Sri Lanka
This is the first chance that I have had to get online since we got here. We are 4 days in to what is so far an amazing trip. Glorious news.
We were on an Emirates flight when December 25th kicked in. This meant that the stewardesses took off their already silly hats (they look like they have toilet paper hanging out of them) and replaced them with even more ridiculous rudolf antler hats and wandered around taking pictures of families and saying things like 'Merry Christmas.' The pilot at one point claimed to have seen Santa fly by. This was obviously brilliant.
We spent a few hours in Dubai. Enough time to wander around the huge mall in the desert and have falafels and halllloooomeee cheese and humous and all those wonderful things for dinner. It is very strange to be surrounded by more wealth than you have ever seen in your life one second and be using a squat toilet (i.e. a hole in the floor next to a hose pipe) the next. Odd. I felt unclean for the second flight!
...which lasted another 5 hours or so, the highlight of which was seeing India from the air. You could just about make out mountains and rivers and some of the coastline. We also saw 'Adam's Steps' which are the small islands that join (or just about join) India to Sri Lanka. They are called 'Adam's Steps' because when Adam left Eden (i.e. Sri Lanka) he must have walked these islands back to blah blah blah... whatever. But more on that later! Yes!
We had an interesting 4 hour drive from the airport in Colombo to Hikkaduwa on the coast with a lovely driver who insisted on honking his horn a MILLION times during the trip. Talk about offensive and defensive driving! Jesus! We stopped for coconuts (red King Coconuts of course) en route ha ha.
Along the coast road you very suddenly come across the area where the tsunami hit/reached. This meant flattened buildings and foundations (even a year later) and lots of signs asking for help. This then went on for hours. You have desolation to your left and sea to your immediate right. We arrived on Christmas day which was obviously one day prior to the anniversary of the tsunami... this meant that preparations were underway for a rememberence day (on our Boxing Day).
Hikkaduwa is pretty built up and FILLED to the brim with Australian surfers. We wanted to stay in the A-Frame surf shack (with the skate ramp and Bob Marley records playing) but couldn't get a room. Thank God. We ended up instead in a place called the Curry Bowl with our new friend Sunni who is a very tiny, ridiculously gentle man who smells faintly of a Bentley (the drink not the car) and has interesting red teeth/gums. He is a wonderful, wonderful man (and is now looking after our surfboards while we travel about the country) (It turns out that the reason Sunni smells like a Bentley is because of his chewing tabacco which contains nutmeg).
I'm getting tired now so in summary:
The surf has been pretty good... small and relaxed waves with the odd big wave or two thrown in (we have surfed 3 reef breaks all of which remind us of breaks in Barbados only more consistent). There is very little aggression out in the water and Alex and I aren't too bad compared to the rest of the crowd... which is nice. Saying that, there are some very good local surfers and one is pretty aggressive.
We went diving which was a let down (we still loved it but there were no fish...). Despite being 'Advanced Divers' according to our cards, neither Alex nor I could remember how on earth to set any of the kit up... on which side the regulator hangs or how to deflate your BCD etc... Thankfully, once underwater, everything came (flooding back? Oh God.) back to us.
We did a sundown walk around Galle's famous fort and that was utterly, utterly magnificent. Saw no other tourists and watched monks in their orange robes setting up candles around the great walls, people playing cricket and just a million other wonderfully 'foreign things' (stray dogs massivley on heat, tuk tuks, fishermen in their G-string pants fishing on tall poles, beggars, touts, men jumping off rocks into the sea etc...) that made us feel like we were back in colonial India (the fort is Dutch I think but there are homes within the sea walls that reminded us of plantation houses in Barbados). We had lobster and drank rum and Arrack (coconut rum basically) in an enormous house that looked out onto the fort wall and the sea. It cost nothing but you felt as though you were dining in some royal yacht club (in baggies of course!).
We took a ride in a Tuk Tuk whose driver had actually been hit by the tsunami while on the job. The driver told us about his experience... leaping out of the three wheel motorbike-kind-of-contraption and onto and up a light-pole. He loved the British (like everyone in Sri Lanka) and had a British flag on the front of his new Tuk Tuk (paid for by a British couple he met after the wave destroyed his original Tuk Tuk). His story was harrowing enough (he told us about the wave crashing through the fort and down the street towards him) but then he launched into what at first seemed like a sad Sri Lankan song (perhaps written about the tsunami?) but turned out to be Elton John's 'It's no sacarifyyyyice' song. Alex and I sang loudly with him all the way back to the Curry Bowl (30 minutes Tuk Tuk ing). That was wonderful.
We had a 6 hour train journey (a proper old diesel train where it was so full of people you had to hang on by the doors!) (well kind of... sometimes Alex and I were at the open doors hanging out... but not for 6 hours!) to Kandy (in the centre of Sri Lanka) where I am now off to sleep. Good Lordy Lord! Tired!
We were on an Emirates flight when December 25th kicked in. This meant that the stewardesses took off their already silly hats (they look like they have toilet paper hanging out of them) and replaced them with even more ridiculous rudolf antler hats and wandered around taking pictures of families and saying things like 'Merry Christmas.' The pilot at one point claimed to have seen Santa fly by. This was obviously brilliant.
We spent a few hours in Dubai. Enough time to wander around the huge mall in the desert and have falafels and halllloooomeee cheese and humous and all those wonderful things for dinner. It is very strange to be surrounded by more wealth than you have ever seen in your life one second and be using a squat toilet (i.e. a hole in the floor next to a hose pipe) the next. Odd. I felt unclean for the second flight!
...which lasted another 5 hours or so, the highlight of which was seeing India from the air. You could just about make out mountains and rivers and some of the coastline. We also saw 'Adam's Steps' which are the small islands that join (or just about join) India to Sri Lanka. They are called 'Adam's Steps' because when Adam left Eden (i.e. Sri Lanka) he must have walked these islands back to blah blah blah... whatever. But more on that later! Yes!
We had an interesting 4 hour drive from the airport in Colombo to Hikkaduwa on the coast with a lovely driver who insisted on honking his horn a MILLION times during the trip. Talk about offensive and defensive driving! Jesus! We stopped for coconuts (red King Coconuts of course) en route ha ha.
Along the coast road you very suddenly come across the area where the tsunami hit/reached. This meant flattened buildings and foundations (even a year later) and lots of signs asking for help. This then went on for hours. You have desolation to your left and sea to your immediate right. We arrived on Christmas day which was obviously one day prior to the anniversary of the tsunami... this meant that preparations were underway for a rememberence day (on our Boxing Day).
Hikkaduwa is pretty built up and FILLED to the brim with Australian surfers. We wanted to stay in the A-Frame surf shack (with the skate ramp and Bob Marley records playing) but couldn't get a room. Thank God. We ended up instead in a place called the Curry Bowl with our new friend Sunni who is a very tiny, ridiculously gentle man who smells faintly of a Bentley (the drink not the car) and has interesting red teeth/gums. He is a wonderful, wonderful man (and is now looking after our surfboards while we travel about the country) (It turns out that the reason Sunni smells like a Bentley is because of his chewing tabacco which contains nutmeg).
I'm getting tired now so in summary:
The surf has been pretty good... small and relaxed waves with the odd big wave or two thrown in (we have surfed 3 reef breaks all of which remind us of breaks in Barbados only more consistent). There is very little aggression out in the water and Alex and I aren't too bad compared to the rest of the crowd... which is nice. Saying that, there are some very good local surfers and one is pretty aggressive.
We went diving which was a let down (we still loved it but there were no fish...). Despite being 'Advanced Divers' according to our cards, neither Alex nor I could remember how on earth to set any of the kit up... on which side the regulator hangs or how to deflate your BCD etc... Thankfully, once underwater, everything came (flooding back? Oh God.) back to us.
We did a sundown walk around Galle's famous fort and that was utterly, utterly magnificent. Saw no other tourists and watched monks in their orange robes setting up candles around the great walls, people playing cricket and just a million other wonderfully 'foreign things' (stray dogs massivley on heat, tuk tuks, fishermen in their G-string pants fishing on tall poles, beggars, touts, men jumping off rocks into the sea etc...) that made us feel like we were back in colonial India (the fort is Dutch I think but there are homes within the sea walls that reminded us of plantation houses in Barbados). We had lobster and drank rum and Arrack (coconut rum basically) in an enormous house that looked out onto the fort wall and the sea. It cost nothing but you felt as though you were dining in some royal yacht club (in baggies of course!).
We took a ride in a Tuk Tuk whose driver had actually been hit by the tsunami while on the job. The driver told us about his experience... leaping out of the three wheel motorbike-kind-of-contraption and onto and up a light-pole. He loved the British (like everyone in Sri Lanka) and had a British flag on the front of his new Tuk Tuk (paid for by a British couple he met after the wave destroyed his original Tuk Tuk). His story was harrowing enough (he told us about the wave crashing through the fort and down the street towards him) but then he launched into what at first seemed like a sad Sri Lankan song (perhaps written about the tsunami?) but turned out to be Elton John's 'It's no sacarifyyyyice' song. Alex and I sang loudly with him all the way back to the Curry Bowl (30 minutes Tuk Tuk ing). That was wonderful.
We had a 6 hour train journey (a proper old diesel train where it was so full of people you had to hang on by the doors!) (well kind of... sometimes Alex and I were at the open doors hanging out... but not for 6 hours!) to Kandy (in the centre of Sri Lanka) where I am now off to sleep. Good Lordy Lord! Tired!
posted by Alex at 4:50 PM
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