Home Again from Sri Lanka

I am back in Penang and I now have a new favorite country.  What a wonderful trip I had and I hope that I can go back to Sri Lanka again soon.  There is still the Philippines, Myanmar and the east coast of Malaysia to explore.  Oh, the list goes on and on.
I stayed in Unawatuna as long as possible, leaving there at 2 in the afternoon by bus to Colombo.  In Colombo I changed buses thinking that the bus marked airport would take me there.  At this point I had about the  equivalent of $10 in rupees and I challenged myself not to exchange more money.  When the bus reached the final stop, we were at a big market and there was no airport in sight.  I was lucky to have sat next to a man on the bus who spoke English and he told me not to take a tuk tuk.  I could walk to the airport from where we were.  He even walked me to the airport entrance so I made it to the international airport with about $4 left.  I was glad not to have changed more money.  In the airport my dollars and credit card were welcome.
Usually when I fly I am on standby but the flights from Colombo all were full and I had purchased a confirmed seat on Tiger Air to Singapore leaving at midnight.  I got to Singapore at 6 AM and took a connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur.  I took another bus from KL to Butterworth, a ferry from Butterworth to Penang and Rapid Penang (a misnomer) bus from the ferry terminal to my apartment.
 Homecoming was bittersweet since a toilet in my place had sprung a leak and I had to go outside to turn on the water supply until I could get a plumber, and my friend Shah had made other plans  for the evening so I was disappointed not to see him.  I guess my homecoming was actually more bitter than sweet.  But now I have water restored and all is well with Shah so life is good again.

Here are a few images of Sri Lanka that I did not post earlier.  Enjoy.

Elephants on the way home from a hard day of entertaining tourists

Happy family

How incongruous to see cows on the beach, but it is a common sight here where cows are revered by the large Hindu population

Kandy Cigarette????

New friends from England whom I met first in Kandy and later in Unawatuna

Mister Ed

Giant bamboo

You may remember on December 26, 2004, the tsunami which hit Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.  All along the southwest coastline of Sri Lanka are small graveyards for the victims. Many of the graves are empty since the bodies were never recovered.  These are sad reminders of a horrible tragedy.

Paradise Revisited

I returned from KAndy to my previous locale Unawatuna on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka.  It was here that I decided would be an ideal spot to live at some point, so I have come back for a reevaluation

You can have rice and curry and get undertaken in one place if it kills you.   How convenient!

Cricket, the most unfathomable of sports, is big here.  Now Sri Lanka is hosting members of the former British Empire for a Commonwealth World Cricket Championship.  

In a bookstore window I saw a large selection of kiddie books.  These people seriously want to speak English.

Kandy Perahera

Years ago on the Discovery Channel I saw a parade of elephants lit up like Christmas and I resolved that was an event I should witness first hand if possible.  A two hour procession of elephants, torches, half naked dancing men, drums, flutes and the relic Buddha tooth was worth every bit of waiting and effort to get here.  I travel with a pocket size point and shoot camera so I hope you will take a few minutes and google Kandy Perahera to get a glimpse of what I experienced.

I did not try to count how many elephants processed through the city.  I suspect around 50 or 60.

When I was living  in Valdosta I took up clogging and our clogging group, The Thuderbirds, danced down Patterson Street in the Christmas parade.  This group is a far cry from the Thunderbirds.  The torches would occasionally explode coals into the path of the barefooted dancers and they had to deftly avoid stepping on a hot ember or into an elephant pie

This was my second time in Kandy in 10 days.  While there before I gave some money to a family who had just lost a grandmother so the son of the family sat on the sidewalk all day the festival opened to save me a spot to sit and watch the Perahera.  All the other tourists I spoke with went to reserved seating grandstands which costs upwards of $60.  I sat with the locals who had also camped out all day long to save a spot, and enjoyed sharing the snacks they had brought along.  I was not aware of what an eventful time this is is Kandy until I went to a posh restaurant the second night of Perahera and even this fancy spot, like all Kandy, was not serving alcohol for the 10 days of Perahera.  I sure wanted to sip a gin n tonic on the terrace overlooking the city of Kandy but settled for a ginger beer (not really beer).  

Galle and Unawatuna

As you know, I am an experienced traveler and it has been my choice to see almost all the places in the world that I have wanted to visit.  For many reasons, one being a civil war that ended in 2009, I have not made it to Sri Lanka prior to this trip.  I think this is perhaps the place I have searched for all my life.  The weather is balmy, the ocean clean and bountiful, the natives very friendly, the natural herb easily available, the costs reasonable and those are just a few of the things I like.
I am now in the beach village of Unawatuna.  You might find Galle on the map and Una is only 6km away.  It is a bit touristy here but that means English is more common here than in some places, a worthwhile trade off.

The beach at Unawatuna

From the train between Colombo and Galle

The view from my hotel in Unawatuna

I left my hotel in Kandy early in the morning and hired a tuktuk to take me to the train station.  I had yet to take a Sri Lankan train, so this was to be my first experience.  Along the way the tuktuk driver convinced me to go by air con bus to Colombo so I followed his advice, arriving Colombo much earlier than I would have by train.  As usual my first move was to find a place to leave my bag while I explored the city.  I wanted to stay near the train station and all hotels I could find were pretty bad.  I took the least bad, and like I was about to swallow bad medicine, I prepared myself to be as accepting as I could of the situation.  I made it through the night and was happy to wake at 5:30 the following morning to take a train down to the port city of Galle.

I did more research on Galle and luckily found a very satisfactory hotel online.  Sometimes staying in a dump is what I need to make me appreciate the good ones.  Galle was a Dutch colony during the 1600's and then later was overcome by the Brits.  The old city is enclosed by a very thick wall and there are buildings dating back hundreds of years.  

From Galle I explored my way down the coast a few miles to  my present location, Unawatuna.  Here I am in a fine guesthouse with an ocean view and plenty of places to eat, drink, etc.  I rented a scooter and today I will go for a look at rental property.  It seems as if signs are pointing me to life in Sri Lanka.  As usual, I will play it by ear.

I am planning to return to Kandy on Friday.  I mentioned earlier that there is a festival there starting 11August.  For an idea of what I will be seeing look at Kandy Perahera on YouTube.  I don't want to leave my enchanted spot by the Indian Ocean, but I am excited to see the spectacle which awaits.

What Doesn't Kill You...

Does the rice and curry come with embalming fluid?

There are always interesting adaptations of English when translated from the local language.  One confusion I had here in Sri Lanka for the first week was the difference in a restaurant and a hotel.  Somehow in their acceptance of English during the British Empire days, Sri Lanka began using the words for restaurant and hotel to mean exactly the opposite of what I expected.  Now I know I can go to a hotel to have something to  eat and to a restaurant to find a place to sleep.

Another confusion here is the head shake.  Like in India, shaking your head side to side and nodding up and down have opposite meanings.  To agree one twists the head right and left which is a negative in USA.  For example, if I go into a shop and barter a price, when we finally settle on a price, the shop keeper will shake left to right.  Fortunately the smile is my clue that we have agreed on a price.

Kandy Land

I am in the mellifluous ancient city of Kandy in the highlands of Sri Lanka.  This was an early capital of the island nation and it is a sacred city of the Buddhist because a tooth relic from the Buddha is enshrined in the Dalada Maligawa temple here.  Yesterday I joined a huge crowd of mostly foreigners to view one of the thrice daily presentations of the casing which once held the tooth, a procedure so ritualized it reminded me of high mass.  Drums, then flutes, opened the ceremony in which monks and priests processed through the temple entering a bejeweled doorway with rice, flowers, fruits and maces.  I regret not having hired a guide to explain more of what was happening, but I will continue to try and find out more of what was happening. Starting 11 August is the annual Kandy Perahara and then the actual tooth will be paraded through the streets of Kandy for 10 nights with dozens of elephants all dressed to the nines.  I am planning to return to Kandy for the first day or so of the Perahara.
Getting to Kandy from my last stop in the coastal city of Trencomalle was a trip, in every sense of the word.  I took an intercity bus for the 5 hour ride and soon after the bus departed the station we were stopping every few minutes for  more passengers.  Before long the aisle of the bus was filled with standees and more and more standees continued to board turning the bus into a sardine can of travelers.  I was glad to have a seat but it still was an ordeal I will remember as one of the most uncomfortable bus rides I have ever made.   Adding to the mayhem the on board entertainment was blasting Bollywood music from a speaker right above my seat.  I am not complaining.  Experiences like this are the spices of adventure travel.
Speaking of spices, eating curry every meal is getting pretty monotonous and I was glad to find a KFC incongruously located on the main street of Kandy.   The chicken was fingerlickin' good.

Sorry the photo not better centered but I was scared to get too close and he just kept moving

I am traveling with ipad, iphone, laptop, hand phone and camera, all of which need to have batteries charged on a regular basis.   Here is an assortment of the electrical adapters I have to keep my toys up and running.  I miss the days when my back up plan was a spare pair of AA duracells.

In the tea plantation

Don't Forget Your Sense of Humor

When you go to some of the places I have been lately, it is primal to have a sense of humor.  Last night when I was served my dinner the spoon fell off  the plate onto the floor.  The lady who was serving me picked it up, examined both sides, wiped it between her fingers to clean it and stuck it right back into my bowl of rice.  Yes, I ate with it and the food was pretty good.  I had to laugh!