Sri Lanka Day 6: Colombo

Mood: Mellow but Motivated

Listening to: My Life would Suck Without you – Kelly Clarkson

After another very nice buffet breakfast, we bid farewell to Kandy. Another long drive found us in Colombo. Harry’s driving became even more erratic and traffic was even worse than Bangalore, if that is even possible.

We stopped for lunch at a very fancy restaurant. Daddy G and I rolled our eyes at each other yet again about the food thing. It was getting a bit much. We went with the buffet as the kids were free here too. I got crab curry with a beautiful crab leg in it to start as we had avoided seafood up until now. Whatever overpriced nonsense the buffet was, this one crab leg made up for it all. The curry was amazing and that crab leg was absolutely glorious. I enjoyed it, curry all over my hands. That is the only way to eat a crab leg. There were lots of yummy vegetarian options too. We got to try some Sri Lankan desserts too, of which some were great and some a tad bit too English for my taste. Treacle Tart anyone?  After a hastily gulped green tea at the end (the girls were squirrely and ready to leave. Now, please.) we set out for the hotel. At this point we were kind of frustrated with Harry. The day was only half over and he insisted that Colombo was just a concrete jungle with nothing to see. I doubted that, but I think he was eager to get back to his family in Negombo for the night.

Our hotel, the Taj Samudra, didn’t have driver accommodations, so he was taking a bus trip home for the night, and would return at noon to bring us to the airport the next day. I absolutely loved the Taj Samudra. Daddy G wasn’t so impressed. He thought it was more of a showy, business hotel. Whatever, I never get to stay places like that, so I enjoyed it.  More quick checkin, more juice, and we were escorted up to our room.  Our room was standard hotel fair but absolutely spotless.  We hung out and watched TV for a bit to relax. The wireless here was about 500 rupees per 2 hours, so we just decided to ditch the work all together, since it was only 1 more day anyhow.

Sri Lankans LOVE their elephants.

After we rested up, we decided that it was pool time. The Taj Samudra is currently renovating their pool and it is closed. The Ramada across the street has kindly agreed to let guests swim in their pool instead. Or are being paid a buttload of money to let people use it – I have no idea. We moseyed on across the street and signed into the pool. They were kind enough to give us big fluffy towels to borrow.  The pool was small, but mostly empty and had a nice small attached pool for the kiddos.

We returned to the room and showered. We had asked Harry where we could walk around in the evening and he gave some vague wave of his hand and told us that we could walk there, but the hotel grounds were the best place to walk around.  Undeterred, we decided to walk next to the ocean, which we could see from our hotel room. The water again was rough and the sand too fresh in Daddy G’s mind to consider a swim, so we just went to the boardwalk. There were lots of Sri Lankans out and about, lots of food stalls selling small eats.

Sri Lankan Sunset. Very Nice.

We enjoyed the sea air and wandered down the walk. We did eventually try to go where Harry was pointing, but ended up not finding anything but more hotels, which really wasn’t all that interesting. There was a military facility near the hotels and there was a LOT of policemen walking around with lots of large guns. We had been warned not to take pictures towards the end and I pretty much pocketed my camera after 15 minutes by the water. We finally got tired of the humidity pouring off the ocean. It was absolutely nuts.  By the time we walked back, it was dark and we could see all the moisture in the air blowing by the street lamps.  We decided to try the north Indian food option (there were 6 places there to eat, including a coffee shop type thing). They immediately told my husband he would not be seated wearing shorts and would he be interested in them finding him a sarong? I had a very good laugh at his expense before pondering how ridiculous this is. I know you’re  a fancy hotel, but I can’t think of any other Indian place in the world that would blink at a man wearing shorts. We took a gander at the expensive menu, determined that there would be nothing the kids would eat except yogurt rice, which was 300 rupees each! All the grownup food was even more silly priced.

We gave back the sarong and went back to our room to regroup. We decided to order sandwiches off the room service menu because no one had any enthusiasm to go out.  They brought our food after a half hour (seriously, everything in Sri Lanka was slower paced, except maybe Harry). The general manager called while I was trying to eat my very nice salad to ensure we were comfortably settled. I was pissed at being interrupted from my salad, but Gaurav was insistent on being chatty. After I assured him we were great, thank you!, he hung up. After dinner, the kids passed out and I went to shower.

When I was done, the doorbell rang. I sent Daddy G to answer the door since I wasn’t dressed. He came back in with a puzzled expression and a bottle of wine. I, of course, immediately got excited.  I asked him what it was and he replied that it was a gift. This made me insanely happy. Taj Samudra and Gaurav, thank you. I joked with my husband that I’m a cheap date because a bottle of wine will ensure that I absolutely love you. He joked back it might not be so cheap because it take a whole damn bottle of wine for me to get drunk.  Whatever. We made sure it was free (seriously. There were chocolates out that I almost ate. 4 chocolates for 400 rupees.), and then popped it open. Well, unscrewed anyways.  A free bottle of wine is a big deal for us because wine is so expensive here and we don’t indulge much. I’m not sure what the label was, but it was a Chilean red (!!!). I love Chilean wine and don’t really drink white, so this made my entire week. It was a great bottle of wine. We watched an Ajay Devgan (yes please!) and Akshay Kumar (double yes please!!) movie. I got about ¾ of the way through before passing out happily on the bed.

Becky

Sri Lanka Day 4: Damballa and Kandy

Mood: Mellow yet motivated

Listening to: Carousel - Buckcherry

We woke up early again (notice a pattern here?) and had breakfast. The buffet was standard, but really nice. Back into the car and on the road to Kandy with a stop in Damballa.

Damballa:

This has got to be one of the coolest places I have ever been in my life. I know my inner nerd is showing, but still. We parked at the Damballa temple. After some quick bathroom breaks and more money hemorrhage for tickets, we wandered into the Buddhist museum. It was amazing. If you ever have the opportunity to go to Sri Lanka, you just can’t miss this. It was a great museum. I’m only posting some of the pics I took – otherwise this would take way, way too long.

Wall Paintings

For some reason this Buddha cracked me up. Look at that Goatee and pencil stache. That there is Buddha Bro.

I'm not going to drive you nuts by posting all of the Buddhas in here (and there were TONS), but it was fun to see how different countries reincarnated the image to fit their needs.

Buddha's on every flat surface. Oh my.

My kids swore these statues were going to come alive at any moment. My husband, being the gem he is told them they only come alive at night and eat naughty little girls.

We then hiked up to the temple in the mountain. Harry took us half way in consideration of the smallest child. It was still a little hike, but nothing like Sigriya. Lots and lots o monkeys here. Silence is required, as is leaving your shoes outside.

The outsides of the caves

Even the frogs are Zen. We were super close to this one.

The caves were absolutely breathtaking. So very serene and spiritual. Trust me – that’s quite a statement coming from me.

When we were finished, Harry took off for Kandy like it was running away. We eventually wove our way up into the mountains. Harry stopped at a spice garden so we could take a tour. The guide talked us into eating lunch there. We were hungry, so it seemed to be a good idea. Again with the fried noodles and Sri Lanka curry. There was absolutely WAY too much pepper in the food. We dropped so much money just on water to wash it all down! It was a tourist place too, so way overpriced.

The “kerosene” lamps cracked me up.

The guide took us around the spice garden and showed us some of the plants and pontificating on their Ayurvedic properties and uses (another word for plant based medicine).  He said “Excuse me Sir and Madam,” Every 3 minutes, even though he had our full attention the entire time. I felt like flicking him in the head by the end of the tour, even thought it was short.

Pepper Tree

He offered to give us short Ayurvedic facials and massages at the end. After the way my skin reacted to the facial I had in Bangalore, I wasn’t up for putting anything else on it right now. As to the massage, well, I’m not a big fan of touching people or being touched by random people, especially guys. After moving to India and having guys trip over themselves on the street to not accidentally run into me, I’m quite cool with that. Even disrespectful guys never get close enough to touch. No touch-ee dude, no touch-ee.

We collected Harry and piled back in the van to finish our short trip to Kandy. As we arrived, I loved Kandy. It is an absolutely charming city. It’s set in a valley with a river running through the middle of it.

On the way, we stopped at a Batik shop. Batik is created by an artist using a special tool to drop wax on certain parts of a cloth (which also soaks through to the other side) and then the whole cloth is dipped in dye. The cloth is then boiled to remove the wax. Depending on the design, it is waxed again, either the same spots or different, dyed and boiled again, until the desired picture is achieved. It struck Daddy G and I as very tedious work for the artists and we bought some as a souvenir.  The shop lady even kindly showed me how to tie a Sri Lankan sari. I know it was a sales bit, but it was fun to learn, since I already can tie an Indian sari. Another wedding was going on right next door.

When we were done, Harry piled us I the van and went to park along the street across from the cultural center. WE walked down to the river and took a very much over priced boat ride. It was nice, but short. There were an absolute ton of birds everywhere, including cormorants, which I like.

When we were done, we went back to the cultural center to take in a traditional Kandyan dance performance. Again, this is one of the best experiences I have ever had. If you want to see an example, I suggest you check out Kandyan dance on Youtube. Blogger is very unhappy with me today due to all the pics I am uploading. Every one of us enjoyed the show immensely and especially enjoyed the fire dance show that happened afterwards.

When we were done, we asked Harry to go somewhere to eat, but he told us no can do. Apparently, a General who had gone against the President was let out of jail and was visiting the temple of the tooth. Bad place for foreigners to be in general. We quickly agreed with him and went to the Kandy Topaz hotel to check in. Quick check in and fresh juice. The hotel lobby was quietly fancy and had a gemstone store. We went to our room and chilled out for a while. There are some rumors about bedbugs floating around on the internet for the Topaz, and I think they are correct. The room looked spotless, but we still came away with multiple bites, even though the room didn’t have any mosquitoes. Our room had a small porch and the view was beautiful.

Again, we headed down to the pool. There wasn’t really a shallow section of the pool here, so the kids swam with us. It was on a hill ledge and it was dark by the time we got to swimming. It was still very nice.

Again, a dinner ordered for the kids – which they were almost too tired to eat any of – and then back for bed.

This hotel charged for internet access. While it was expensive (350 rupees for 2 hours!), I had work I needed to do. When my computer died because it didn’t have batteries, things got ugly. There were absolutely no plugins in our room. I got really pissed that I had just bought 2 hours of internet I could not use. The lobby didn’t have any plug ins either.  What gives Hotel Topaz??

I pouted, stomped (quietly) around for a while and then just went to bed. I decided to embrace Sri Lankan Buddhism and just accept the situation.

Becky

Sri Lanka Day 3: Anuradhapura

Mood: Mellow yet motivated

Listening to: Paper Sun – Def Leppard

Daddy G and I decided we wanted to have a little bit more of a relaxing time, so when we got up (early!) the next day, we decided to not visit the ruins at Pollunaruwa as it was the opposite direction from where we were going the next day and was also ruins. Breakfast was again lovely. They didn’t have a buffet that day, so they served omelets, toast and a nice huge plate of tropical fruits, some of which I had never even seen before. I love trying new stuff, so this was fun for me. Sri Lankans love them some tropical fruits.

The drive to Anaradhapura was a long one and my eldest doesn’t really do well with jerky, swerving car rides. Thankfully, a nap took care of that nicely.

Anaradapura is a great place to visit some old ruins and a very nice temple. The grounds were super peaceful and had lots of trees and shade. It was still hot as hell.

Buddhist Stupa

What was on top of the Stupa

Note the Elephants and the Buddhist flag

An Elephant Swimming Pool - or so the legend goes

Oldest outdoor Buddha statue. It was so calming among the trees and quiet grounds

Moonstone

Cute carvings on the steps

When we were done, we were all pretty heat exhausted. We decided to try some of the yellow tender Sri Lankan coconuts. They were delicious – much sweeter than Indian green coconuts. They also were FULL of water. By the time the vendor scraped out the meat, we were pretty full already.

We asked Harry to bring us to a restaurant to avoid the resort pricing for food. He obligingly took us to a tourist trap where the prices were inflated anyhow. We got the hard sell about the buffet, which we agreed to after they told they wouldn’t charge for the kids to eat. Our kids don’t eat a ton of food anyway, so we usually don’t get buffet for them anyhow. We got to try some different stuff and lunch was pleasant.

We then went to the hotel. Palm Village Garden was also stunning. I wish I would have taken pics of the lobby here too, but there was yet another wedding going on. Harry informed us it was wedding season in Sri Lanka, which I found silly due to the heat. It was another rowdy wedding, but thankfully nowhere near our room. Again with the quick check in and fruit juice, we were then escorted to another cottage type set up. This property was even larger and had beautiful grounds. We collapsed into the air conditioned room and chilled out for a while, much the chagrin of our pool wanting children. The room again was beautiful and spotless.

Daddy G lookin a little scary goonda-ish- he isn't, I promise.

I generally don't like bathroom pics, but I loved these tiles

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Patio Chairs - squee!

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After we had rested a bit, we went exploring. We wandered down the lane to the end of the property.

There was a fence, a gate, and a warning sign about not leaving the property because wild elephants were there and it was dangerous.  There was a path, and lake with some benches just outside. We wandered down the path until we came across another very large sign to stop because of elephants. We decided discretion was the better part of valor and were content to sit on the benches and enjoy the breeze at dusk next to the lake. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any elephants. We did see a nice Ganesha statue about a quarter of the way around the lake. However, another sign made us reconsider seeing it up close.

The forbidden statue.

We left the lake and wandered up through the center of the property which is a grassy/vegetated section with lots of trees/tall grass.  We stopped by a small lake in the middle. The kids were playing around when we noticed a big mound of dirt with holes. Noting how much this looked like a snake’s home, we decided to move on. A little further down the trail, my husband started yelling about a snake that my youngest almost stepped on all of a sudden. It was a good sized snake and we all watched as it fled through the grass. It stopped for a few seconds and raised up a ways to stare at us. It was too far away for us to tell if it was a cobra or not, but it looked like it to me. After a few seconds it disappeared through the grass.

We decided that we had enough encounters with snakes and went to change for the pool. The pool here was enormous and nice to swim in, although the water was still really warm. As with Sigriya, we were the only people in the pool. It was a little deeper than the day before, so we stuck to the shallow end with the kids.

We got dressed and went for dinner. The dining room was beautifully decorated and open, as with the other places we had been. We opted for the Ala Carte menu even though they tried the buffet hard sell. The food was good, although it seemed to get more spicy the more places we ate. We tried Kerala rotis, which are hockey puck sized heavy rotis that have a lot of coconut in them. They were good, but not really Daddy G’s and my favorite thing to eat. After coaxing the exhausted kids to eat a few more bites of their sandwiches, we went back to the room where they promptly passed out. Something about the heat and humidity seemed to keep us perpetually in need of a nap and early bed time. In the end, cutting out Pollunaruwa was the right decision. It just would have been too much.

This hotel also didn’t offer wireless. I was getting worried at this point, but still had time. I watched TV for a while and then crashed.