Sad, friends, but true: we left Sri Lanka on November 10th LAST YEAR, and I’m uploading my brief account (ha ha) of that wee trip now – November 9th, 2011.
Life – living it is invariably more fun, complex and unpredictable than writing about it! We were homeless and jobless, wending our way back to Newcastle then – we’re now residents of Tasmania, having spent most of the year living in Bali … oh well, a woman far wiser than I said it best – “The moment of change is the only poem” (Adrienne Rich, the American feminist poet, if you’d like to explore that a little further).
As I really don’t expect you to remember, I last wrote to you from Bali’s west coast, writing to you of a night halt in KL after our Javanese jaunt. And then…
November 30th, 2010, Balian Beach, west of Soka, West Bali’s south coast, Indonesia
Yep, we’re still here, although I gave myself most of today off – it’s nearly 6.00pm and I’m just kicking off this chapter before we wander down for dinner at one of the three little eateries here (each attached to a guest house) – no sunset tonight, just an electrical storm out at sea – they do great storms here, and we can lie in bed, under the mozzie net, with our door to the balcony open, and take it all in … it is nearly nirvana, you know! Of course, in nirvana I’d be able to upload the last three days’ worth of work, but my attempt to use the local internet café up on the main road to do so proved too taxing for them, so it won’t be up until we return to the south on Friday – I hope to be close to finished telling you about Sri Lanka by then, so the blog posts might be like the old buses: you wait for ages – nothing – and then two come along … sorry!
March 29th, 2011.
Well, more like Sydney buses, perhaps. You wait for ages – nothing – and then just the one, anyway. Gotta be a record interruption there – just a day shy of four months! All will be detailed anon, suffice to say we’re now resident in Bali, here until January 2013. I’m writing from Pemuteran, on Bali’s north coast, not too far from the western port town of Gilimanuk, where regular ferries to Java depart – we rode up the west coast from our house in Seminyak, with views of Java and its gigantic eastern volcanoes for large chunks of the ride. We’re both well, I’m working at an International School near Denpasar, while Iona’s enjoying her non-working ‘spousal visa’ status before starting some serious study in July. Hope spring’s sprung up north and an Indian summer’s stretching along with daylight savings down south … back to Serendib …
June 24th, 2011.
Forget the bus analogy. School hols await, and I’m determined to get this done before flying to Sydney next week. Sorry for the delay, working and blogging don’t easily co-exist. I’ll get stuck in below, and work out how to blog about 2011 later! Hope you all are well and happy, and making good choices about how to live life!
October 23rd, 2011.
This is getting silly now, really! For those who only keep up with our adventures via this blog it’s time to confess that still more water has passed under the bridge – we now live in Launceston, in Northern Tasmania – it’s still a small island off the Australian coast, just now we’re about 41◦8’ rather than 8◦41’south of the equator. A dream job opportunity led to this latest move – I’m working a four day week teaching English to refugees and migrants (adults) – and loving it! Launceston (pronounced Lon-ceston, ‘Lonnie’ to the locals) is great, but I’ll save details on that for another time – probably a blog to be published about 2014, the way things have been moving on this one! Well, it’s 46 weeks since I started this Chapter – in fact, two days from now it’ll be a year since we arrived in Sri Lanka – given we were only there three weeks I’m aiming for a 23 day ‘deadline’ – I’ll aim to publish a year to the day after we left! (We’re off to Burma in 8 weeks, hopefully I won’t be telling you about that NEXT Christmas!).
I did say ‘read ourselves to sleep’ as I left you at the Tunes Hotel in the carpark of Kuala Lumpur’s LCCT terminal last time, but in fact it was a pretty unsettled few hours rest before we were up again – we may have seista’d too long in the arvo – the things you learn.
We were actually up at 3.30am, and outside the hotel boarding the shuttle bus by 3.45am. At 3.47am we stopped to pick up a couple of older Aussie surfers, with boards, as they came bolting after the bus. They were off to Sri Lanka too, but spent most of the 10 minute trip raving about the waves around Kerala in India; 50 year old beach bums – you’ve just gotta love people who follow their dreams.
By now it’ll come as no surprise to you that we breakfasted (wouldn’t “bagel-led” be a great word?) at the wi-fi friendly Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at the LCCT, where the coffee was its dependable self, though I must report that our usual seats had been taken – there’ll be a letter to the manager, no doubt.
We’d elected to visit Sri Lanka for a few reasons. In 2004 we’d tossed up between a Christmas trip to Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and had settled on the latter – I can’t even remember the deciding factor, but it worked out well – we made friends in Cambodia, especially on the return trip for 2007, that we wouldn’t have otherwise, and a handful of them are going to be lifelong friendships; you just know sometimes. We also missed the Boxing Day tsunami – having now seen the damage in Banda Aceh, and spoken with many Sri Lankans, we really appreciate how different our lives may have been. Another factor in our decision was the relative costs– leaving for anything less than 12 days would require us to leave Indonesia a second time (30 day visas are the only ones available ‘on arrival’), so 17 days in Sri Lanka was more economical than two trips out of Indonesia to KL and/or Singapore, or even into Darwin or East Timor. The deal was done! (Murphy’s law and all that – a miscount of ‘days’ and ‘nights’ mean we’ll be overstaying by a day anyway – still, a $20 ‘fine’ each at the airport is cheaper than another visa!) Finally, I’d had a particularly burning desire to visit since discovering its old Arab name, Serendib, which gives us the exquisite English word serendipity.
Some of you may know that Malaysia’s population includes a significant percentage of Indians (they’re the third biggest group after Malays and Chinese – nearly 8%), the majority of whom are Tamils, Indians from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and Sri Lankans, predominantly from the north and north-east, but also from the tea-growing central regions. Certain industries – baggage handling and maintenance at the airport is one – are almost exclusively staffed by Tamils, and it wasn’t very surprising to find that our flight was both full, and almost entirely so of Tamil Malaysians heading ‘home’ to Sri Lanka for a visit, or Sri Lankans heading home having visited their Malaysian-dwelling family members.
I hadn’t met that many Tamil people before this trip, but those I had – mostly in southern India – had always been incredibly friendly and hospitable, and very ‘upbeat’ people, quick with a laugh. Of course, the greatest ever bowler in test cricket, Muttiah Murilidaran, is a Tamil, and someone we’ve both admired for years. In any event, what I’m leading to is what an enjoyable flight we had – it’s not a long flight, and it was obscenely early in the morning, but the trip felt like a flying party – apart from us and our 50-something year old surfer mates we saw one other pair of whiteys, and everyone else seemed to be on their way to or from some very happy family reunion, and the joie de virve was palpable! It’s a nice way to fly.
Colombo Airport isn’t huge, and we were soon through immigration and customs and having another fight with an ATM – even with just the one bank card at the moment, we aren’t carrying any hard currency, just withdrawing as we go; apart from little hiccoughs like the one in Yogyakarta last chapter, it’s normally pretty straight-forward. Not so here – the machine said I could have 4000 Sri Lankan rupees (about $400), but wouldn’t give it to me. A local guy approached, asked the problem and stuck his head in at the appropriate one of the more than a dozen currency exchange windows (i.e. the one run by the same bank!) and came back to us and said – ‘Just ask for less money’ – we eventually got 2 500 rupees, but I was sweating the whole time, worried that the incremental attempts at lower amounts would eventually convince the machine to retain the card. (And that’s not to mention the $5 fee for each withdrawal – it makes these lower amounts not very cost-effective – thank God for a resilient Aussie dollar throughout our travels! Now that I’ll be getting paid in USD it’s time to start hoping for an easing in the value of the AUD – the whole global economic system, run on my whim – couldn’t be much worse than the way its run now, surely?)
Mr. Helpful hung around and, of course, worked for a tour group, and wanted to sell us a tailored ‘car and driver’ trip for the duration of our visit – at under $100 a day, including the driver’s accommodation, it wasn’t too bad an offer, but part of the reason we were here was because we figured we could do it cheaper than in Malaysia, so we weren’t coughing up $100 a day for anything!
We did hire a taxi from him to cover the 30 kilometres or so into town, and then a couple further south to our pre-booked hotel, and promised to think about a tour. Of course, the taxi driver tried to talk us into just using his car for touring, but wasn’t much cheaper, and didn’t have the language or driving skills to entice us – he was one of those people who like to look at an obstacle for a few seconds before standing on the brakes to avoid an impact with it! The fact that he had another fare waiting for collection, and kept saying ‘10 minutes’ each time the guy rang (there were several calls) wasn’t inspirational either. The client – a Saudi businessman (our driver didn’t like Saudis) eventually told him not to bother coming at all, but then had to ring back and retract when he couldn’t find anyone else. Like most, our driver was even worse when on his mobile phone.
We distracted ourselves by taking in the passing scenery – we’d arrived at the beginning of the morning peak hour, and had to drive right across town to get to our destination.
December 1st, 2010, Balian Beach, west of Soka, West Bali’s south coast, Indonesia
Five blog updates from the one spot – surely a record! What a lack of distractions can do for self-discipline, eh? We’d a pleasant dinner down the road last night – the final set of guest cottages has a sea-facing restaurant – a great place to watch that storm head in to land – we got home dry, but between 4.00 and 5.00am today we watched a brilliant storm over the sea – even had to close our balcony doors! Anyway, I was about to tell you about our first impressions of Colombo….
The tuk-tuks are Thai style, three wheelers with the driver ‘in’ the cabin with you – variously decorated, the older, more traditional ones predominantly in greens and blues, newer ones more individualistically – the introduction of fluorescent pastels as trim hasn’t necessarily been for the best, however. There are myriad ‘gods’ on the dashboards and windscreens, obviously for the Hindus, but Buddha, Allah and Jesus aren’t in short supply either. The canopy (if that’s the right word? – the stretched and fitted soft-top, anyway) is attached by a series of studs to the metal body, and these have also become custom items – many ‘skull and crossbones’ ones, but also Sri Lankan flags, and vaguely ‘silhouette-of-a-mosque’ ones too. They’re typically 125 or 200cc engines, in both 2-stroke and 4-stroke, and have amazing torque for their size; we went up a few steep hills – with us, driver and chassis they must be moving close to 400-500kg – and we only had to hop out and walk once, and that was an incredible gradient and practically on dirt, the surface was so poor.
- Bajaj, the Sri Lankan tuktuk – all colours and all conditions can be seen.
The road-side constabulary are both military and civilian, practically ubiquitous and very heavily armed – there’s a strong sense that the 30+ year long war with the LTTE (Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam) has only just ended, and although the risk of a final retaliation is slight, the security forces aren’t relaxing just yet. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for the Tamils, as with the Kurds and other ‘aspirationalist’ groups, and you certainly don’t have to dig deep to find anti-Tamil sentiment amongst some sections of the Sinhalese population – one guy we spoke with insisted that every Tamil asylum seeker was an economic refugee, that no discrimination or abuse occurred etc, when Amnesty International and other groups have clearly documented numerous cases. There’s no point debating it though – firstly, as visitors to the country it’s certainly not our place to lecture or harangue people about ‘internal’ matters (although human rights are a universal matter!), and secondly – sadly – many people would rather listen to their prejudices and mistaken beliefs than the facts – I’ve found the same thing back home often enough! There’s an Elvis Costello song, New Lace Sleeves, that has a line which goes “But you never see the lies/that you believe” – just about sums it up, I think. (You can hear New Lace Sleeves here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2rNQ0jMfEo – it’s a great song, with an unrelated-to-our-topic-yet-simply-brilliant line – ‘Good manners and bad breath (will) get you nowhere’.)
Almost as profuse as the cops were the canines – as with Southern Thailand, Indonesia’s predominantly Muslim population means you see fewer dogs than in other parts of South East Asia (the compensating fact being that you don’t have to see them being carted around on the back of a bicycle as livestock, as occasionally you do in Vietnam), so it was nice to see them in numbers again, clearly accepted by the population, if still largely left to fend for themselves.
Another difference was the number of motorbikes on the road, as opposed to scooters. Everywhere in South East Asia the two-wheeler is in the majority, but in most places it’s either in the form of semi-automatic, large rimmed motor-scooters (the Honda Cub is the classic example, with over 200 million made in the 30 years from 1975); the manual Vespa-type ‘European’ scooter, with clutch, small wheels and a footbrake, or the Japanese small-wheeled, fully automatic (‘twist and go’) scooter, with front and back brake levers on the handle-bars, bicycle style. Here the motorbike-proper – usually at 160 or 200cc, Indian-made, at least equalled, but probably out-numbered all other two-wheelers combined.
It wasn’t just the motorbikes that reminded us we were back on the sub-continent either – that wonderful, unique and occasionally convoluted use of English, spoken with distinctive pronunciation patterns and frequent use of progressive verb forms was all around us. ‘Will sir be requiring a taxi cab and a driver for his undertaking his sight-seeing?’ Signs along the streets, too, led to wry smiles – ‘Deadly Accidents Happen Here’, conveying the same information as the Australian ‘Accident Black Spot Ahead’, but with much more vim! (I remember years ago in India approaching a sharp bend, to be greeted by three signs, about 100m apart, that read ‘Slow’, “Very Slow” and ‘Dead Slow’ – it was like listening to a track report from Flemington!) Outside a law firm Iona spotted ‘Atony at Law’, which would be just fantastic if your solicitor’s name was Anthony.
Sari bedecked women were everywhere too – wonderful colours, many shot through with gold or silver thread, catching the bright sunlight wonderfully. Watching a sari-wearing pillion passenger dismount (the bigger bikes meant fewer passengers riding side-saddle) was witnessing an art-form no less complex than tying a sari – to mount the bike the woman would stand, placing all her weight, on one the side-pegs – left foot on left peg, for example, then demurely lift her right leg over the seat, rather than the alternative of standing on the ground and ‘hoiking’ her leg over the seat – the discreet method meaning legs were angled less than 45°, the from-the-road method often requiring around a 90° manoeuvre – immodest or impossible in a long sari or skirt.
These sights whizzed or crawled by, depending on the minute-by-minute vagaries of Colombo’s traffic, as did some landmark buildings, like the Cargill shopping centre, and we soon reached the Fort area in the centre of town, before taking a southerly turn along the famous Galle Road, stretching for several kilometres along the waterfront. Galle Road starts just south of Fort, at Slave Island, with beautiful colonial courthouse buildings on one side and the grand Galle Face Hotel on the other, and after a few kilometres we veered off into the Kollupitiya area, where we were staying in the lovely gardened, 100 year old ‘Colombo House’.
December 2nd, 2010, Balian Beach, west of Soka, West Bali’s south coast, Indonesia
One last entry from our western wonderland – we’re heading back south tomorrow, for a final week around the coast west of Denspasar – a visit to school, some preliminary house hunting and so on, plus some long walks on white sand beaches – the ones around here are black, volcanic sand, and the area’s something of a delta for the many rivers that start in the mid-country mountains, so none of the beaches is particularly long – it’s an extremely nice spot, but not especially so for beach-combing. Anyway, back to Colombo…
It was barely 9.00am, but Colombo House had a room immediately available – well, it was more like a dorm, really. Colombo House is a lovely British colonial era relic – large, verdant gardens, dark wooden floors, and a sweeping circular staircase to the upper floor, where four massive rooms have been given over for accommodation. Ours held a decent sized table and chairs and – all along one wall, with adequate space between and around them, a double bed and two king singles, each with a mosquito net hanging above; on the opposite wall were a gigantic dressing table and a couple of odd armchairs. The far end was free of furniture, sporting a 15ft wide bay window. The bathroom was bigger than our entire room at the Tunes Hotel, although it only contained a toilet, shower recess and sink. Downstairs housed a massive administration area, a dining room like something from a southern English hotel circa 1940 – white linen, numerous pieces of furniture – display cabinets, side boards, low-boys etc – every piece in dark stained wood, and showing its age. The opposite half of the ground floor – what once would’ve been a reception room and ball-room – was filled with wicker, bamboo and cane furniture – all very ‘Days of the Raj’ stuff, but just uninvitingly scattered about the place.
We looked at our room and had to suppress our laughter until the bell-hop (who actually turned out to be the absolute do-everything dogsbody, poor guy) had left – it was enormous, and should have been great, but instead looked like a set for Fawlty Towers – absolutely nothing matched, everything looked old or second-hand rather than period or antique, but mostly it was the sheer size, and the ridiculous mis-use of it that brought on the giggles.
Still, there was plenty of bed-space, it was 35° or more outside, and we’d had very little sleep, so we decided to nap until lunchtime and, hopefully, stroll around in the cool of the afternoon.
We dozed fitfully – it really was very hot, and the wall-mounted air-conditioner was clearly inadequate for the space it was expected to cool – and got up for noon-time showers. Iona was first in the bathroom, and sadly reported a very dodgy shower – one of those two-in-one taps and shower jobs, and the pull-up button to direct the flow to the shower wouldn’t stay up. Luckily the lid from my shaving foam canister was just about the right height, and was soon jammed in. The next bathroom excitement was the spotting of squirrels outside the window! There were two resident dogs – an older, extremely short-legged, light-brown haired Corgi variant and a youthful, leggy, black with tan saddled, skinny mongrel – fortunately it was the former that gave chase, and the squirrel made it across the yard comfortably. We were later to learn (but still can’t quite believe) that the Corgi mutt is mother to the younger dog – I’m shaking my head still, and can’t even begin to think of a human analogy – Lester Piggott as the Incredible Hulk’s dad?
While Iona was showering (well, washing her feet, anyway), I’d tried to power up the computer for a quick check of the email, and discovered that I’d need a password – the signal was great, I’d noticed the wi-fi modem on the landing right outside our door – so I nicked down the fantastic staircase and asked the woman behind the counter if I could have a password. Have you ever had that icy feeling of knowing that someone has instantly taken a dislike to you? This was sub-zero: the manager (I think) was a woman a little older than me, with perfect English, and a perfect bitch. ‘Sorry, we don’t have internet access for guests.’ I explained that they advertised free wi-fi, that I had work to do and that I needed the net to do it (not that I consider talking to you as work, friends, but I do like to check my facts (and Elvis Costello lyrics) on line, now and then). She shrugged – a 100% teenager ‘not-my-problem’ shrug, then picked up the phone and started to dial. I was stunned, and went back upstairs shaking my head.
We wandered out into Kollupitiya, heading back towards Galle Road in search of lunch. We found nothing – the area off the main road is strictly residential, while the main road is largely commercial, with a sprinkling of retail outlets and some tiny, local-style eateries, a bit like the Padang warung in Indonesia – filled with precooked ‘snack’ type food, usually deep-fried and unidentifiable – our Sinhalese/Tamil language skills being non-existent, we weren’t game to give these a go at this stage.
We walked for a bit, but the heat was searing, so we soon flagged down – well, in fact, we soon gave in to one of the dozens of three-wheeler drivers who harangued us, calling out every minute – and headed back to the Fort district. (He started at 400 rupees, we ended at 200 – it seemed fair; it’s funny how when you’ve got no-idea what something’s supposed to cost you’re still expected to haggle in these parts – it felt like a scene from Life of Brian. We actually had done quite well, and never covered the distance again for under 300 rupees.)
Fort is the most central of Colombo’s 15 districts, and earns itself the postal code ‘Colombo 1’. Once you get the hang of the postal codes they’re a useful orientation tool – Colombo is a long, relatively narrow city, stretching along the Indian Ocean about 12 kilometres south from Fort, and a good four or five kilometres inland from the coast for most of the northern section of this strip (although, like many others, it’s sprawling outwards, particularly to the south and east). So, at the northern-coastal tip is Fort (Col 1); then heading south along the coast is Slave Island (Col 2), where we’d seen the court house and other colonial buildings earlier – it’s not really an island, just a slab of land between two lakes, but the Dutch colonialists did keep slaves there; next southerly is Kollupitiya (Col 3); then so on down the coast to Wellawatta (Col 6). If you then come back up to Kollupitiya and head inland you get the beautiful, green and lush, upper-crust area known as Cinnamon Gardens (Col 7), and you can keep working east and north until you end up back just inland from Fort, at the market area of Pettah (Col 11). Our limited time and ramblings were pretty much restricted to the Area from Fort down to Kollupitiya, and inland from Cinnamon Gardens to Pettah, with a side-trip to the adjoining Hulftsdorp (Col 12).
Fort is an historical area, with buildings from the various colonial eras, most notably the British, but it is also an incredibly security-sensitive area, still off-limits to motor traffic, with armed, barbed-wire sentry posts at each access point – the very centre, around the legal and business precincts, is off-limits to the general public. We passed an armed guard, looking incredibly bored, as we headed up Chatham St, one of the main – well, I was about to say thoroughfares, but it ends in a military road block – so ‘streets’ will have to do.
We found the Pagoda Tea Rooms, an art-deco classic, with that sort of old-fashioned, colonial set-up that means you expect the waiters to wear white gloves. They didn’t, but they were very attentive – we took seats in the non-smoking section, and were immediately attended to by an ancient waiter – easily old enough to have been working there when Duran Duran filmed their 1980s video-clip for their hit Hungry Like the Wolf here, although we didn’t ask! (In fact, the whole clip was shot in Sri Lanka, but the opening café scenes were right here in the Pagoda Tea Rooms – another YouTube link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOg5VxrRTi0.) The food was OK, but nothing too exciting. Not that we were hungry when we left, and definitely not a lá lupine.
- Free publicity for ‘Hungry like the wolf’ – and I never even really liked Duran Duran!
We wandered around parts of Fort – it was actually a fort during the European dominated period of Colombo’s history, walled on two sides by the sea and on the others by moats – but it’s an odd, not all that welcoming sort of place now. It’s got a couple of ‘sights’ – a clock tower in the restricted, take-no-photos military zone and a large dagoba (the local word for a stupa), as well as some nice old colonial-era shop fronts, Cargills and Millers being the stand-outs. (Cargills has a wonderful street frontage, a little like the Grace Brothers’ Buildings on Broadway in Sydney, but with an older, other-era feeling to them – those old enough to remember the Mark Foys’ frontage in Sydney might be better able to picture it. Cargills is still a leading supermarket here, positioning themselves very similarly to Tesco in the UK, with loads of fresh produce and their appeal to the working parents to ‘Pick up something for dinner of the way home’, but also branching out to {incongruously, in this building} hold the local franchise for KFC.)
- Cargills – the 20th Century landmark – far nicer than the 21st Century ‘World Trade Centre’, behind!
Also in the Fort area (craving the military security on offer during the years of strife with LTTE, I suspect) are Sri Lanka’s World Trade Centre and a couple of 5-star hotels, including one that that bimbo Paris Hilton will one day own. The absence of motor traffic makes it a relatively easy place to stroll, although the condition of the roads and footpaths is no better than elsewhere.
We were getting warm, and there’s not all that much to see in Fort, so we turned our heels to head towards the railway station to book our tickets north, to Kandy. En route we discussed the rudeness of the old cow at the guest house, and took the snap decision to cut our stay short by a day and head off to Kandy on Wednesday rather than Thursday – we hadn’t yet planned how our trip would end, so we could always return to Colombo later (and stay elsewhere) if we felt we needed more time. The walk to the station wasn’t far, but it was hot – we took some snaps of the impressive dagoba, and of a modern sculpture of a giant dial-up telephone and receiver (just because it was there, really), and were soon crossing a rather whiffy river as we reached the station.
- The Dagoba, which doubles as a traffic roundabout …
- Who can fail to be moved by modern scupture? It’s engaging, anyway (ha ha).
Colombo’s Fort Station houses a TIC, which – Indonesian style – is little more than a front for selling organised packaged tours. Our insistence that we only wanted train tickets; not cars, drivers and accommodation for the next 10 days, eventually won through, and one of the staff nicked out and purchased the tickets for us – as far as we could tell without charging a levy for his service, but who really knows? Happily booked on the early morning train to Kandy in a couple of days’ time, we re-traced our steps to Fort, wandered from there to Slave Island via the World Trade Centre, and were soon on Galle Face Green, a kilometre or so long stretch of parkland wedged between Galle Road and an esplanade along the narrow beach fronting the Indian Ocean.
The Green itself wasn’t very; more a dusty brown after a long, hot dry season. Colombo has a strange climate, with two wettish seasons annually, in April/May and October/November – the ‘true’ dry season is meant to run from December through to March, but the June-September dry this year looks to have been very dry, indeed. I’d half expected loads of cricket games simultaneously on the Green, as at the Maidan (Parade Ground) near Calcutta’s Eden Gardens, where I’d seen literally hundreds of youths playing dozens of overlapping games years ago, but there was none; just a few dozen soldiers being put through some callisthenics workouts, a few people walking their dogs and a boy futilely trying to fly a kite. (According to our airport taxi driver cricket isn’t even the national sport in Sri Lanka, it’s volleyball. I wasn’t able to confirm this with anyone else, but we certainly had more people talk about cricket on hearing we were Aussies than on any other subject – in fact, you’ll be surprised to hear, no-one else mentioned volleyball at all.)
We dropped from the Green down to the esplanade alongside, and wandered southwards, enjoying the few degrees of coolness afforded by the water’s proximity. The beach itself was narrow, with the tide fairly well in, and another considerable drop from the esplanade – a good couple of metres or more. The birdlife wasn’t the seagulls or terns you might expect, but the city’s near ubiquitous crows – tossing through washed up seaweed and other jetsam, chasing wee crabs – acting just like any other sea bird. Whether evidence of the 2004 tsunami or merely of incredibly strong tides (but I suspect the former), we soon came across the beached remains of what was once a giant tree – it appears to be gradually petrifying on the beach’s edge, and looks quite incongruously stunning.
A post-tsunami reminder? A giant trunk, either way.
Further along we started to encounter swimmers and people playing on the beach, and were amazed to see a good number of Muslim women participating in beach life, fully clad. I’ve seen modestly dressed, presumably Muslim, women on Sydney beaches before, but nothing quite like this – fully dressed women, just playing with their kids, taking photos and all the usual family-at-a-beach stuff, in or out of the water.
'Swimsuit' models, Laccadive Sea, Galle Face Green
As we got further south there were more people taking advantage of the open space of the Green as well, and we noticed little ‘kite hire’ stalls – although there was still no sign of any real breeze, yet. We soon reached the southern end of the Green, at which sits the magnificent Galle Face Hotel, nearing 150 years old and still the grande dame of Colombo’s hotels – suites go for over $1000 a night, we’re not talking ‘LateStays’ options here! It’s a beautiful colonial building, north-facing and bordering the sea on its west, with the verandah bar that screams Pimms and cucumber sandwiches. We kept walking.
And were soon back on Galle Road – building numbers re-start in each new district– the Galle Face Hotel is No. 2, Galle Rd (Kollupitiya) –there must be 6 of every number up to 100, at least, running south from Fort to Wellawatta, and then potentially many more as Galle Road runs another 80 or so kilometres down to Galle itself. A little footsore, and instantly five degrees hotter once we were off the coast proper, we were thinking about a tuk-tuk when we were joined by a chap who struck up conversation – he worked at a bar in the Galle Face Hotel, and was keen to find out what brought us to Colombo. We chatted for a few minutes, before he asked if we were interested in gems (we’d already shaken our head to this query from at least 10 000 tuk-tuk drivers today) – despite our guarantee that we couldn’t be less interested, he carried on with his patter about a government sale, huge discounts, double your money back home, blah blah blah – it was like re-visiting Bangkok. He insisted we shouldn’t miss out, warned us off certain coloured tuk-tuks (‘all thieves’ – ha ha!), flagged down a ‘correct’ coloured one, told the driver to take us somewhere for 100 rupees (very cheap) and waved goodbye. The driver, clearly in on it, was extremely peeved when – just a kilometre down the road, near our base – we insisted on being let out, and on paying the 100 rupee fare he’d agreed to. Apparently there are good gemstones quarried and polished in Sri Lanka but, like anything, if you don’t know what’s what you’re just gonna be taken for a ride – luckily for us it was a convenient, and cheap one!
Just to make sure we didn’t get off scot free, we weren’t exactly where we had expected to be, and ended up paying 200 rupees to get back to Colombo House – it probably should have been half that, as it turned out we were closer than we thought, we were just dis-oriented!
We showered to cool down, then headed off for dinner – it was dark, but we had torches and, for a change, a genuine (rather than photocopied) Lonely Planet guide, complete with maps, to guide us to our destination. Sadly, the map may be genuine, but it’s out of date – our search for the highly-recommended Siam House Thai restaurant took us meandering for what felt like miles, but as it started to take us into some dark and less-than-salubrious districts we abandoned the idea of Thai, wandering up one last alleyway towards the lights of a Southern Indian restaurant, Amaravathi. We enjoyed a couple of delicious – if only lukewarm – fish curries (the locals eat with their hands, as in India, so food isn’t served as hot as we get in the West) and were introduced to EGB (Elephant brand Ginger Beer), apparently the most popular soft drink in the country, and very refreshing. (Here in Indonesia I’ve discovered the delight of ginger coffee, where two or three chunks of ginger, often the size of marbles, are dropped into the coffee cup as the brew is added – it’s delicious. I’d never seen a ginger plant before either, but here’s a picture of the flower on one from the Istana in Solo.)
A stunning flower from a ginger plant - this one was in Solo, Java.
We wandered the more direct route back to base, and turned into our street – Colombo House is only about 50 or 60 metres from the corner – to see a dog half-way along the street playing with a security guard for the embassy-like building further along. It saw us and came running, tail wagging like mad, greeting us like long lost friends – it was the younger dog from our hotel, the mystery of why he spent most the day curled up asleep in one of the flowerbeds explained – he keeps the watchman company all night, enjoying the cooler weather too, no doubt. The bell-hop guy was there too, acting as security guard for Colombo House, and clearly glad to see us safely back, I guess mostly because he could lock up and turn in, but he also exuded a sense of really wanting us to be safe and happy.
We awoke early, determined to pack as much as possible into the day. We could hear the bell-hop guy outside, talking to the old dog as he swept the garden paths (it’s an obsession in Asia, this daily battle with nature). Breakfast was down in the dining room, and we appeared to be the only guests. Poor old Manuel was there, finished with his gardening duties, wearing the traditional sarama (a sarong-style skirt). The set breakfast, at 500 rupees, included fruit juice, tea or coffee, two eggs any style and a fruit plate, but not in that order! We got juice and a fairly measly plate of fruit each, which was immediately supplemented by a hand of bananas just picked from the garden (but “Don’t tell the boss, they’re not included” – he was clearly afraid of the old bag, too). We then had quite a long wait while things were bashed around in the kitchen, and eventually he came out juggling a tray with tea pot, coffee pot, cups and saucers, milk jug and sugar bowl, and an explanation/apology for taking so long – ‘I have to do everything until 9.00am’. We assured him it was OK, then had another long wait before the eggs were served. He then scurried off and, as we were leaving a little later, we could see he’d opened every window, swept the floor, brought in the papers, even put a cool glass of water on the old bag’s desk for her arrival at 9.00am – poor bugger. Naturally enough we declined his offer to make up our room, just a little fearful we’d find him dead on the floor, and knowing the manager’d blame us for his demise.
We decided to take a tuk-tuk up to the Galle Face Hotel once again, keeping ourselves fresh for a wander from there to Pettah, then maybe back down inland a little, to Cinnamon Gardens, with its lakes and temples. En route we again saw a plethora of armed and uniformed police, both military and civilian, but this time there were many, many traffic cops too – we’d noticed them on the ride from the airport yesterday, but there were even more here, nearer the CBD. The women traffic cops look like girl guides – the uniform’s a dusky tan tunic, with a wide-ish white belt, and they wear ankle-high tan socks as well, making them look more school-girlish than police-womanly. One in particular stood out, as she’d tightened her white patent leather belt to emphasise her slenderness, which was noteworthy – I don’t have large hands, but I’d have almost got fingertips touching around her waist – it can’t have been anything over 18″ – she looked fine with a traffic baton, but unless she’s a martial artist extraordinaire it’s hard to see her in the crime squad.
The tuk-tuk driver dropped us at the bottom of the Green, and we enjoyed a morning stroll along the esplanade, snapping pictures and generally enjoying the relative coolness and calmness of the strip, along with some early morning exercise nuts. We were able to walk through the section closed to traffic from Slave Island to the clock tower on Chatham Street in Fort; but as you can’t even have your camera out of its bag along that stretch it was a little bit of a frustrating stroll – you can’t take a picture of the clock tower either, even though it’s one of the few ‘sites’ in the old fort proper. Here are a few of the Galle Face Green esplanade shots though, it really is a pretty enough spot!
The 'Fort', funnily enough, had cannon! This one had just been re-painted.
A watchtower, offering a prime view over the Laccadive Sea / Indian Ocean
Another view of the 'preserved' tree on the beach at Galle Face Green.
We turned down Chatham Street from the clock tower, passing Pagoda Tea Rooms once more, and resisting the urge to whistle Hungry Like the Wolf – well, Iona resisted it anyway but, then again, it’s a little hard to whistle whilst clobbering your partner. We went round the corner and stuck our heads into a government handicraft emporium, just to see what the local souvenir market consists of – which is, mostly, very heavy. Two metre tall brass candlesticks, semi-life-sized elephant carvings (OK, big anyway!), large carved masks, giant brass etchings – not too much aimed at the humble ‘carry it yourself’ type tourist, but an interesting insight into the arts and crafts of the island.
Which reminds me of another slight digression I wanted to take – many of the public notices you encounter – rules stuck up in streets, hotel regulations, train regulations etc – refer to the country simply as ‘the island’ – e.g. “It is an offence to consume narcotics anywhere on the island” and so on – it’s really quite quaint, I thought, but I wondered what rules apply on the tiny little islands scattered here and there around the coast, that must surely be part of Sri Lanka – or do the rules just apply on any island you read them on?
December 7th, 2010, Legian, back down south, Bali, Indonesia
We left Balian Beach a few days ago, and spent the past three days at another hotel a little way from here, but have moved closer to the beach and the heart of the action for our last few days in what’s been a hell of a trip – I’ll do an annual ‘bed count’ later and fill you in on the results. Anyway, I’m determined to not let living in the heart of town stop me from completing this chapter, at least, so let’s get back to the story…
We stopped for a cup of coffee and a bottle of cold water each at a hotel – just as it was time for a cold drink, it’s time for a second digression. Rather confusingly, a hotel is neither a pub nor a sleeping establishment in Sri Lanka, but any one of a million or two small cafés around the place. These ‘hotels’ really specialise in two things – ‘packets’ and ‘short eats’. Packets are a take-away version of the main meal option on the island, ‘rice and curry’. It may not sound a culinary masterpiece, but the Sri Lankans have taken simple rice and curry to soaring heights – for a start it should really be called ‘rice and curries’, for you’re never just served one – on average a sit-down rice and curry lunch will involve at least four or five ‘curries’, plus various side-dishes – pickled mangoes, sambals, shredded coconut and so on – it’s a feast, often a vegetarian one and, at its best, it is high cuisine! And, we were lucky enough to sample some of its very best examples, especially in Sigiriya, which we’ll get to in due course!
‘Short eats’ are another joy – in the savoury department they’re a collection of spicy rolls and pastries – samosas count, but so do fish-paste rolls, cheese pastries, vegetable rolls and so on – Aussie readers can think of a ‘chico roll’ with various fillings. On the sweet side it’s any pastry-based treat you can imagine – Danishes, mini-croissants and so on. The difference though is in the delivery – a platter of ‘short eats’ is delivered to your table (normally in lots of 10 or 12) and you eat as much or as little as you like; the waiter returns, counts what’s left behind and you pay for the difference – as the average price per piece is just a few cents it makes for a very economical, if not the most diet-ricious, meal! And they’re delicious!
To return to our tale, we resisted the delicious-looking short eats on offer, finished our cold drinks and headed back outside, meaning to wander down towards the market district of Pettah. Our stroll took us past a few more of the fantastic old buildings of Colombo – the Grand Oriental Hotel and the Standard Chartered Grindlays Bank are just two great examples – the juxtaposition of the rickshaw pulling statue and the advert for the Blue Leopard Nightclub in the ‘GOH’ sort of sums up modern Colombo, I think.
A British colonial masterpiece, The 'Grand Oriental Hotel'
Note the poster for the 'Blue Leopard Nightclub' - bet that wasn't around when the rickshaws were!
Another colonial gem, the Standard Chartered Grindlays Bank building.
As we strolled toward the market the realisation struck us, along with what felt like a 50° breeze, that we didn’t particularly want to be in furnace-like markets, and we didn’t even want to walk in this heat – unsurprisingly, our thoughts were easily read by a nearby tuk-tuk driver, who simply asked ‘Where do you want to go to?’, and was rewarded with an instant fare. He was a bit of an odd-bod, and insisted all the way that he ‘wasn’t like the other drivers, he was a Christian, and he wouldn’t rob us, he’d only charge us a local fare’ – he protested so much that I almost started to fear for our safety, or at least the entire contents of my wallet – I needn’t have worried, it turned out he was just a bit weird, and insisted on only charging 100Rp ($1), which may, indeed, have been the local fare – I tried to push 200Rp on him, but he wasn’t having it – decidedly strange, particularly so as he just waved and rode off afterwards, not even trying to hang around and get further work from us, let alone sell us a tour, accommodation, gemstones or anything else.
Our destination was the Eighteenth Century Wolvendaal Church, one of the most important Dutch colonial-era buildings in Colombo, probably Sri Lanka. En route through Pettah we were treated to scenes of hectic street-life, the way only a vibrant market-district can do it. There were dozens of guys pulling trolleys laden with all types of produce, some boxed, some squawking; there were the dry-produce specialists, rolling beer-barrels laden with rice, lentils, desiccated coconut and who-knows what else; there were other porters whose trolleys, for want of a better word, were low-to-the-ground six-wheelers, with a protruding board joining the front axle to the following four-wheeled cart – for all the world like an over-sized billy-cart, pulled and steered by a length of shipping rope tethered to the front axle. As we started to climb the hill from the market area to the church we spied our first Hindu cows – a couple of beautiful, caramel-coloured cows; a Red Sindhi if my research is correct, their un-filed horns bedecked with tinsel – whether one of the myriad Hindu feast days was approaching or whether this was their everyday street wear remains a mystery – they were certainly ‘free range’, wandering down the hill toward the market.
A Red Sindhi, common in Tamil Nadu.
A well-laden, slightly more modern, beast of burden - near Pettah, Colombo
The Wolvendaal Church is quite something, not so much architecturally as in its interior furnishings. Its name means ‘Wolf’s Dale’ – now in the heart of town, it was on the urban-rural interface two hundred and fifty years ago, and the Dutch mistook the packs of jackals which freely roamed the area for the more familiar, to European eyes and ears, wolves. There are, of course, no wolves in Sri Lanka. The church, in the shape of a Greek cross, was built in 1749, and has walls which are five foot thick – housing some magnificent carved ebony pews, a stunning wooden pulpit and baptismal font, as well as the oldest organ in the country – it’s a serene place, 20° cooler than the city around it, and once would have had stunning views to the harbour, but now snatching a glimpse through the built-up environs is a challenge.
We wandered back down the hill toward Pettah (we hoped!), but even the assistance of gravity wasn’t enough to counter the oppressiveness of the heat – such explosively hot, Australian-ish heat, not like the humid heat of much of South-East Asia (equally unpleasant, but different). You see plenty of eucalypts here and in Southern India, and it isn’t surprising – the feeling that each and any bush could suddenly self-ignite is strong, and thoughts of the possibility of spontaneous combustion in humans being more than urban myth also cross one’s mind.
Whether we were actually headed towards, by or away from Pettah remains a moot point, as we soon enough gave in and accepted a by-stander’s offer of his mate’s tuk-tuk – we ended up walking another three-hundred metres with the guy to find his mate, who had one of the roughest looking tuk-tuks in town, into which we gratefully poured ourselves anyway. Our next destination was the Gangaramaya Temple, a Buddhist temple near Beira Lake, a decent sized body of water forming part of the southern boundary of Slave Island, as well as part of the boundary between it and Kollupitiya and the inland Cinnamon Gardens. Our theory that the lakeside location would help ease the effects of the heat was correct, although the initial barefoot dash across near-melting asphalt from the shoe deposit counter into the tiled haven of the temple wasn’t much fun!
Fortunately the temple’s powers-that-be had chosen the day of our visit as the day to give the large, central, gloss-white-painted concrete stupa a jolly good wash, and the entire area was suitably wet, adding to the cooling effect in the main courtyard. It’s an odd, sprawling complex, to say the least. Off to one side of the stupa was the temple elephant, tethered in his own giant open-sided elephant house – he seemed a sad old fellow, but looked cool enough. Photos we later saw of him all splendidly bedecked for weddings and other festivals showed him looking a bit happier, but they really shouldn’t be kept in cities.
The grand old tusker - he really needs a better home base
Behind the stupa was a wonderful Bodhi tree, around which had been built a wooden pavilion housing some sort of Buddhist information/propaganda library, full of wonderful posters cautioning against all the things which create negative karma, leading to ‘downfall’ – there were way too many to share them all, and unfortunately the display was organised in such a way that full photographs weren’t possible, but here are a few tips to get you on that track to Nirvana!
So, how many courtesans are just 'OK'?
But your common or garden finite jabbering should be alright ...
Hats off, step lively! And stifle that yawn, or it'll be your downfall!
Walking back to the other main wing of the temple took us via a garage full of old cars, presumably donated to the temple at some point – sadly, they’d been parked and left there, many looking like they hadn’t been moved in 40 years. They weren’t all ‘collectibles’ either, many were just what would’ve been everyday rides – restored now they’d be worth a fortune, but a couple are even being used as random storage areas. Here’s one, along with the only ‘cared for’ piece in the car collection:
It could be a beauty ... Check out the Kombi, and the type-writer too!
The only one singled out for restoration - it looked lovely
The oddness of this ‘collection’ did nothing to prepare us for the second gallery, dedicated to show-casing some of the temple’s wealth – largely in whatever form it was donated. There are cases full of wrist-watches, some dating to the 1950s, at least – Rolexes and Omegas lie carelessly over Timexes and Seikos, the whole lot snagged by various lengths of gold chain – necklaces and bracelets abound, but there are anklets and the nose-chain used to link nose-rings to earrings, popular amongst many Sri Lankan brides, not just those of Hindu faith. The ‘bedrock’ consists of gold – often jewel-encrusted – rings, earrings, nose-rings and so on – there must easily be a few hundred kilos of gold-jewellery, simply ‘dumped’ in a display case.
And that’s just one display – there are dozens of ivory tusks lying about the place, ivory-tipped walking canes, Bakelite radios, early wind-up toys, leather-bound books, gramophones, countless Buddha statues of all sizes and made from all materials – the smallest gold one in the world, smaller than a single rice-grain, with all the detail of a full-sized statue, and only visible through a massive magnifying glass. Many of the Buddha images, and a not insignificant chunk of the other valuables, were donated by Buddhists from Thailand, Myanmar and Japan – I’m not sure if they’d visited first, or whether they imagine something a little more professionally curated as the resting place for their generosity. It’s a weird place, to say the least – it looks like a holding-bay for e-Bay, and would probably raise, literally, millions of dollars if the whole lot was auctioned off – but it just sits there, serving very little purpose – it’s a shame, in such a poor country, and it’s hard to see how it fits with anything much taught by the Buddha, in much the same way that some of the wealth of Rome seems out of touch with the simple messages of Christ.
The outer-courtyards did hold some more conventional Buddhist statuary and offered some nice photo-opportunities – it’s an odd temple, but not without charm, and well worth a visit –
Freshly washed, helping reduce the temperature to a number lower than my age!
A particularly beautiful Buddha statue ...
and not too bad a collection, as well!
An exquisite example of Lord Shiva's loyal mount, Nandi
Another dash across the hot front court-yard to reclaim our shoes reminded us of the heat, and killed off our intention of visiting another nearby temple – it was, really, just a bit too hot for sight-seeing. We nicked someone else’s waiting tuk-tuk – not without guilt, but I figured if they took their time taking in the temple he’d make it back, and he didn’t seem bothered anyway (I guess they shouldn’t have paid him on the way in!), and headed back to Galle Road, with our destination being a café Iona had read about, embedded in the textile emporium ‘Barefoot’. Certain people – you’ll know who you are – would love this place, an old villa, stretching back over three levels from the road, filled with hand-loomed textiles, sold by the metre or as clothing, bedspreads, cushion-covers, table linen and the like – or used to cover photo albums, notebooks, lampshades etc. There are also kids’ toys, a coffee-table book store, beads, knick-knacks and so on – it’s all high quality and, while not dirt-cheap by local standards, it’s just that by western ones! Those certain people (sisters!) might like to visit www.barefootceylon.com/home/htm.
Other people, myself included, could just wander right on through the shop into the sunken rear courtyard, and gorge away on seriously good food – falafels, beet-root salad, fresh-squeezed juices and real coffees – they were just my choices, you realise; you can go for whatever you want – it’s an extensive menu, and everything we ate was delicious, while everything else sounded, looked and smelled good, too! And, as an added bonus, the frangipani ringed courtyard, the high-ceilinged pavilions and the slow old ceiling fans did their bit in keeping the temperature in the low 30s, fully 10 degrees below the street temperature.
That street temperature forced us into yet another tuk-tuk, shirking the walk home, even though it was under a kilometre! Showers were followed by cold showers, then an hour or so reading time before we started to pack for the morning’s journey. I nicked downstairs to ask for our bill before the old bag of a manager knocked off at 5.00pm, as we’d be leaving early in the morning. She immediately complained that we’d booked for three nights, not two, and that she’d turned people away based on our booking. Given we were the solitary guests in a six-room guest house I chose to largely ignore the comment, simply replying that I needed the internet for my work, and they shouldn’t advertise facilities they didn’t have, and repeating that we were leaving in the morning. We had a 60 second stare-off, which I managed to win, and she said she’d send the bill up to our room.
I went up and counted out the right money, only to find when poor old Manuel arrived with the bill that I hadn’t counted out the right cash, as the breakfasts were charged at 600Rp per person, not the 500Rp advertised – I went downstairs again and told her of the error, and she informed me that the price had changed on October 1st (it was the 26th now), and that the information pack in our room had been updated. It hadn’t, and she’d irked me enough to make an issue of it, and I refused to pay the extra $2.00 (which now sounds pathetic, but she was a very irritating person). Needless to say she was rather annoyed, and I half-pictured either coming to blows or the tourist police storming the place, but was ‘saved by the bell’, as 5.00pm rolled over and she clearly doesn’t do ‘overtime’ – she muttered something not-too-friendly in Sinhalese, took the money and left Manuel to run the place until her return at 9.00am the next day – it felt much nicer immediately, and as we later wandered out for dinner Manuel was positively beaming and extremely friendly – I’ve got a strong inclination he hates her, but it’d be more than his job’s worth to say it!
We wandered around the corner to a Thai restaurant we’d spotted in our travels, keen to compensate for last night’s missed Thai dinner (not that there was anything wrong with the Southern Indian we’d had, I might say!). The restaurant was nestled in the nearby Indra Regent Hotel, but felt decidedly more ‘small-hotel-breakfast-and-dining-room’ than ‘big-hotel-restaurant’ in its character. Unfortunately, the chef also wouldn’t cut it in a big hotel restaurant – the food was OK, but seriously under-flavoured; not very Thai at all. We wandered back to base after a good few hands of cards, and were again greeted in the street by the resident young dog, and at the gate by Manuel, now positively effusive in his friendliness – it was at this point that we discovered the friendly young dog was the older bitch’s pup, which still stuns me, a week into December!
We woke up early and said farewell to our new mate Manuel (we’d snuck out of the house without disturbing him, only to find the gates locked), and wandered down to the road in search of a couple of three-wheelers to get us and our mountain of gear to the station. Tuk-tuks were thinner on the ground than I’d expected, and when we eventually found one he was resilient in holding to his price, but as he eventually bundled in both of us with all our gear it didn’t seem too exorbitant, although the trip to the station wasn’t the most comfortable I’ve ever had.
Which should’ve provided some preparation for the train trip to come, but discomfort seldom seems to work that way. We were quickly aboard the 7.00am to Kandy, and found our seats without the assistance of any of the myriad ‘porters’ keen to assist in exchange for a ridiculous fee. We were in second class, as the first class carriage had been fully booked, with its full-width rear glass wall, allowing a view of where you’ve been – I hadn’t minded too much about missing out on that, as I’d always rather face where I’m going than where I’ve been. Of course, our second-class seats turned out to be rear-facing, like everybody else’s, except two out of four of the unlucky sods in the knee-knocking, way-too-cosy ‘four-seater’ sections at each end of the carriage.
After an unexplained delay of about half-an-hour we got underway, spending the first hour or so slowly passing through greater Colombo’s sprawling suburban fringe: predictably poor railway abutting houses and slums, sandwiched between seemingly kilometre after kilometre of washed clothes drying in the morning sun – on lines, clothes horses, poles, or just strewn across rocks, or even on the ground, whether the compacted earth around the humble dwellings or the blue-stoned bedrock of the disused lines of the railway tracks. Interspersed with drying clothes were garish, fluorescent coloured advertising placards for various colleges, schools and tuition or learning centres – physics, mathematics, English, biology, ‘logic’, commerce, SATs prep courses – they went on and on, a very visual reminder of the importance placed on educational attainment in the developing world and, it seems to me, especially in the sub-continent. South-East Asian students seem particularly credential focussed – an MBA or a Science Degree is valued, but particularly as a ticket to a good (or better) job, and the money and (perceived, at least) life-style that comes with that. Of course, I’m sure the same holds true for many Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans, but there also seems a strong culture of learning for the sake of learning or knowing – a true ‘philosophy’, and I think the offer of so many courses in individual subjects, as opposed to structured courses with credentials issued upon successful completion, reflects this. Maybe.
The suburban stations we passed by were crowded, even this early in the day, with school students and people headed to work in town – white suited men, office-working women looking beautiful in saris or the stunning looking local version of the shalwar kameez. The commuter trains were over-packed, with up to six or eight guys forced to stand ‘outside’ the carriage on the small running board below each entrance way, hanging out of which were up to another dozen shoe-horned-into-the-sardine-tin commuters. (Beat that mixed metaphor!)
We were soon leaving Colombo behind, and the gradual climb towards Kandy began, as did the rural scenes from our carriage – poor housing still, mostly around the passing stations, although occasional glimpses of better standard farmhouses and small villages away from the railway lines; farming scenery including rice paddies; many being hand ploughed as we drifted by – incredibly rare in this day and age, where diesel hand-steered ploughs aren’t uncommon, and the ubiquitous Asian carabao (water buffalo) does the job nearly everywhere else; banana trees in abundance; coconut trees wherever they’d grow.
As we climbed into the mountains, tunnels became more regular, and with them an apparent Sri Lankan custom, whereby the kids scream their heads off in mock terror as the train passes through. Fortunately they’re not too long, although there are enough of them – the kids’ smiling faces afterwards help prevent headaches, but I can’t say I missed the tunnels once we’d hit the plateau.
Despite the not-infrequent sight of railway maintenance workers, usually with a decent enough sledge hammer over their shoulder, the tracks were very uneven, leading to an uncomfortable ride; likewise, although the scenery was beautiful – at one point we hugged the lip of a striking, steep-sided valley, stunningly lit beneath us – the backward facing seats (especially in combination with the poor track quality) were slightly nausea inducing – we were glad to hit Kandy.
After lunch, December 7th, 2010, Legian, back down south, Bali, Indonesia
Right – I’m back! Just saw that the Aussie’s capitulated in the Adelaide Test this morning – nowhere near good enough, a well-deserved win for England. Dunno about Phil Hughes, but batting’s hardly the problem – pick Hilfenhaus for Perth – or Dennis Lillee, or me, for God’s sake – something needs a shake-up in that attack! Anyway, as well as catching up with news cricketing, I was reminded of something I keep forgetting to mention – fast food home delivery. The low labour costs here make it economically viable to have McDonalds and KFC delivered to your home or hotel – some lazy, bloated Aussie by the pool was having KFC delivered as we left for lunch – everyone likes some indefensible indulgence on the road eventually, but fair dinkum – there’s a restaurant on the other side of the pool, 15 metres away. OK, James Griffin (Agents front-man) has just replaced Chris Bailey (Saints front-man) on the Pod, and we’re away again. (Soon – I forgot to say Vale James Freud, Radio Stars and Models front-man, while we’re reliving great bands and singers of my misspent youth – another good one gone way too soon.)
We got to Kandy, wandered out to the car-park at the front of the railway station, and soon hired a mini-van taxi to take us to our guest-house – the email advice from the owner had been a three-wheeler at 200Rp, but for 300 the van seemed a more comfortable, and perfectly reasonable, deal. Of course the driver tried to sell us tours of the rest of the country in the coming days, but accepted our polite refusal graciously, just palming off a business card in case we changed our minds. Half way up the hill from the station to the Blinkbonnie Guesthouse is a fantastic lookout over the town and a few of its big attractions; a giant Buddha image on the hill, and the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and Kandy Lake down below (yep, imaginative – sounds a bit like an adult-movie actress to me. The lake, I mean.).
Kandy Lake and, in the distance, the most sacred temple in Sri Lanka
Kandy, the Rio De Janeiro of the sub-continent
We’d trusted dumb luck in heading to Kandy a day earlier than scheduled, and thus a day ahead of our room booking, and we got lucky – there were no budget rooms available, but for $5.00 a day extra we could have the deluxe room – we only had to see it to ask if we could change the booking, and we could! The hillside location of the guesthouse means that there are only two rooms at street level – ‘ours’ and one which seemed to have been let long-term to an occasional guest. The rest are all downstairs, spreading over two levels, before a third descending set of stairs takes you to the restaurant area – all have great views, but only the deluxe has a private balcony – you could sit there all day and drink in the views. From the restaurant the sweeping view was slightly obscured by foliage, but the upside was breakfast with the squirrels each day! Oh, and Tommy the dog, when he could be bothered with the stairs.
One of our furry friends ...
... and another!
We were early enough for a late breakfast and a midday nap, meaning we could head into town in the relative cool of the afternoon, although the temperature at this elevation felt great, even with the sun at its zenith.
Kandy holds a special status in Sri Lanka, partly as it’s seen as the heart and soul of Sinhalese culture, which began in the north but drifted south following the late Twelfth/early Thirteenth Century decline of the Polonnaruwa dynasties; but mostly due to its resistance to various European colonial powers for over three hundred years – neither the Portuguese (1505 – 1650s), nor the Dutch (1650s – 1796) could take Kandy, and it would be another 20 years before the British could – having declared Ceylon a crown colony in 1802, Kandy was only ceded to Britain in 1815.
No doubt one of the defensive assets in Kandy’s favour is its elevation, some 500 metres above sea-level (Colombo is, for the most part, at an elevation of between just 2 and 20 metres) – this is no doubt one of Kandy’s assets in terms of attracting tourists, too – the days were still mostly in the high 20s, but that seemed blessedly cool after a couple of days in the capital. The town is set amidst a ring of even higher mountains, and the lake dominates – it’s a pretty place, surrounded by more beautiful scenery, with most of the hotels and guesthouses nestling in the lower areas of the mountains around the town proper, but only a good stroll or a cheap, couple of minutes, tuk-tuk ride away.
Our first exploration was by foot, and our four feet were soon joined by those of Tommy, the guesthouse resident dog, and soon by his mate Blackie (so-dubbed by us for the obvious reason – no irony). These extra eight feet had the decided advantage of keeping the dozens of monkeys hanging around the lookout spot at bay. Kandy has long (presumably even pre-1815) been home to colonies of monkeys, mostly grey-faced macaques. I may have mentioned it, but since my experience with the hordes at PKK in Thailand, I’ve become less-enamoured of our small furry cousins – there are just too many of them in various places we’ve been, and – especially here in Bali, but also more generally – my rabies awareness/phobia has increased. (By this time next week, in fact, we’ll have had the first of the three jabs necessary to vaccinate against the old hydrophobia – maybe I’ll become fonder of the wee critters after that.)
Anyroad, having seen off the would-be furry fiends, our furry friends assessed the hill that they’d have to ascend if they went much further, and headed back to base, leaving us to wander on down to the town. Our first stop was at Devon Restaurant, an odd three-in-one eatery, with a formal-ish dining area, a café-ish bit and – most popular by far – a short-eats café-ish bit. It was our first experience with short eats, and, I must say, we were hooked. We simply explained we were vegetarian as the waiter went to plonk down the usual platter of goodies, were asked to wait a minute and he was back with a platter – only slightly smaller, of vegetarian treats. A little self-restraint was called for – we’d had a couple of Sri Lankan Lion beers with dinner the previous night – but I did try a delicious lentil falafel, along with an onion roll! Add a couple of soda waters and the bill still left change from $2.00 – exceptional value!
We wandered around the market area at the base of the town’s main street, where I picked up a hippy-esque shoulder-bag – too much crap for my pockets when we travel like this – then headed up the road towards the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in search of the TIC which, once eventually located, was closed. We wandered around the outskirts of the Temple, then headed back down the main road, admiring the gorgeous floral temple offerings for sale (bright purple lotus flowers with jasmine trim were certainly favoured, and beautiful) and wandering around the local shops off to one side as we did so.
Dinner – and, for the first time in many weeks, beers on consecutive days! – was enjoyed in The Pub, one of the few drinking type establishments in town, based above a cake-shop, ‘hotel’ and restaurant (and not to be confused with the drinking establishment of exactly the same name, across the lake, owned by the Sri Lankan cricket captain, Kumara Sangakkara). We were struck by the friendliness of the local population – noticeable in marked contrast to most of the people we’d encountered in the capital. Our trishaw driver home, a young Muslim guy named Irshan, was also very friendly and helpful, pointing out various things, telling us which bits of town to avoid, and so on. As we were zooming home in the dark, to our great surprise, Irshan’s headlight lit up a porcupine crossing the road, not 500 metres from our guesthouse. Having taken two trips to the UK to even spot a wee hedgehog, I’d never actually expected to see a porcupine in my life, far less to see a ‘wild’ one! The bugger was fairly quick, just dashing across the road from the forested hill on the high side and launching itself into a gap in the fencing around a construction site on the low side – but we could clearly see it, much bigger than I’d expected, and with quills hanging a fair way behind it, like the fluffy pantaloons on some long haired cats and dogs. Amazing!
December 8th, 2010, Legian, back down south, Bali, Indonesia
We fly home in two days’ time! So much to tell you, so little time…
We were woken the next morning by what was to become our Blinkbonnie ‘alarm clock’ – the alpha male monkey of the large troupe which lived around, and terrified the students at, the private school half-way down the hill. His morning territorial act was to jump onto the roof of a building which looked as though it may have once been a dormitory, but now stood, seemingly abandoned, alongside the school’s Olympic-length swimming pool. He’d climb along the roof to the apex of the gable at the very end of the building, slide down this to one ‘corner’ of the roof, where he could lift the asbestos sheet a few inches, then bang it repetitively against its supporting timber frame – the echo effect around the ring of mountains was brilliant, and we could easily hear it lying in our bed, five or six hundred metres away, up the hillside.
The monkey troupe seemed to delight in bailing up the school kids, who had to head down a single narrow staircase to the road which had to be crossed to get to the swimming pool – this funnel effect gave the monkeys a natural taunt point, and they made as much of their advantage as the Turks did at the Dardenelles during the Great War – the shrieks could also be heard from our room! We’d been advised, in writing – and ad nauseum – by the owner of the guesthouse, to keep all windows locked and not to leave valuables on the balcony, as management wouldn’t be held responsible for theft by the monkeys. We were woken one morning by the sound of the wads of scrunched up newspaper which had been used to plug the diagonal air-vents in one wall being removed, and saw the searching hand of a monkey reach through the new hole and feel around – luckily for us these vents were high up the wall, but the owner instantly arranged for them to be re-plugged, worried small monkeys may fit through.
We were up early the next day, still buzzing about seeing the porcupine the previous evening, and headed off to town to run errands – we’d washing to drop off, and also wanted to purchase ‘Cultural Triangle’ admission tickets – a centralised ticketing system exists, covering many of the key attractions in Kandy, as well as the ‘Cultural Triangle’ of Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa and Andradhapura. Our initial plans had been to just visit Colombo, Kandy and the southern, almost coastal, town of Galle, but we’d decided we’d have adequate ‘beach time’ in Bali and its neighbouring islands, so had altered the plan to Colombo, Kandy, the ‘Cultural Triangle’ and a couple of days at Negombo, a beachy town just north of Colombo, and quite close to the airport. A $50.00 ticket, good for a couple of weeks, represented good value, as the individual admission to a couple of the main temples ran to $20.00.
The laundry was more like a western dry-cleaning outlet, very professional, priced per item (which always works out more expensive than by the kilo, the way most of the cheaper laundries operate here) and, like a few too many businesses here, very chauvinistic in its dealings with couples – every word was addressed to me, as though Iona wasn’t there. We’d encountered this on the streets too, with spruikers, tour touts etc always addressing me – ‘Yes sir, good morning sir’, “Can I help you sir?’, ‘Look in my shop, sir, good produce’ etc – you get the idea. Anyway, I could tell it was wearing thin for Iona, so I simply walked out half-way through the ‘item’ count and made the guy talk to her – it didn’t kill him. It is a very male-dominated and focussed society for the most part – nearly all jobs involving public contact are almost ‘male only’ – including jobs that might be female dominated in the West – cashiers, waiters and so on; yet the typical South East Asian approach to manual labour and women (it’s OK!) prevails here too, with road and rail labourers, construction workers and other heavy-lifting jobs being split roughly 50-50.
(Conversely, here in Bali, many of the market stall touts and owners call out ‘Madam’ to all and sundry – you feel a bit of a fool on the occasions you start to decline before they’re finished speaking – well, as a male, anyway. They also often make the mistake of just making a literal translation from Indonesian to English – their word for ‘Mrs/Madam’ also means ‘mother’, and every now and again Iona gets hassled by someone calling her ‘Mum’ – one guy the other day was trying to ‘sell’ a taxi ride, and kept calling out ‘Taxi, Mummy?’)
We got back to the TIC to get our tickets, and had to survive a fifteen minute effort to convince us to take a car and driver for the week long expedition to the Cultural Triangle – well, their car and driver, to be exact.
We wandered back to the main street from the TIC, passing an entrance to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic en route. The Temple’s entrances are very securely guarded, with the mandatory automatic rifle toting uniformed police, and with airport level pat downs and bag checks; it’s a very significant site, and fear of another LTTE or other ‘terrorist’ attack – however unlikely – remains fairly high (a bombing, attributed to the LTTE by the government, occurred here in 1998, but the damage was minimal). Given all that, it was something of a surprise when our nod and hello to the guard was taken as an invitation for a good old chat – he was very friendly, and keen to talk about just about anything – meanwhile, the security queue grew!
We headed home after lunch, and spent the arvo blogging away, watching the squirrels and enjoying the (still keenly missed!) wonderful feeling of having a dog plonk itself at your feet and keep you company.
We’d arranged for our new mate Irshan to pick us up the next morning for a visit to the Riverside Elephant Park, a wee ‘refuge’ for an elephant or three on their way to more permanent housing – often at the nearby Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage, a couple of hours travel back towards the capital. We’d elected not to make the hike to Pinnewala, even though it’s meant to be a great sanctuary for 60 or so orphaned or abandoned elephants, as we felt we’d had that sort of experience at the fantastic jungle camp outside Luang Prabang in Laos a few years ago, and time was short – the Riverside Park, on the other hand, was just on the edge of town. And, as we discovered upon arrival, temporarily closed. Irshan suggested a morning in the Royal Botanic Gardens in the adjoining town of Peradeniya instead and, as that had been on our ‘maybe’ list anyway, we agreed. He dropped us off and promised to return in a couple of hours, but we altered that to ‘we’ll send a message’, as we weren’t sure how long we’d want to spend in the gardens – two hours can be a long time, sometimes! And, on other occasions, just not enough – we ended up texting him and requesting an extension!
The Gardens are magnificent – incredibly dating back to as far as 1371, when Sri Lanka’s then monarch kept court in the area, but also incorporating colonial additions when Colombo’s Slave Island Gardens, set up in 1810 on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks (of The Endeavour, banksia and Bankstown fame Down Under) were re-located to Peradeniya in 1821. At almost 150 acres (60 hectares) the gardens are quite large, and occupy a peninsula of land, horse-shoe shaped, bound by Sri Lanka’s major river, the Mahaweli Ganga. There’re over 4000 species under cultivation, and there are some fantastic displays – the orchid house contains dozens of beautiful, colourful specimens; there are wonderful spice gardens, where the competing odours of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon are almost overwhelming, and three magnificent ‘palm avenues’ – Palmyrahs and Royal Palms line two, and the lofty (up to 21 metres in height) Cabbage Palms line the third, which lazily follows the river for a couple of hundred metres.
Having just left the Orchid House and taken a few snaps of a happy, and happy-to-be-photographed, bride and groom, we were standing at the head of the Palmyrah Avenue, consulting our maps in the heat when I decided to move to the shade of one of the massive palms (these only grow to about 12-15 metres!). I took another point in our continued battle with the forces of nature, when the free-falling coconut – to which I was oblivious – landed with a resounding thud about two metres to my left, embedding itself in the soft ground the way a golf ball sometimes will when chipped on to a very wet green – i.e. 40% underground! Still, better the resounding thud and embedded-ness in the ground than my head – I’m assuming a pretty instant fatality would be the outcome; if any mathematician can be bothered it weighed about 1200 grams and fell about 10 metres.
A very happy couple! No falling coconuts here ...
We moved back to the heat and continued planning our exploration, intending to follow the Palmyrah Avenue down to the riverside Cabbage Palm one, which led to a suspension bridge over the river. Naturally, the Gardens are fairly popular with furry friends, and we spied countless monkeys and squirrels, but were slightly more surprised to come across grazing cattle.
A lovely, living 'Nandi'!
The grass was long as I wandered in to the wee meadow to take my cow pictures, but I was wearing hiking boots and I made sure I stomped heavily to warn off any slithery occupants of the area, which turned out to have been a good idea, as at our next ‘map stop’ our eyes were drawn away from the map by the nearby slithering – thankfully, away from us – of a metre-and-a-half long green snake: I’ve no idea about its make and model, so don’t know if this also belongs in the ‘near misses’ pile we’re accumulating. I do know that we thereafter only consulted the bloody map over a cup of coffee; the thing seemed jinxed.
Our wanderings took us by a gigantic kauri pine – you could really appreciate the popularity of the timber as floorboards when you looked at this specimen; and dozens of cheeky monkeys, including one with a strong penchant for a certain malted milk drink!
Giant Kauri pine
He's going to go and go and go ...
We reached the suspension bridge which, naturally enough in a fee-charging environment, is closed half-way out over the river – it was solid enough, but certainly had a good ‘wobble effect’ by the time you were 30 metres out over the river. Some nutter in a uniform ‘escorted’ us out there, sharing his vast knowledge (i.e. naming the river) and then started shaking the bejaysus out of the bridge – any fool who knows Iona and expected a tip would NOT have done that. His subsequent request for payment was, as I expected, ignored.
"We're gonna die Shrek, we're gonna die ..."
... and it's a long way down.
We wandered on, vaguely heading towards the fairly central ‘Great Lawn’ for a coffee stop, and I was struck by the number of young lovers sprinkled around the place – school and uni aged youth, snatching a few of those ever-so-precious hours of solitude, planning idyllic futures and putting the world to rights, the way young lovers are prone to do. This, of course, set me off on a nostalgia trip, and we were soon recalling our own (separate) teenager-hoods, first loves and so on. This led to our own early days together, before digressing in to a discussion about the changes we all undergo on life’s journey – who’d have thought, 25 years or more ago, that either of us, let alone ‘we’ together, would spend hours wandering around botanical gardens, snapping dozens of pictures of orchids? Could we be the same people who existed circa 1980? Anyway, I’m not quite sure why I’m telling you that, so I’ll return to the ‘Great Lawn’ now.
Which is, really, quite an expanse of lawn. To add to its interest factor, as there’s only so much even a mellow old sod like me can enthuse about, basically, grass, its centre-piece is a huge Java Willow, or Javanese Fig Tree – and by huge I mean really, really big – the ground covered by its gigantic spread is two and a half thousand square metres (yep, 2 500sq.m). We sat in the nearby coffee shop and just admired the scenery – the lawn and the giant tree provide foreground to an avenue of Cook’s Pines, all wild and free form up top, behind which is the river and a residential hillside. Somewhere in them there hills a ceremony was taking place, and we heard the drumming and brass percussion long before we eventually caught glimpses of a procession of saffron-clad worshippers.
There are no straight lines in nature!
It was past midday and getting warm, so we called Irshan and headed for home, having a really good chat with him en route (we detoured to get the laundry, which had been done ‘5-star’-style, the shirts ironed and folded with paper inserts – couldn’t he tell we were backpackers, just from the state of our clothes?!). Irshan is an interesting guy – he lost his mother very young (he was ten, his youngest sister just two), and has a really close family – he’s recently married and has a toddler-aged daughter, but had lived with his dad until marrying, and still lives very close by, along with his youngest sister – the other two sisters live and work in Singapore. He’s a devout Muslim, and was interested to hear than there were mosques in Australia, and so on – we had quite a chat, and after reaching home we decided to give him a call later in the week for a temple trip we were planning – we’d normally share the work (and money) around, but he was so nice, and knowledgeable, that we decided on repeat custom.
Irshan’s tuk-tuk is his pride and joy – he’s a very safe driver, and keeps his three-year old buggy immaculate. He had, unfortunately, followed the trend and used fluorescent paint to highlight his wheel-hubs, handbrake-lever-like ‘crank’ and handlebars, but the tonneau-cover/roof was new, the seats – both the solo driver’s one and the two-seater rear bench, were proper, sprung vinyl, and well-padded to boot. He even had a model with electric windscreen wipers – many of the more basic/older trishaws simply have a single blade operated by hand via a short lever through the firewall/dashboard beneath the windscreen – that’s the driver’s hand operating it of course, in the rain, with just a small front wheel to steer by the remaining hand! Anyway, Irshan’s was great, and I wish I’d a better picture to share, but here we are – note those fluorescent wheel hubs!
Irshan, his tuk-tuk, and the fluoro wheels!
After lunch, December 8th, 2010, Legian, back down south, Bali, Indonesia
Still plugging away ….
We blogged away the afternoon, then headed off to town for dinner, this time heading towards Mr. Sangakkara’s Pub, but settling down in the neighbouring History Restaurant, an under-signaged eatery (it took some finding, and the cabbie had never heard of it!) set in a massive building, with a ground floor bakery, a first floor reception hall (hosting kids’ dancing classes as we went by) and a second floor restaurant “dedicated to the idea of ‘edu-tainment’”, according to the menu. This edu-tainment consists partially of floor-to-ceiling black and white historical photographs on almost every inch of wall space, the ‘almost’ allowing for one, plainly painted section, reserved for the hour-long, silent documentary, consisting of back to back black and white slides with sub-titles. Despite sounding overdone and a bit dull, it’s not at all so – the slideshow in particular is really quite informative, and includes some very early photography – late Nineteenth Century shots of local elders and the like – I wouldn’t call it riveting stuff, but it probably beats abstract art or kitsch handicrafts (after a while, anyway!).
We spent the next morning down in the balcony restaurant putting some flesh on the bones of our itinerary for the remainder of the Sri Lanka trip, and beyond – Indonesia was only a couple of weeks away, and we’d left everything after ‘arrive in Denpasar’ hanging. We easily whiled away three or four hours and were ready for some lunch when we realised the breakfast staff had legged it, closing the kitchen for the day, but not bothering to tell us. This resulted in us grabbing a tuk-tuk to town for lunch at The Pub, followed by self-catering grocery shopping at Cargills for the evening’s dinner, before returning to Blinkbonnie’s deserted restaurant to blog away the afternoon (the restaurant was wi-fi, the room wasn’t. It increases the time I take blogging when I can’t be on-line simultaneously {as is the case now!}, as my notes are always inadequate for the task, and there’s always something to verify!).
We were woken early the next morning, not by the alpha male of the monkey troupe, but by what sounded like heavy ordnance exploding outside our balcony. The source of the explosion turned out not to be military, but civilian – someone was using fireworks to scare off the monkeys, which had obviously been pestering them for too long. I can report that it doesn’t really work – most of the wee critters have clearly habituated to the noise, and the remainder bugger off for a few minutes before returning to investigate all that pretty red paper strewn around the explosion site. It’s more effective, at least in an immediate manner, to simply mime the action of throwing a stone at them – the really bolshie ones will stare you down or just flinch, but most scarper for a few moments. Most effective was the Blinkbonnie houseboys’ method of waving a slingshot/catapult around – obviously it’d been used in the past (which isn’t great), but it had reached the Pavlovian stage now, and they only had to see it, especially being mock-primed, and they were gone.
We’d planned an ‘around town’ photography day, and set off fairly early for the trudge down the hill, hoping to circumnavigate the lake before it got too warm, by which stage we could take in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic or a couple of the devales (smaller Hindu temples) and viharas (Buddhist monasteries) around the town. We stopped at the lookout half way down the mountain, taking in not just the lake, temple and Buddha statue, but also the scores of buses parked around the sports’ stadium, alongside Kandy’s gaol, smack in the middle of town. The buses were there because, previously unbeknownst to us, Kandy was hosting the national ‘games’ – an annual, three day long sporting extravaganza. Fortunately for us, the buses seemed to have brought only athletes and interested spectators, and the town was only marginally busier than any other day, with the exception of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which was really busy, as apparently happens at weekends and on Buddhist feast days anyway.
As we carried on down the hill a local restaurateur, out on the street for a stretch, saw our cameras and invited us into his restaurant to get ‘the best shot in town’ – we were half-way through feeble protests, jaded by the constant touts and hawkers, when we seemed, simultaneously, to remember that, sometimes at least, these chance encounters, and being open to the friendliness of strangers, bring the richest experiences – they’re part of the reason for travel, and shouldn’t be automatically shunned. He was a nice guy, didn’t even show us a menu, and the view of Kandy Lake, with the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic behind, wasn’t too bad, either …
Not a bad vista while you dine!
We were soon down at lake level, and elected to make our trip counter-clockwise, which would mean we’d cover 80% or so of the lake before lunch could interrupt us. We wandered along – there’s quite a nice path nearly all the way around – and soon reached our first stop, the compact but pretty Malwatu Maha Vihara. It appeared that some dignitary was just leaving, as the head monk and a few of his saffron-robed brothers were gathered around the entrance forecourt, blessing and ‘weying’ away (the Buddhist palms-together-in-front-of-the-chest-whilst-slightly-bowing motion made in greeting). This left us free to wander around unaccompanied, which was fine by us, and we enjoyed both the serenity of the monastery, with its small temple, dormitories and various statues, and the cool breeze coming up off the lake.
We were soon back by the lake, trying (and failing) to get a decent photo of a giant tree which was home to a large colony of fruit bats, when a middle-aged man, armed only with an umbrella, approached. Given he didn’t seem to have anything to sell I again elected to go with the flow, and was soon in conversation – he was a school teacher too, and wanted to know about teaching in Vietnam and the texts used in Australia and so on, and was soon inviting us to join him to look at the Buddhist library in the vihara we’d just left – we accompanied him back up to the monastery (via a rear entrance), and were soon being shown around buildings we’d only glimpsed from outside, taking in the statues (some beautiful, some gaudy), the pictures and paintings (mostly gaudy), the wood-carving and architecture (splendid) and, most impressively, the collections of Buddhist literature and teachings – both of the Theravada school, in Pali, and of the Mahayana school, in Sanskrit – hand-written, recorded on ola (talipot-palm leaf), bound and beautifully decorated along the spine. Some of these were over 1000 years old, and the volume of them is stunning, all hand-produced, meticulously copied by monks and novices over centuries – amazing.
We re-entered the section of the vihara we’d already visited, and were then led up the mountain via a set of stairs we hadn’t noticed previously, where we reached the school that our guide and many other members of his family had established and run for over 30 years. The ‘classroom’ – I use the term loosely, had just a few groups of students sitting in clusters around the place, studying together – maybe 15 or so in total, barely a smattering in a classroom which regularly holds 1328 students – no typo there, that’s one thousand, three hundred and twenty eight – they’re pretty well ‘lectured to’ in two hour blocks by different teachers – maths, English, science, Buddhism, whatever – it’d be something to see full! (I don’t imagine too much homework is set, nor books collected for marking!)
Periods 1 to 7, Roll Call ...
Having led us up a level our guide showed us out onto another road down to the lake, just happening to come out at a batik sales shop! Of course we were bustled in, shown the ‘students’ art-work, cups of tea miraculously appeared and were pressed upon us, the costs of running a school were re-counted and so on and on and on – just when it looked like we’d had back-to-back positive experiences, here we were right in the middle of a hard-sell again! The bedspreads became table-clothes, the table-clothes became bed-runners, the bed-runners became doilies, the doilies handkerchiefs and still we shook our heads – we didn’t want to buy anything! Next was the request for a donation to help the school, but when Iona’s request to see something on letterhead confirming the school existed, or for a printed receipt if we did donate were met with a scramble to start writing something down for us then and there, we left. At least it’d been an interesting and informative tour, which compensated for the circuitous walk back to where we’d met the guy – it’d’ve been much quicker back the way we came, and I half expected to see him back down there, looking all innocent and school-teacherly with his umbrella again. We didn’t.
We resumed our stroll, stopping suddenly as Iona spotted first a beautiful blue king-fisher, and then a good-sized monitor lizard, happily sunning itself on a rock by the edge of the lake.
Our next interruption was a paw-paw stop, although I limited it to a photo rather than partaking, as the shrieking of monkeys at the nearby entrance to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic was clearly audible, and I couldn’t be bothered to fight them, or the baby elephant, over the fruit!
The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is, indisputably, one of Sri Lanka’s most important religious sites, and one of Kandy’s premier tourism draw cards. The impressive, moat-encased pink building dates from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and was once part of the Kandyan royal palace – but it’s what’s inside which gives the site such significance, the oft-referred to ‘Tooth Relic’ is, reportedly, part of a tooth liberated from the blazes or ashes of the Buddha’s funeral pyre in 543 BC, and brought into Sri Lanka 800 or so years later hidden in the hair-do of a princess. Or, according to different sources, it’s the replica of that tooth, which is safely stored elsewhere, after the Indians tried to nick it (13th Century) and the Portuguese tried to burn it (16th Century) – in any case, it drags in Buddhist adherents in their tens of thousands each year, and it felt like a good deal of them were present today.
Given the crowds, and the reports that, after several hours of queuing you get to look at the un-opened tabernacle housing the relic (or its replica), from the doorway, for just 15 seconds, we decided that maybe tooth-spotting could wait until our next visit. We settled for a pleasant enough stroll through the grounds, entering at the northern entrance, following the lake, and exiting at the southern one, back by the TIC.
The clouds finally started to deliver on their threat of rain, and we just made it down the street and into the Devon Restaurant before it got heavier. We decided, as it looked like a longer break than our previous visit, to dine in the restaurant-ish bit, and were soon settled into a ‘snug’, from which we realised we could both look over each other’s head and watch the end of the Twenty20 cricket match between Sri Lanka and NZ – won by Sri Lanka, to the satisfaction of 100% of the diners and staff watching – if there were any Kiwis present they kept it quiet. (When we later returned home and mentioned the cricket, Sanggakara’s house and ‘Pub’ were both pointed out to us, across the lake from Blinkbonnie.)
The rain eased and we ventured out again, having enjoyed a very good grilled tuna and rice dinner, and also having resisted the advertised ‘fired rice and devels’ – which should have read, of course, ‘fried rice and devils’, with ‘devils’ being any devilled dish you care to order!
We wandered down a side street to one of the devales we’d read about, this one being rather different as, in one compound, it houses both Hindu and Buddhist temples and statues. This overlap between Buddhism and Hinduism isn’t uncommon – apart from the number of previously Hindu regimes which adopted Buddhism (Angkor, to name a big one, but there are plenty of examples elsewhere, including here in Indonesia), I’m guessing that a pan-theistic religion like Hinduism will more readily accept ‘another’ god-figure , and, given that the Buddha isn’t actually a god at all (and, technically, Buddhism isn’t a religion, but a philosophy), I’m guessing many Buddhists are open to having a god or two alongside their philosophy. Still, two temples in the one place is a bit unusual, to say the least, and we were curious.
March 29th, 2011, Pemuteran, Bali’s North Coast, Indonesia.
Catch up time! I’m sitting on our hotel porch, overlooking the pool and being overlooked by some cloud capped mountains, raring to go! David Gray’s singing along on the iPod; our fellow guests, a bunch of heavy smoking / swimming obsessed Europeans are all calm, Iona’s having a massage and I’m ready to type …
You enter through a very Hindu looking archway off the street, and my attempt to show our ‘Cultural Triangle’ admission tickets was waved away – this, we were assured, was a ‘free’ temple. The Buddhist monk assuring us of this led us inside and showed us to a giant painting of Shiva, blue-hued and decidedly Hindu. The tour continued, passing hundreds, possibly thousands of images and icons of Hindu deities – Brahma, Vishnu (Rama / Krishna) and Shiva of course, along with Ganesh, Parvati, Lakshmi, Hanuman and all the regulars, joined by scores of others – some estimates put the number of Hindu gods at over 300 million – most religions’d kill for that many adherents! The Hindi section segues into the Buddhist, and we found ourselves standing at the entrance to a fairly typical Theravada wat; with the story of the life of the Buddha in picture panels around the walls, and statues of Buddhas, standing and reclining, across the front.
In much the way that many two-in-one-things end up being not as good as either one on its own (cross-over motorbikes are a classic example), the temples were interesting enough without being spectacular. The monk who’d been delegated to lead us around eventually led us into an adjoining building to be ‘blessed’ by the head monk – a Buddhist – who went through a whole five minute ceremony including tying saffron bands around our wrists, before producing a ‘ledger’ detailing the massive donations made by previously ‘blessed’ visitors – several of whom had felt moved enough to donate over $100USD – each! It may have been my natural cynicism or frugality, or perhaps it was my indignation at being blessed by a monk reeking of beer, but I – most begrudgingly – coughed up $5.00 for each of us, only to be informed the ‘minimum donation’ was $10 a head. I shook mine, and we left, being quietly cursed by a man who’d only five minutes earlier been blessing us. We’d been instructed to wear the saffron bands for a week for good luck, but – not unexpectedly – the only noticeable change over a few days was that the bands went manky, and we decided to risk bad luck and ditched them a few days later.
The following day was largely spent blogging, broken up by a long walk into town and back. We organised a van to take us on to Sigiriya in a couple of days, and consumed ridiculously large pots of tea and coffee at The Pub – $1.75 for 2 litres! We had our eyes peeled for another porcupine during our walk home just after dusk, and were rewarded, not with a quilled beastie, but with a solitary, incredibly bright, firefly, which we spotted at the exact spot we’d earlier seen the porcupine’s mad dash across the road. Neither of us had ever seen a firefly before, and we were both stunned by the brightness of its light, and by its solitude – I’d pictured masses of them faintly glowing, but this was almost halogen like, a tiny, solitary prick of light in the dusk sky.
June 24th, 2011 – the end is nigh!
We awoke and breakfasted early the next day, keen to be out the front to meet up with Irshan for a tour of some nearby temples. We’d been waiting just a few minutes when we were greeted instead by the van driver we’d booked for the trip to Sigiriya the next day – he’d been ‘chosen’ for us by a mate, who refused to take us for the price we wanted to pay, and we’d been concerned he may not show up at all, so seeing him a day early was, although a little awkward, a bit of a relief, too. We quickly communicated that he was 24 hours early, and he left promising to be there again the next day. Soon after Irshan arrived, and we were presently wending our way towards the first of the temples on our list, Gadaladeniya Temple (that’s easy for you to say!), a 14th Century temple of typical South Indian design. Like many Sri Lankan temples, there is a fusion of Buddhist and Hindu elements in the temple, and adherents of both religions worship there. The temple is, fairly typically, built on a large, flat – or flattened – rock, and is made out of stone. It has a few interesting frescoes and statues, but is more notable for its fairly isolated position in the countryside and its array of colourful prayer flags than any great architectural features.
The ride to Lankatilake Temple, the next on our itinerary, allowed us to get to know Irshan better. His Mum had died aged just 32 years, leaving his Dad with Irshan and his three sisters, including the two year old. His Dad never re-married, and Irshan, as the nearest living offspring, is pretty much responsible for his well-being, as well as his own family’s (he has a young daughter himself). In addition to chatting away about the differences and similarities between life in Sri Lanka and Australia, we were able to chat about life as a tuk-tuk driver (tyres are $25 a pop!) whilst taking in the sights of the countryside around us. Irshan was authoritative on the farming produce and practices – we saw rice, tea, coffee, jackfruit, cardamom, pepper, mangoes, avocadoes and bananas – all before our tuk-tuk, despite its new tyres, became stuck, forcing us out to push! The gradient was challenging, but the soft surface was probably the real culprit (it couldn’t possibly be our combined weight, after all!). Incidentally, riding home the previous night the tuk-tuk had momentarily given up as well, before the driver switched over to the reserve tank – I’d not previously thought about the fact that, being essentially motor scooters/bikes, they’d have a reserve tank – but I was quite grateful to discover they do!
Our early start (and perhaps our decision to visit the temples in the ‘reverse’ order most tourist literature / guidebooks suggest) meant that we avoided the tour buses that ply this route – there weren’t that many, but just one or two busloads at a small temple can alter the experience dramatically! Despite a temperature of around 25˚C many of the local kids were rugged up in knitted beanies and thick jackets, but not so the little fellow we encountered out the front of Lankatilake Temple, amusing himself with a half-sized cricket bat and a tennis ball. My offer to play with him wasn’t received as I expected, with the kid shrinking away in a bout of shyness, which no coaxing or miming a bowling action could overcome. The poor little bugger kept looking at me like the last white guy he’d seen had either stolen his bat or killed his pet kitten, so I settled for a farewell wave and caught up with Iona and Irshan at the entrance to the temple, wishing, as I so often do at temple entrances, that I’d planned ahead enough to wear slip on shoes instead of lace-up hiking boots.
Lankatilake Temple, like Gadaladeniya, is built on a stone outcrop, but the temple here is constructed of brick, rather than stone. (The third temple, Embekka, is also built on stone, but constructed of wood. It felt a little like the ‘Three Little Pigs’ fable in reverse.) Also like Gadaladeniya, Lankatilake – and later Embekka – was attended by highly informative local ‘guides’ – I’m still unsure as to which were official and which were just hangers-on, but these guys really did know their stuff, providing history, social commentary and architectural expertise. The wooden temple, Embekka, was particularly interesting, with intricate religious carvings in pillars constructed from jackwood and ironwood, both incredibly hard woods – some of the wooden pillars are over 750 years old, and the lack of wear and erosion of the carvings readily affirms the wood is tougher than much of the local rock and stone.
Our drive home took us by more farmland, with buffalo the clearly preferred beasts of burden hereabouts, evidence of which was abundant as we watched the ploughing of nearby fields. We happened upon a local mosque as we rode through the countryside, and asked Irshan if non-Muslims could visit. He pulled into the mosque and asked a young lad, who immediately became our guide, not only showing us the grounds and minaret, but even allowing us in to look at the prayer hall (a rare thing, in our experience). It was a pretty basic building, but it was nice to have a few minutes chatting with the lad (and a couple of his young mates, who turned up to gawk at the whiteys). We were soon heading back to Blinkbonnie, and farewelling our new friend Irshan.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon blogging away in the wi-fi enabled dining area, snapping pictures of the ubiquitous squirrels as we did so.
Our wander towards town in search of dinner was abridged, as we decided to eat at the ‘half-way’ down restaurant into which we’d been invited to take in the view earlier in our stay. It proved an inspired choice, as the food was simply delicious! We wandered back to base for an early night, our last at Blinkbonnie.
An early morning followed our early night, and we were up and away before anyone at the guesthouse had stirred – luckily for them we’d paid in advance! Our ‘friend-of-a-friend’ driver turned up punctually, and we were soon headed north to the ‘cultural triangle’ area, with an en-route stop-over scheduled at Dambulla. The trip out of town was slowed by the early morning peak hour traffic, with what felt like thousands of uniformed school kids undertaking their daily commute; scores of similarly uniformed traffic cops attempting (not too successfully) to keep the traffic flowing and dozens of rough old buses slowing it all down. We spied a tuk-tuk dealership, with brand new bajajs going for around $3000 USD – I was immediately tempted to suggest buying a couple and trekking around the country in them, but a second look at the traffic sapped my enthusiasm a little, so I kept the thought to myself.
October 23rd, 2011, Launceston, Tasmania.
An hour or so on the road north and we were into the Central Province, at the junction town of Dambulla, where the A6, running off to the north-east coastal town of Trincomalee, cuts across the A9, which veers slighly west, towards Anuradhapura, as a slight detour in its northerly wend up the guts of the island and into the Jaffna Peninsula. Pretty much a service town on these highways north and east, the reason we – and many other visitors – stopped here was to visit the famed cave temples, properly known as The Royal Rock Temple.
The temples (there are five, all aside each other) sit, as the old Lonely Planet puts it, “atop a massive hill on the edge of town”. They helpfully add “The hike up to the temples begins along a vast, sloping rock face with steps in some places”. In retrosepct, if I’d written this it would read “atop a massive hill on the edge of town”…“The hike up to the temples begins along a vast, sloping rock face with steps in some places”…”EAT BREAKFAST BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO CLIMB THIS MASSIVE HILL!!!!”. I really should’ve been a travel writer, I’m choc full of useless facts and after-the-event good advice.
Along with no breakfast we had no warm-up, and were driven on mostly by the desire to get away from an annoying kid, well-dressed and well-fed, but being egged-on by its parents to pan-handle the whiteys (just us at this early hour!) for ‘toffee’ and ‘pens’, instead of practising its English with ‘hello’, or ‘could I carry you to the top?’
Having outpaced the kid we were soon half-way up, where we encountered trinket sellers, complete with ‘mystery boxes’, carved beatifully from local timbers. Each has a ‘hidden’ lock piece which needs to be slid aside to allow the box to open, and they were rather disappointed when we instantly opened them – we’d been beseiged with sellers of the same devices at Embekka a few days earlier, and knew the trick. It was a little graceless of us, but we really weren’t in the mood for a 15 minute sales pitch – simply opening the box and saying we’d already bought one seemed simpler.
The climb was long, and the morning was already warming up, but the temples made it all worthwhile. After the long climb the top of the mountain plateaus out, with the caves carved into the rockface to the right, and views over the surrounding countryside on the left.
The Royal Rock Temples were, admittedly, worth the long, hot climb!
We’d planned ahead and brought plastic bags to carry our shoes around in, rather than abandon our good hiking boots with the thousands (well, hundreds!) of other shoes left, unattended, on racks. It’s unlikely you’d be unlucky enough to have your footwear nicked, but it does happen, and Dambulla’s monkey population – they were legion – have a pretty bad repuation too. As well as removing your shoes on arrival at the ‘sacred premises’; it’s appropriate – whether any religionist mannerly person – to behave gently.You gotta love Ceylenglish!
I think I know what they meant ... -ish!
In the courtyard in front of the temples was a gigantic Banyan tree, adorned with hundreds of prayer flags and surrounded by a low wall, upon which fruit offerings could be made and candles lit. The offerings may have been intended to Buddha, but most were quickly claimed by one of the myriad monkeys, no matter how much arm flapping, shooing or shouting was done!
Buddha said I could have this one - honest ...
The caves themselves were impressive – some of the Buddha images and statues weren’t first rate, but the fresco covered rock walls and ceilings were incredible, whether relatively simple geometric patterns or covered with Jataka (pictures representing tales from the Buddha’s life). The biggest cave is over 50m long and over 20m deep, with the ceiling reaching 7m high in parts. The 15m long reclining Buddha in the adjoining cave is better than the statuary here, but the fresco work and sheer size make the place pretty awe-inspiring! We wandered through each of the five temples, surprised at how easy it was to get some quiet time in each one to ourselves – we were ahead of the daily tour-bus rush, but there were easily 100 or so other sight-seers, yet the temples never seemed overly full.
The view over the surrounding countryside was simply breath-taking, and we could clearly make out the imposing Sigiriya rock, our next destination, despite it being over half an hour away by car.
We enjoyed the downward hike a little more than the climb, although we were both actually pretty hungry, and the lack of caffiene was really making Iona irritate me. Oops, was making me very irritable.
Fortunately our driver obviously had his own reasons to hurry along, and we made it into Sigiriya in just under half an hour. Sigiriya (Lion Rock) is a tiny township of under 1000 people, existing only to offer food and accommodation to visitors to Sigiriya, the rock. Before we could even really contemplate the rock we needed to find our accommodation and, more importantly, our food! We were soon deposited at our pre-booked guesthouse, The Flower Inn, and our host, Preety, told us she’d be cooking a great vegetarian dinner, but didn’t offer lunch. We signed on for dinner, and headed off down the sole dusty road to find something to act as breakfast and lunch in the meantime.
A Government run ‘Rest House’ (as opposed to a guest house, although I’m not sure how or why – they were common enough in India too, when I visited a million years ago) looked the most promising, and we were soon salivating as we smellled our lunch being prepared – curries and rice. That’s possibly the best thing about Sri Lanka – the food is fantastic, generous in portions, AND you always get variety. It’s not enough to have curry and rice, you must have curries and rice – along with the usual side dishes – pickled magoes, brinjal, pappadums etc. The highlight here – and it was damn near as high as the nearby rock – was sweet potato curry with onions. If it isn’t the best curry I’ve ever eaten it has to be in the top 2 or 3 – absolutely delicious!
With such contented bellies I doubted we’d appreciate Preety’s dinner properly later, and we sort of snuck back into our room for a wee nap – full bellies and an early start – plus 30-something degree heat – can do that to ya! A couple of hours later we emerged, and decided to wander down to the rock itself for a bit of a squizz before the following day’s climb. Which, almost by accident, became ‘today’s climb’ – we wandered around the base, taking in the rough gardens and occasional livestock – cattle and monitor lizards, for the most part – then just decided to give it a go there and then – the temperature had dropped, and the curries from lunch and nap had obviously recharged the batteries.
I iwsh I'd lobbed in a matchbox, or a small bus, just for perspective. He was a BIG lizard!
I’ve not yet visited Uluru, so Sigiriya is the most impressive lump of rock I’ve ever seen. Whilst at 378 metres Uluru sounds rather more imposing than the 200 metres Sigiriya raises above the ground, the fact that much of the rock overhangs its base makes Sigiriya (an ancient volcanic ‘plug’) incredibly dominant on the landscape.
The climb starts with a gentle enough incline through a small canyon, leading to carved steps and tracks which bring you up to the first of the rock’s wonders, the fresco gallery. Leaving the climbing path to ascend a metal spiral staircase, you reach (well, in this case, I – Iona was fighting enough demons with the climb so far, the stairway was just too much!) a long, sheltered gallery right in the face of the rock – gently sloped, like the barrel of a wave, it is home to the last remaining 22 portraits – it’s believed there were over 500 originally – of apsara-like women – comely, busty, thin-waisted – similar to those found in the caves at Ajanta, in India. My visit to Ajanta in 1987 coincided with a once every 12 years (I think) religious festival, and I remember it as much for the sheer crush of humanity as I do for its frescoes, so having this gallery to myself – well, there was a guard present – was simply wonderful. I greeted the guard, who was looking out through a small opening in the protective hessian that hangs like a giant curtain over the opening of the gallery, and he immediately became my personal guide, ignoring the other climbers who eventually joined us. He pointed out details he felt shouldn’t be missed (3 nipples on one fresco), and also knew all the spots at which the hessian could be pulled back to allow the late afternoon sun to briefly illuminate various portraits – it was an amazing sight. These don’t do justice, but here are the guard’s view of the surrounding countryside, and a snap of one of the frescoes.
We're about half way up The Rock, at this point!
One of the beautiful frescoes in the gallery, 100m or so up the Rock!
Back on the climb towards the top the next feature is the ‘Mirror Wall’ – a 3 metre high, smooth (and once upon a time glazed, hence the name) wall protecting climbers, as – at this point, like many others – the path itself is simply carved into the sheer side of the rock.
The fact that the rock is more than a rock adds to its wonder- for years it was believed that, late in the 5thCentury, a magnificent fortress had been constructed on top, accessible only through the ‘Lion Gate’, the huge stone paws of which still exist, and through which you commence the final ascent, battling wobbly legs and vertigo as you climb external metal stairs, akin to a fire-escape, bolted onto the outer edges of the rock – at one of those spots that partly overhangs the base – it’s a blast! More recently archaeological research seems to have confirmed that, rather than a fort, the remains are from Buddhist monasteries – both Theravada and Mahayana – dating back to at least the third century!
The start of the final ascent!
What could possibly go wrong?
The next stop for us was the Lion’s Paws, and Iona, having climbed over 150 heart-stopping metres, was ready to call it a day. The paws rest on a large natural platform in the rock, and to carry on you ascend through the paws (you’d, once upon a time, have then entered the mouth of a gigantic brick lion, now only the paws remain), then take a mixture of the rickety fire-escape stairs part of the way – it’s here they really ‘hang off’ the edge of the rock; and, in other parts, are reduced to ‘clambering up across a series of grooves cut into the rock: fortunately there is a hand rail’ – nice of good old Lonely Planet to warn you, but it may have been worth mentioning that the handrail wobbles. And that there are wasps nests. We’d seen the helpful warning signs –
Really ... quiet, calm and no moving - there are wasps, I'm hangin' off a bloody rock, on ricketty stairs, 150m in the sky!
– but, of course, I’d just automatically discounted the likelihood of encountering them ourselves. I half encouraged, half-cajoled poor old Iona into carrying on, fearful that she’d miss something really special, and after having already done 75% of the hard work. She heroically clambered across the grooves, but baulked (understandably!) at the foot of the firestairs. She’d turned toward me, and was angsting about continuing, but all I could see (which she couldn’t!) was a great big wasps’ nest hanging a few feet behind her ear. I said something like – ‘Well, just decide – up or down?’, and she decided to push on – it was only hours later I felt safe enough to explain my sudden abruptness! We did push on, and minutes later reached the summit. The temple/fort remains aren’t particularly impressive, but the view – not to mention the sense of achievement at making it there – is amazing.
Wow, even that lizard looks small from up here!
The descent was, naturally, quicker and easier than the ascent, and we even managed to bum a lift for the 500m or so home – with the generous driver, of course, scoring the next day’s gig, a day trip to the nearby ancient capital of Polonnaruwa, an hour or so north-east of Sigiriya.
Apart from the sense of achievement, the cultural experiences and the wonderful views, the climb had provided another unexpected bonus – the five-curry feast from lunch-time was fully digested, and we were eager for Mrs. Preety’s great smelling dinner. We took our books out to the lounging area right outside our room, and were soon joined by a few other travellers – a Swiss couple, Brigette and Elgar, and a young Aussie couple, Lena and Daniel. Brigette and Elgar had climbed the rock the previous day, whilst Lena and Daniel were to do so the next. Brigette was a really interesting person, a human rights lawyer who’d recently been working on the Khmer Rouge trials in Phnom Penh. Elgar, Lena and Daniel were lovely too, and we feasted for hours on a sumptious vegetarian spread – honestly, between Preety’s dinner and the Rest House lunch it’s worth visiting this tiny backwater just for the food, whether you see, climb or ignore the Rock! A few glasses of wine washed down the delightful food, and it was surprisingly late when we all turned in.
Nearly every long-term traveller has, at some stage, I suspect, considered the horror of the call summonsing you home for a family emergency. Alas, the next morning, Lena and Daniel were gone, before we’d even exchanged email addresses, rushing off at 4.00am after a call letting them know that Lena’s Mum was – as far as any of us knew, totally unexpectedly – seriously ill. They’d been living in the UK for a year or so, and were just enjoying some travel on the way home, and we felt absolutely gutted on their behalf. I hope they made it home in time, and that they get back to Sigiriya one day – as it happened it was an overcast and misty day that day, so the climb wouldn’t have been much fun in any case.
Our driver arrived punctually as we finished our breakfast at 8.00am, and we headed off into the grey morning, stopping every now and again as his sharp eye picked out something to show us – feral pigs, wild jungle fowl and civet included! The drizzle became heavy summer rain on the ochre-red earth which, combined with Lena’s horrid departure, brought on a bout of home-sickness – parts of the country-side could’ve been many places in western NSW.
As we entered the outskirts of the ancient capital we noticed the obvious poverty, with many tin roofs being held down by old car and truck tyres. Our first stop was a quick drive along the Bund Road which forms the eastern bank of Topa Wera, a great lake on the western edge of the old city. Impressive in itself, the Lake was over-shadowed – literally, as the sun came out to greet us! – by hundreds, quite possibly thosands, of large birds flying in the most perfect, and lengthy, v-formations we’d ever seen. There were dozens of squadrons of these birds, and literally scores or hundreds of birds in each. They were too high and too far away to make out the type, but they looked too narrow to be ducks – it was an amazing vision.
We soon reached Potgul Vihara, the first of the ruins we planned to visit – like Thailand’s ancient capitals of Sukhothai or Ayutthaya, or Cambodia’s Angkor – Polonnaruwa has many ruins spread over a fair-sized area. Potgul Vihara is an amazing collection of five circular buildings, used as religious libraries over 1000 years ago. The Royal Palace group of buildings was our next stop, followed by the Quadrangle and Northern Groups, all of which contained amazing buildings, raising again the question of how such a clearly advanced culture – such mastery of planning and execution of grand buildings on a massive scale, like the temples at Angkor – could crumble over the next millenium, and the once great state become one of the world’s poorest nations. Yet another Duran Duran film-clip was made in these ruins, 1982’s ‘Save a Prayer’!
Our driver would wait for us at each stop, chatting away with various touts, vendors and locals – he seemed to know everyone! Iona headed back to the car early at one stage and, unable to find Mr. Gregarious, spent an enjoyable 15 minutes befriending a lovely local dog. The trip home involved numerous, unexplained, stops, but we were soon back as base, surprised to find ourselves suddenly the only guests remaining – there’d been 16 for dinner the previous night! Fortunately Preety had moved our washing – strung on lines across the courtyard – undercover to dry, as there’d been light rains most of the afternoon. The preparation of the night before’s feast had knocked the stuffing out of Preety, so we were left to our own devices to find some dinner. A wander down to the Rest House with the great curries was the obvious choice, however we found them closed too. It’s a small place, so it didn’t take long to work out there wasn’t much else on offer – and then we stumbled across the general store – 15 minutes of internet access and a box of pringles set us back 70c; and a roadside roti seller provided the carbs to bulk out our pringle-based dinner. Home to crash, careful not to tread on the many frogs along the driveway!
We were up early the following day, partly because we were keen to get on the way with the next leg of our trip, heading further into the cultural tirangle, destination Anuradhapura, but mostly because of the loud firecrackers being let off right outside our room! These were intended to drive off the monkeys – more grey-faced macaques – who did, indeed, play their part by retreating for all of two minutes after the first explosion, but merely looked contemptously at the Sri Lankan Guy Fawkes following subsequent explosions – they learn quickly, and are incredibly cheeky! As was the young cat who scrounged around our feet at breakfast, before giving up when – I think – he worked out we were vegetarian, and immediately unleashed his inner lion, hunting and pouncing upon at least half a dozen large moths in quick succession.
The driver arrived literally as we drained our coffee cups, and farewells were had with the friendly Preety and were on our way north in quick time. The drive took us past a large orphanage, an elephant watch-house, and fields of lotus plants, harvested for their seeds, a popular delicacy here, as in Cambodia. Soon we were in the foothills of the Ritigala Mountains – the highest peak of which is 766m above sea level, or over 600m above the surrounding landscape – an impressive sight! The surroundiung area is a nature reserve, home to many spectacular and endangered birds, of which we were lucky enough to spot a beautiful humming-bird. Our driver was a rural lad from the north, and kept stopping and pointing out interesting things – we saw wood apples – white fruit growing in orchards, as well as the bright white fields of ‘lotus rice’ (that’s what I thought he called it – I haven’t been able to find any reference to it anywhere since!). The farmers here intersperse rice paddies amongst their cropping fields, and we saw quite a few farmers – and quite a few ancient looking farmers – doing the back-breaking work of dyke-building for these paddies – mud is literally man-handled into levees, allowed to harden and then canals cut through where needed for irrigation – pain-staking, and hard! And, to make matters worse, Sri Lankan farmers in the north are lucky to get two harvests, whilst most rice-farmers these days – since the ‘green revolution’ of the 60s, anyway – get three.
We soon reached Anuradhapura, the ancient city that was capital of Sri Lanka for over 1000 years, first being capital as early as 380BC, and were soon checking in to the ‘Milano Tourist Rest’, a hotel pitched mostly at business/conference type travellers, but reasonably enough priced and offering simply enormous rooms – like Colombo House back in the capital, ours had three double beds, but this time in a modern, 4-star setting!
We dropped off some washing at reception and walked into town, wandering a fair way, as both the age and the frequent decline/rebuilding of the city has stretched it out along many of the main roads and highways which cut through the town. We wandered for a couple of hours, spotted a couple of motor-bike hire places for the following day’s planned ride around the ruins, and finally settled on a multi-story Chinese restaurant for dinner – more due to a lack of any great choice in the area we eneded up in, than any great desire for Chinese food (which neither of us much cares for) – but we were pleasantly surprised with some high quality food (not a surprise in itself in Sri Lanka!), and were soon wending our way home – managing to go slightly astray in the dusk light, but eventually arriving at Milano – relieved, foot-sore and tired.
We rose early again, logging in a couple of quick phone calls to Oz, then enjoyed a decent enough buffet breakfast in the dining room at Milano, before enquiring about bike hire at the hotel – they wanted $25, which we at first took to be a joke, but soon realised they were serious, and inflexible! We once more hiked into town, where we eventually secured a bike for the day for $12, but only after some serious haggling! I think South-East Asia has spoiled us in some ways, and $3 to $5 a day scooter or motorbike hire is certainly one of them!
Our first destination was Anuradhapura Train Station, where Indian-esque paperwork was required to book two tickets back to Colombo for the following day. Apart from succeeding, the highlight of the exchange was being issued two, very stiff cardboard, tickets, like something from the 1950s or ‘60s – very old world!
Transport organised we jumped back on the bike and headed for the Citadel, the ‘heart’ of the archaeological ruins scattered about the town. The ruins here are harder to make ‘sense’ of than in Polonnaruwa, being much more spread out, but also having been built over a much longer period of time, and having been ‘abandoned’ as a capital for such a long time too. We headed next to the northernmost group of relics, and found ourselves amid a large gathering at Abhayagiri Dagoba, as hundreds of pilgrims milled around for some sort of ceremony – it was damp and grey, so we wandered amongst them for a few minutes before re-mounting and heading off to explore elsewhere. The spread of the ruins, the weather and, in truth, the dilapidated state of many of them, resulted in Anuradhapura feeling distinctly ‘second best’ to Polonnaruwa, but we had a nice few hours looking at buildings here and there, and were treated to lots of waves, smiles and nods from the local countryfolk as we rode from one site to another.
The drizzle got heavier, and we headed back to base for an hour’s kip, planning to head out again in the late afternoon if the weather lifted. The weather did break a bit a little later, but we’d barely gone 50 metres up the road before the flat rear tyre registered with our backsides, then brains. Twice we found roadside pumps, but we simply inflated the tyre only to have it instantly deflate as we drove off. We headed back to the café we’d hired it from, inflated the tyre in the servo across the road, wheeled it back in, grabbed our deposit and left – sometimes the language thing is just too hard!
Finding ourselves at a loose end we decided to look for a late lunch (we’d just been going to scoff some fruit and have a big dinner), and stumbled across a sit-down bakery offering ‘short eats’. Despite the construction work happening in half the restaurant (separated from the functioning half by clear plastic!), the food and ambience were unsurpassed. There were dozens of groups of diners – families, school and uni students in gaggles and, alongside us, a doting grandfather and his ever-so-cute grandaughter. Once the waitress understood our vegetarian status she skipped off and returned with a plate overflowing with various savouries – we couldn’t possibly eat them all, but I made a good effort at sampling as many as possible, and each seemed more delicious than the one preceeding! The waitress was great, one of the least shy of those we spoke with in the whole trip, she actually summonsed up the courage to ask questions rather than just answer ours – including the fantastic “What village are you from in Australia?” – gorgeous!
We hit the nearby supermarket and picked up some dinner and breakfast supplies (an early train ride beckoned!), and headed back to base to read and laze about. We had a bit of a fight with the reception staff, with our old curse of not-completely-dry washing haunting us again – Iona soon got them sorted and, after a fair bit of too-ing and fro-ing, the bulk of the stuff was eventually ‘ironed’ dry. (One of my trips to reception did at least bring some light relief, with a file on the desk reading ‘Tax Bills – Nowember’! – those transliterations occasionally make it to print, and always look funny. It’s Vs and Ws in the sub-continent, and the famous Rs and Ls in South East Asia – we once saw a Bangkok high rise under construction, with sign-writing literally a floor high saying “Office Space: For Lent or Rease” – brilliant!) Anyway, everyone calmed down eventually and a few beers and hands of cards on the hotel’s deck made for a very pleasant evening.
We were up and at the station in time to board the 6.40am ‘express’ train to Colombo – which left 20 minutes late, allowing the train driver to release his inner Ayrton Senna – the trip was truly horrendous, with both of us – and many other passengers – repeatedly banging our heads against the windows as the train hurtled along the tracks. Of all the dodgy forms of transport we’ve experienced over the years I’ve never felt less secure about reaching the destination – that even includes the homicidal maniac driven taxi that drove us to Ban Lung in Cambodia a few years ago. Gratefully, then, we reached Colombo at 11.00am, glad to be alive.
Our grumpiness – a combination of the early start and terrible trip – wasn’t helped when we discovered the next train to Negombo, the beach town not far from the airport which was to be our final destination, wasn’t due for nearly two hours. We decided to give the bus depot a try, although we weren’t keen as the bus takes 2 hours, compared to an eighty minute train ride. The tuk-tuk drivers run a cartel here, and no-one would take us to the depot for under 200rp – each! We finally agreed to take a ride with the friendliest of the pushy bunch and, immediately we were out of the station forecourt, he offered to take us all the way to Negombo for 1500rp – I protested it was too far to go in a tuk-tuk, but he assured us we’d be there in just over an hour, and pulled over to re-arrange our luggage – so we took a 40km tuk-tuk ride and, true to his word, he got us there in just over an hour, and not too uncomfortably!
The ride through Colombo’s northern suburbs showed us a slice of Sri Lankan weekend life – many people in their Sunday best, white-clad kids carrying cricket bats, and – despite many shops remaining open, the general relaxed feel of a (mostly) non-working day.
Negombo’s main street runs parallel to the coast, and the Laccadive Sea, just over 100m away, is a pretty strong tourist magnet, both for locals and international visitors. The main strip – Lewis Place, becoming Sea Street as you head south towards what remains of the old Dutch Fort (follow your nose – the grounds house Negombo’s fish market these days!) – is home to over a dozen hotels and guest houses, and a similar number of eateries.
One of the digs is Marine Tourist Guest House, where we’d pre-booked a room, swayed by some nice images and rave reviews about the owner and his Mum on a travellers’ review website. My notes on arrival read exactly as follows
Marine G.H. – room not ready (probably until about 2012), chat with Nishan (owner) = right-wing dickhead. Room: big, spacious, new, unfinished.
They don’t read like much, but they’re more than enough to remind me of the hour we spent waiting to get access to our room. Nishan (the ‘lovely young man’ of the reviews) was a Tamil-bashing, mean-spirited jerk. The room was big and modern, but alas, also unfinished (as were the stairs leading to it – in an effort to make this an even bigger challenge the builders decided their top priority was to tile these, a few at a time – we were on the second floor, they started on the ground. In preference to finishing the bathroom in our room!) Still, we’d prepaid, and the room was spotless and enormous, so we decided to stay put, but to eat out to avoid spending any more of our money with Nishan, despite his eventual agreement to bring the remote control for the air-conditioning, which was advertised as ‘included’ on the website we booked through, but for which he had wanted an additional fee. He attempted to invite us to dinner the following day – via the cleaner and then his Mum, but we feigned a lack of understanding (neither had enough English to be definitely understood, in truth), and simply stayed out late. My tolerance and sense of duty to hold my tongue as a ‘guest’ in someone’s country were well tested listening to him label every Tamil asylum seeker an ‘economic refugee’ – I didn’t think I’d last a whole dinner without unpleasantness happening.
As it happened we had an incredibly nice dinner just across the road – baked seer fish and vegies, washed down with soda, followed by a quick visit to an internet café and then home to bed with our books – we were both fairly well exhausted.
Breakfast was also eaten out – based on a word or two from Lonely Planet I dragged Iona a kilometre down the street to one of the most expensive hotels on Lewis Place (on the ‘sea side’, not across the street like we plebs!), the Swiss-run ‘Ice Bear’. The magic word was ‘muesli’, followed immediately by ‘in the morning is home-made’. I was enjoying Sri Lankan cuisine but, like so many other South-East Asian destinations, breakfast ain’t their best meal of the day. The Ice Bear is a little tropical oasis – absolute beach frontage, lovely pavilion-style rooms and sun-lounge areas, and – yes – great muesli, even a bit of granola mixed in. The coffee was also superb, only Iona’s tea and toast letting the deal down. It wasn’t cheap, but at least one of us thought it was worth it!
We jumped into a tuk-tuk down to the ‘town’ proper, found an ATM, wandered through the modern, and fairly soulless, market, passing the Negombo Lagoon – more like a small harbour for the local fishing fleet – and headed down to the Dutch Fort and the fishing market; only one of which was an immediate assault on the senses! All that remains of the fort that really grabs the eye are a turret and partial walls; whereas the 40◦ heat meant that every fish, and every bit of fishy offal, hit the nose full-on. The combination of a fairly average fort, burning heat and smelly fish eroded our resolve to walk back to Lewis Place along the sea-front, and we again jumped into a tuk-tuk back to base.
Guilt took its toll, so we walked northwards around to Brown’s Beach before sourcing lunch – in a deserted, shady beach-front café-cum-restaurant-cum-pub. The heat clearly wasn’t going to subside, so we decided to wend our way back to our room for a read and a siesta. En-route I spotted a little hairdresser’s shop, and nicked in to see if I could get a haircut – giggles from the hairdressers (that always happens!) gave way to outright laughter when I bumped my head on the ridiculously low ceiling upstairs – which didn’t stop the hairdresser from subjecting me to an overly-vigorous scalp massage after the buzz cut had been completed. I caught up with Iona back at base, and we dropped off some washing, figuring it’d have to be able to be washed and dried in this heat! We were fairly well washed ourselves, sweating the afternoon away, as Nishan still hadn’t delivered the promised air-conditioning remote control unit.
Driven out after a couple of hours reading (it was too hot to snooze), we jumped off our fitness campaign and had a couple of sun-downers (delicious Lion Beer) at yet another beach-fronting bar, before tucking in to some wonderful grilled swordfish, then whiling away a few hours playing cards. We headed home just as the temperature dropped, and were chased upstairs by Nishan, finally dropping off the remote control!
Breakfast consisted of pancakes and postcard writing, followed by a trip to the post-office and internet café, before returning to base for a toilet stop. I made the mistake of waiting in the courtyard while Iona nicked upstairs, and was duly accosted by Nishan’s (slightly mad, I fear) mother, whose only non-Sinhalese vocabulary seemed to have shrunk, now consisting entirely of the words ‘room’ and ‘problem’, which she tried in a dozen or so different combinations before shrugging and retiring back to her house, a cute cottage in front of the Guest House.
We picked up our washing, strolled down to Brown’s Beach for lunch once again and returned to base to pack – an early flight the next day looming large in our minds! We dined directly across the street, playing a few thousand more hands of cards and laughing at the cute cats that seemed to have run of the restaurant.
A 5.30am tuk-tuk ride had us at the airport in a matter of minutes, and just as well, as our flight – back to our home away from home at KL’s Low Cost Terminal, for a short wait before heading on to Denpasar – actually departed almost 15 minutes early. (I assume that means everyone was aboard, although there were enough seats available for us to move after take-off, recline and sleep our way to Kuala Lumpur.)
We breakfasted in Negombo, lunched in KL and dined – rather belatedly, in Legian, Bali – the beginning of an unexpected adventure that would keep us in Bali, more or less, for the next 9 months – but that’s a story for another chapter – one which, for a whole lot of reasons, will be reduced to little more than an overview – but not right now!
Thanks, again, for tolerating my verbosity and reading all this way – and thanks, especially, to the good number of you who’ve been so generous in your encouragement with my blogging – it is, really, truly, very re-assuring to discover I’m not the only one who reads these rambling recollections!
Well, it was ‘aayu-bowan’ (goodbye) Sri Lanka and ‘selamat malam’ (good evening) Bali for us, but it’s ‘adieu’ from me for now!
Thanks, friends, for your endurance – be nice to each other, stay happy,
John.
Posted by jandibrennan 
Jandi in South East Asia 