Adieu Colombo

I'm going to miss this place. Our last thunder and lightening show:

http://youtu.be/bBQ1mtDqOJg

Ultimate Colombo

All journeys pass on to other journeys and this Sri Lankan time is no exception. Tonight we fly back to Wien by way of the Maldives and Istanbul.  Tomorrow morning we will have an airport change in Istanbul which means a van trip that includes crossing the bridge over the Bosphorus.  

Last night we braved the lightening storm to have one more meal at our favorite curry shack.  Splashing through the dark in our flip-flops, we clutched our lightening rod umbrellas and hoped for the best.  It was damn good food.  

Imagine living in a terrarium where your meager house plants grow to enormous size.  Coleus hedges, oleander thirty feet tall, all manner of normally potted plants the size of elephants and growing wild.  Now imagine your giant terrarium is about 85 degrees and almost 100% humidity.  Just for fun, add some twisty little roads with Tuk-Tuks running up and down like so many drunken three-wheeled robots.  That image, that is Mt Lavinia.  

Che' Lives!!  Like Bob Marley, Che' seems to be immortal in most of the Third World.  

A lazy last day here in Colombo.   Late brekkie, a bit of shopping for curry powder and then beach walks.  The afternoon thunder is starting right on cue, but I am safe on the veranda with a last cigar. 

South from here, there is nothing until Antartica. 

We walked the beach where the ocean laps your feet with salt foam the temperature of bath water.  Even in the breeze, walking is a sweaty business. We had coffee and juice at a local beach place, hanging with the beach guys and the ex-pats.   Chill, Winston!

Later we will have to break out of our Mt Lavinia cocoon and face the maelstrom of Colombo traffic.  I have a pocket full of rupees so it will be a private car all the way.  A one hour ride, so allow two hours.  Such is Colombo. 

So, Ciao to Sri Lanka for now. I can contemplate a return here and smile.  

Next entry:  back on euro time. 

Sticky Colombo

The commuter run North to Colombo proper, thirty minutes of standing up and getting up close and personal with the locals. 

85 degrees Fahrenheit and 100% humidity.   That's what Weather Bug has for the Colombo forecast.  The "Feels Like" index was 99 degrees with an 80% chance of thunderstorms.  A perfect day for walk-about in Colombo's busy Pettah and Fort neighborhoods, the heart of the old city. 

Pumpkins in the wholesale market. 

We ducked from the train station at Fort into the steaming labyrinth of the wholesale produce market. This is a monkey's nirvana, with huge bunched of bananas of all kinds. Steaming?  Yes, literally. Walking in the shade is sweaty business and we did the best we could to stay out of the hammering sun.  

The dark and close of the real market, where people move about carrying huge bunches of bananas or bins of produce. 

Not for tourists, not this place. 

Watching the bustle at the Old Town Hall while sipping a sweet milky coffee with the locals. 

The tangle of Pettah's mercantile streets. 

The motion and traffic and activity is sheer chaos. We slipped out of Pettah and across the bridge to Fort.  The streets open up a bit here and walking is easier.  Traffic, well, not so much. 

Here is a little street seen near the bridge to Fort:

http://youtu.be/JXlePlLGOXk

In Fort, we ducked into the air-con oasis of the Hilton.   Yes, the Hilton.  I needed a cigar and we both needed a real coffee.  Jazzed up on our euro priced espressos and with my Cubano safely tucked in my bag, we were slammed by the heat as we headed out the door and towards the shore walk called Galle Green. 

Ah, the breeze off the sea as the clouds pile up.  Rain is a'coming Boys. 

A huge pelican sliding in for a landing

Sounds bad.  

The locals gleefully ignoring the signs. 

New street food!   Crustacean snacks!

It's a shrimp paste pancake thingy.  Very very good.  Weird, but good. 

Sweaty and wrung out, we are back on the veranda and debating going out into the storm for grub. It will be a splasher for sure.  Flip flops, umbrellas and nothing else, off we must go for curry. 

Ciao  for now!

. 

Penultimate Transit

Another Sri Lankan train ride. 

We had reached the far Northern point of our Sri Lankan circuit and the time had come to return to the teeming city of Colombo.  From the Ancient Cities region and Anuradhapura, we boarded our carriage for the five hour trip south.  

The snack vendors sell all manner of treats, navigating the jostling train cars and calling out their wares in sing-song chants. 

Forty rupees will buy tasty udula dabai in a envelope made of recycled cast off papers. It doesn't pay to think too much about where the paper has been. 

One very cool thing about Sri Lanka is the street light switches.   In many parts of rural Sri Lanka the overhead lights, if they exist at all, have manual switches. If you are of a mind to do so you can simply turn them on.  I know that it works because of course I had to try one!!  This is an idea that would never work in the USA.  Imagine the chaos.  

Five hours of hypnotic train swaying later we arrived at the Fort station in Colombo. A quick train change and we were on our commuter to Mt Lavinia, our old neighborhood.    This would be easy, not like the last time.  Or so we thought.  As a bonus, our commuter train was early so less waiting......

Back on the familiar run along the Indian Ocean. 

Never a seat on this run.  The packed commuter train, busy even on a Sunday evening.  

Easy.   Yes, well, there was a reason our train was early. We sailed right through the Mt Lavinia station and four more before we stopped.  So, off the train and scrambling over the stairs to the opposite track, we caught the slow commuter back North, this time actually reaching  our stop.   Now the easy walk to the guesthouse. 

Easy.  Even though we know Mt Lavinia well, the guesthouse was a mystery. Up and down Hotel Road we trudged, finally stopping for a drink and wifi to double check the address.  Back down the hill in the dark, we found the right address but no guesthouse sign and no evidence of rooms for rent.  We had already booked and paid for this place or we would have given up.  Finally some gentlemen at a jewelry shop called the place for us as we do not have a local SIM card.   Out of the unmarked door popped a man who then walked us two blocks to our place, a guesthouse  which had a completely different name and location than the one listed on the Agoda website.   Vindicated that no one could have found this joint, we settled in, showered off the travel slime, and headed to our halal curry shop for string hoppers and roti coated in fiery red chicken curry. 

Travel the world and still lessons to learn. You won't always find the place, the train won't always stop here or there, people are generally kind and helpful and a sense of humour is an essential part of the journey. 

Soon we must fly back to Vienna, but not before savoring two more nights in Colombo.  As I write this, I am sitting on our veranda as lightening and thunder entertain us and the rain pours down. Our luck with traveling the rainy season has been extraordinary.   

Tomorrow:  Sticky, sweaty walk-about in 100% humidity.   I did not know there was such a thing but that is the weather forecast for the next week. 

A Quiet Day

It was a quiet walk-about day in A-Town. Templed out, we opted for a long and leisurely local brekkie and some hang out time at our guesthouse.   Our luck with the giant family room for the price of a double had run out and we would likely have to move. 

We strolled the back lanes and along the tanks, getting sort of lost and then sort of found.  Eventually we got to the rail station and checked on our train times for Colombo on the morrow.  

Some food, some rain and a doorway that led to a chat with a Buddhist monk.  Besides walking many kilometers, we did not do anything.  

Back at the guesthouse we grabbed our gear and cadged their wifi to find another spot.  The town is full of Sri Lankan tourists as the school holidays have started.  We managed a budget room not far away and trudged off to our new digs. 

Showered and spiffy, it was back out on the street for dinner and a stop at the Saturday Night Market. 

Silvery fishes gleaming in the lights. 

Our curry guys.  We bought two bags to smuggle back.  

There was a small tragedy back at the guesthouse.  Preparing for bed (showering the seat off once again) I noticed a steady line of ants heading up the bathroom door and balling up at a certain spot.  Curious, I opened the door and there, between the edge of the door and the jamb, was a freshly squashed gecko.   Poor little blighter must have been hiding between the door and jamb. The first time the door closed, well, goodbye gecko. 

Living with insects and lizards, particularly geckos, is just an ordinary facet of daily life here.  I did feel bad about the squashed gecko though. 

I scooped the poor gecko's remains out of the jamb and set him outside.   Then I eradicated the ants with big sweeps of a wad of damp paper.   My bug killing chores accomplished, it was off to dreamland. 

Tomorrow we are bound for Colombo via train.  We will end up in our little neighborhood of Mt Lavinia, having completed a long, slow and wiggly circle around Sri Lanka. 

Rainy Season Sights

We drew the little air-con bus for the trip from Dambulla to Anuradhapura after catching the local from Sigiriya to Dambulla. Bus rides, transit day, a long and very sweaty walk to the new guesthouse, the usual stuff.  Anuradhapura is a part of the Cultural Triangle, the region in Sri Lanka's center that is home to most of the ancient ruins. 

Dining ambience at our local hotel.  Hotels are not hotels, remember?

But they do have crazy good grub.  In this case, chicken biriyani and rice n' curry. 

Anuradhapura sits amidst ancient tanks, or reservoirs, and is home to some of the biggest dagobas (giant stupas) in this part of the world.  Raised by successive kings of old, these religious cities were a battleground between the Ceylonese kings and their Southern Indian enemies. Conquest, re-conquest and rebuilding was the history here. 

Following a good nights sleep in our plush new digs, we set out on Trusty Rusties to explore.   The ruins are spread out across more than ten square kilometers and multiple sites, far to big to explore on foot.   Despite a forecast of rain by noon we trusted to our luck, which has served us well so far. Perhaps being a grump about our late start and bad coffee doomed us. Yuppers, my fault. 

Twisting through traffic and the maze of roads and lanes, we finally got to the first site.  The locals have a "don't kill the foreigners" policy, which I heartily  approve of.   The sky was heavy, leaden clouds hanging low, and the air was almost liquid. It would be a sweaty day. 

My favorite guardstone.  

Ankor Wat this is not.   With its wide lawns adorned with ruins and crumbling walls, this UNESCO site reminded me more of Sukhothai in Thailand.   No getting your Indiana Jobes on here.  More of a lawn party from ancient times.  There are sites here dating back over 2500 years. 

Monkeys and ruins. 

The Moonstone is a big deal.  And it's pretty cool but....

I was much more impressed with the little fat guardians carved into the steps leading to the moonstone. 

While the ruins were fun, after spending days exploring the Angkor complex, well, let's just say this was not my first rodeo. I have to admit to being a bit jaded when it comes to temples and ruins.  To make things fun, I try to find the little details that are hiding, like the fat guardian guys.   

It wasn't all about piles of stone.  Riding a lonely road along a tank, we stopped for a good view of a mongoose scampering across the track.   Just past that we scared a huge monitor lizard that was lurking on the edge of the road.  Dark gray and black with yellow speckles, he was well over four feet long.    We both got a nice look at it before he slid off the bank and into the brush below.  I did not deign to follow.  

It is a wet landscape here and was about to get wetter. 

Verily the skies did open and we retreated to a little shack for lunch and shelter. Here is what it looked like:

http://youtu.be/YRkb1wnyhak

One of the huge Dagobas viewed across the paddy fields. 

Between the rains that would finally chase us from the field, we were lucky enough to witness a ceremony at one of the dagobas.   A group of pilgrims and volunteers were decorating the circumference of the structure with a huge ribbon in the sacred Buddhist colors. Imagine a team of people threading a continuous 1.5 meter wide sash around a structure with a circumference of over 300 meters!   It would look something like this:

http://youtu.be/cHDz5ijcfQo

In the video the team seems a bit short on sash length, but they did eventually get the two ends to join. 

The rain increased until it was continuous. We visited the sacred Bodhi Tree under a steady rain.  This Bodhi is the most sacred and oldest in Sri Lanka and is said to be from a cutting taken from the Buddha's Bodhi in India. 

By late afternoon, sodden and tired, we pedaled through puddles and traffic. Safe on our treetop deck, we watched the squawking parrots roosting and the huge fruit bats waking up. Hunger bested us and we set out with under our bumbershoots for a well deserved dinner. 

 Roti with chicken curry, sans utensils. 

Best roti platter in Sri Lanka thus far.   

As I write this the rain is still falling and the night symphony is in full swing, led by the joyous tree frogs.  They dig this wet stuff. Tomorrow is a free day of exploring the modern town and hopefully brighter sky's.  

From the rainy and noisy Sri Lankan night, Ciao for Now

Random Notes, Vol. 1, Sri Lanka

Those of you who have read some of my other blogs will be familiar with the "Random Notes" posts that crop up from time to time.  For those of you who are not familiar, these are just the odd fluff that catches in my addled brain during the course of a journey.  Stop now if you expect some coherent narrative.

The people of Sri Lanka seem to be deeply involved in the competition for Friendliest People on the Planet.  Aside for the general scuffle and scrum that goes on with each boarding or disembarking of a vehicle of conveyance, the Sri Lankans are warm and genuinely interested in travelers.  I forgive them the scrum because Sri Lanka has a population density that makes the US and Europe seem uninhabited.   If one does not push and shove a bit, one will never get off of that bus.

It is seemingly impossible to have the shortest interaction with a Sri Lankan without at least being asked what country you are from, or more precisely "What is your country please?"  Anything that takes longer than buying an ice cream will be entail questions about family, occupation and the amount of time one will spend in Sri Lanka.  Almost everyone addresses us as "Sir" of "Madam" to the point that this is now the only way I can say thank you to anyone.  "Thank you Madam" has not been a part of my vernacular for, well, ever, but it is common usage now.  

Sri Lankans love baked goods and sweets.  I mean, these people get down on some serious cake munching.  It is not much of an exaggeration to say that every third store front on the main street of candy was a bake shop.  The storekeepers sell all manner of soft white baked goods.  Good luck on a nice toothy bread, but if you like sponge cake, they cut it off in slabs and sell it by the kilo.  Seriously, by the kilo.  

Speaking of food, Sri Lankan grub rocks.  First level of food is the bake and sweet shops, followed by the milk bars and short eats.  Milk Bars are self-explanatory and Short Eats are Pakora, Samosa, Stuffed Buns and all manner of snack type food.  A hungry traveler can order a Mixta, which is a platter of all of the varieties of fried goodies heaped in a pile and dropped on your table.  Next up the food chain are Hotels.  Hotels are not places to sleep, but combo eateries that usually have a roti grill, a hopper stand, and a fried rice and khottu wok the size of a satellite dish.  Behind the work stations are the curry kitchen and glass cases with different BBQ'd meats.  Past all of this are the tables where you can sit and chow down.  Hotels are our mainstay for sit-down dining and a huge dinner for two, with drinks and tip, will set you back between $5 and $6.  Further up the ladder are restaurants and tourist places, but that is not our gig so I have no knowledge of these.

Like everywhere I have been in SE Asia, everyone loves a market.  The stall markets here are similar to the rest, a crazy jumble of makeshift stalls and narrow passageways where one can purchase anything that swims, walks or flies.  There is clothing by the bale, odd assortments of hardware and electronics of dubious quality.  Cheap Chinese toys vie with cheap tourist crap, usually at the most visible front of the market.  The further back you dig, the better the goods.  One of the odd things about Sri Lankan markets is the abundance of "Adventure Clothing."  We passed stall after stall where the vendor would point to the gear I was wearing and hold up a similar item from Colombia or North Face or some other brand.  At first I thought they were knock-offs until one vendor gentleman reminded me that lots of this stuff is (duh!) Made In Sri Lanka.  Seriously, I could show up in a pair of bad surf shorts and flip flops and leave like I was just hit by the entire REI catalog, and for a lot less dough.

There is a huge building boom in this country, much of it aimed at the steady increase in tourism since the end of the civil war in 2009.  Based on what I am seeing, it is a bubble that will burst for some of these entrepreneurs.  Places like Ella and some of the beach areas are already being overbuilt.  Beaches have been damaged by overdevelopment, badly placed breakwaters and jetties, and too many people.  Other areas remain pristine and wonderful and I hope that remains the case.  As travelers in the rainy season, we see the empty guesthouses and eating places.  Our hosts have told us that the high season is, indeed, a crazy time with rooms filling up  While this can be true, it still means that a business has to make it through the lean times of the hot season and the rainy season when the tourists are few and the rooms many.  

Sri Lanka is an amazing place, boasting an incredible diversity of landscape and culture contained in a small island nation.  To me, the country seems closest to India from the viewpoint of culture and cusine, but without the frenetic insanity that is much of India.  The overall feeling on a personal level is more like Thailand, with a vibe of mellowness that seems nonexistent in India.  This country suffered a terrbile war that lasted almost three decades, yet that is not the overriding feeling here.  I don't have deep day-to-day interaction with the Sri Lankans, but I can contrast the feeling here with that of Cambodia, where the horror of the Khmer Rouge shadow is still dark and long.  

So, that is it for the random notes for now.  Sri Lanka is an amazing place, vibrant, beautiful and very, very real.  After three weeks here your skin smells like curry, your face always feels dewey and your feet are almost never clean.  The smells and flavours of daily life are intense and comples, leaving one savoring and pondering.  This is true both as a metaphor and as a reality.

Oh, one more thing.  While I was packing up today, I grabbed my raincoat to place it in the top of my backpack.  I felt something on my back and reached to see what was there.  A gecko had been hanging out in my coat and, disturbed by the movement, it ran up the nearest hiding place it could find which was my bare back.  I am here to tell you Friends and Neighbors, a suction footed gecko running up your body will render you wide awake faster than you can say "Holy-Cripes-WTF-was-that?!?!?"  Fortunately no geckos were hurt during the filming of this blog and the little fellow skittered under the bed and disappeared.