were up there with us were all quiet, just enjoying the view.  

We had walked quite a distance

There was a pool up top too.  I couldn't quite understand how the guide described it, but they manually brought the water up, unless it had rained.  I'm guessing someone kind of pump, hopefully not a thousand people with a thousand buckets.

   

So from here, was just the walk down.  Not too bad right?  Well, I did slip once, and ride down the stair case a few stairs.  Glad I had my hand on the hand rail.  It would have been a very long ride, and I probably would have just flew off the side, on the 90 degree turn down.  Eek.  Going down was quite a bit faster, there was a fast route down, that didn't hit all the stops that we had seen going up.  We did see a snake charmer, who also had a giant snake.  Did we want to see.  Heck yeah!  5 dollars.  Oh...  ok sure...  

I aint' scared.  

Probably de-fanged, but it hissed alot!

Alright, time for lunch, elephants, and Damulla.  Wait, what's that?  SQUIRREL!

And a puppy

     

Sigiriya, what an awesome place!

So we did have lunch.  Chicken and rice again.  Can't complain, it was pretty tasty.  From there we got to ride elephants!  Awesome!  

So there's a beginner ride and an advanced ride.  Depends on whether you want to ride with a cage or not.  I had to try of course.  Elephants are very tall creatures, and don't have stirrups.  Well, their ears are not meant to be.  Also, they don't like it if you clutch on to their collar for dear life.  So we tried that for all of 5 minutes.  When the elephant rotated, I almost fell off, so yeah, I'll take the newbie ride.  Aaron, who had nothing to hold on to, definitely was in agreement.  

That was about as close as we were going to get to riding bareback.  Also, notice that our driver is driving a hybrid!

So we got the cage, and were joined by a family who worked in Qatar.  Small world.  French father, and Spanish mother.  Very cute kids, one very brave daughter, and her not as brave older brother.  And off we went.  The elephants like banana's and you could give them bananas on the way for a couple of bucks.  Sure.  

  

So after walking around for a little while, we were asked if we want to sit on the elephant's neck.  My pride already being hurt since I was afraid to fall off, I jumped on the opportunity.  I had a cage to grab onto now, in case I slipped.  Plus you can feed the elephant from the front much easier.  

I was holding on to the cage till my knuckles were white

The ride was a 45 minute ride, including some time in the water.  The water was very interesting, the guide rode the elephant into the water, and we got up quite high in the water.  Elephant poop everywhere.  Did you know it floats?  I didn't.  I kept my feet up as high as I could.  The elephant was trained to spray water as well, and of course it's a great tourist picture, so here they are:

Notice the water level on the flag.  

   

    

It was getting dark at this point, and we still had one more stop, in Dambulla, the buddhist caves.  The caves unfortunately close when it gets that dark.  They are caves you know.  No natural light in the dark.  So I got a few photos.  The statue of there is one of the largest statues of Buddha in this sitting position in the world.  Pretty neat.  It was a shame we got there so late.  Although, apparently, people were tired from walking all the stairs, they didn't want to walk any more stairs.  

  

Oh, and remember how I took a picture of the buddha from Sigiriya, here's Sigiriya, from Dambulla:

We made they drive ALL the way back from Dambulla to Colombo, which took 4 hours.  At night.  With buses driving full speed, and Tuk-Tuks swerving in between lanes.  I was too scared to take photos.  Fear that the flash would blind a driver coming right at just, and cause bad things to happen.  We did stop at a very scary looking liquor store on the way.  Not for us.  The driver.  You know, to calm his nerves.  Haha, not really, his wife wanted him to pick some up on the way home.  He had been gone now, for 2 days straight.  On his birthday too.  Well, we tipped him pretty well I believe.  He got paid per the km, and it ended up being something like 250 bucks for both days.  The gig if you're single isn't bad, your food is paid for by the company, as well as the accommodations  and any place you tour.  He also got commission at all the places we bought stuff.  Including the last place we went, which was a Batik shop.

Batik is very similar to an Easter egg dyeing process.  A white cloth is covered in wax, except for the parts that are to be dyed.  As you switch from color to color, you melt off the wax, and change the color.  At the end, you can have a very intricate design, with little bleed through, depending on the skill of the people.  I wonder at some point if all these items are really secretly made in a factory in India, or China, and then sold in Sri Lanka.  In either case, there were some very young girls doing all this stuff by hand, and so just watching how intricate the work was, was good enough for me to believe that it's all done by hand, and I won't complain about it, or the price I paid.  

  

We got in around 10:30, and it was time to go to bed again.  Heck of a day again.  

Day 3 

We were in the business capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo.  I slept in.  Pretty late, well past 11 or so, so the day was kinda half over.  We met up with Chaminda, our fellow worker in Saudi, who lived near Colombo, and who was willing to show us around the town.  

View from the Hotel.  Nice!

So the plan was to go shopping, find all the knock-off stores and go to the beach.  Apparently there wasn't too much of a selection, I couldn't really find much around.  Odels is a actual store where the manufacturers sell all their off-spec clothing.  I bought  a pair of boxers for 2 bucks.  That was about it for me.  We went to the "fancy" mall in Colombo, and you were paying full price for everything.  I definitely didn't buy anything there, except for sushi.  Did you know that Sri Lanka exports quite a bit of tuna?  I did not know this, and it's not a common thing to eat, as it's very expensive, and there's no market in Sri Lanka, except for tourists.  It's mainly exported out.  But the place we found was quite tasty.  I even got to see a video on the export business.  It was in Japanese, so I didn't really get it.  The pictures were good enough to make out what was going on.  I had a Sri Lankan hot dog.  Basically chicken hot dog with curry mustard.  Very tasty.  We headed out to where the Parliament building was.  It was quite nice, and still very much under tight watch.  We stopped for maybe 2 minutes, and police showed up immediately, asking what we were doing.  Enough to get a photo though :-).  

We then went to the independence square, which was designed to be similar to the one in Kandy, near the temple of tooth.  It was nice.  

  

From there we went to the beach, and well, just relaxed.  The beach was long, and clean.  The water was a perfect temperature, and the sand was clean.  No seaweed, or junk in the water.  We were told it went out  a km before it sloped down.  Water was right at chest level, a perfect height to relax, and enjoy the waves.  

                    

We had dinner in the same area, had "mongolian grill" for dinner, which was a brand new concept for Chaminda, I didn't want to spoil his fun, since he was leaving the following day back as well.  We went out to "The Library" bar, for drinks, played some pool, I had an "Arak" which is hard liquor created from coconut.  Not too good, tasted very much like fresh coconut gone bad, a bit like spoiled milk.  But at least I can say I had some.  

The following day, I had some Singapore Chilly Crab, since it's available there, and it was off to the airport.  Very spicy.  Nothing too crazy there, it was funny that our driver spent about 1/2 an hour trying to argue his way out of a ticket for having illegal tint.  We had plenty of time at the airport to spare.  Which was nice, since there were quite a few chilis in the Chilly crab.  

The trip was great, was exactly what I needed, very relaxing, and we only saw 1/2 of Sri Lanka. It's rare to be somewhere, where people are naturally kind, helpful, and happy.  Everyone is happy with what they have, and are very invested in their future.  Everyone knew the latest politics, the country's 10 year plan, including new highways, airport expansions, and increased tourism.  Everyone was intensely proud of their heritage, and were excited about their futures.  With that attitude, it's only a matter of time.  I will definitely go back and check out the other half when I get an opportunity to go again.  Hopefully not on Valentines Day with a fellow co-worker, haha.

http://hudang6234.smugmug.com/Asia/13-Feb-13-Sri-Lanka/