Welcome to Sri Lanka.
Two weeks here to see a country the
same size as Ireland but with a population of 20 million, that's alot of people and a lot of traffic but let's see how we get on. Don’t know that many
people who’ve been here but those that we spoke to loved it so very excited. On
one of the first days, we overheard a tourist say to a waiter that Sri Lanka is
very similar to India, without missing a beat, the waiter replied- “but Sri
Lanka has big green parks and the people are happy!” We’ve never been to India
so can’t confirm or deny that claim……
Arrived into Colombo on Saturday morning and have until Tuesday to explore the city.
As with lots of these Asian cities, the first impressions are drawn from
the chaos on the roads. Such a shock from the peace of Perth! Buses careering down
on your left, right and centre, tuk tuks disobeying every rule of the road,
written and unwritten, pedestrians tentatively stepping onto the roads hoping
to avoid being killed- OK that last part is just us, the locals just stick
their arm out, walk across and the traffic seems to avoid them! It’s like a leap of
faith. Well for now, I’ve no intention of putting my faith in the hands of
these tuk tuk drivers, so I’ll take it one small careful step at a time!
The other way we like to get to know a country is by heading
to its markets. Good to see if the chaos of the roads extends into the market
place- we weren’t disappointed! Love these markets, so entertaining. Cardboard
boxes of fish, huge bags of chilli’s, more pineapples then the man from Del Monte.
Along the way, an old Sri Lankan fella started chatting to us, introduced
himself as an engineer from the shipyards just out for a stroll on his day off.
Nice chap full of information so we were happy for him to walk with us. We were
skeptical as is our nature that he was trying to scam us in some way- the
shield of the Western World was up in force! As he was a nice fella we looked
past the spoofing and gaps in his knowledge:
Us: what religion
is this church?
Him: Roman
Catholic
Us: Really?
Where’s Jesus?
Him: Eh, umm, eh,
well I’m Buddhist so I don’t really know, let me ask someone else!
It was only when he suggested that he should bring us to a
gem factory that the red alert went off fully- a classic scam to get tourists
to buy cheap gems at high prices. We excused ourselves to go “meet friends”- it
was then that he asked us for a tip for his services. What services we asked,
aren’t you out for a Sunday stroll and work as an engineer? It was then that he
demoted himself to being in the boiler room of the shipyards and introduced a
sick grandchild. All fun and games. Eventually we parted with $10 for the two
hours of “touring” to keep him happy and to shut him up- just a regular day at
the markets really!
For us travel between cities in Asia has always been
interesting, generally we’ve found it pretty reliable- trains through China,
buses through Vietnam, very uncomfortable buses through Thailand (and a few
boats too). From what we’d heard, the public transport option consists of
spending mountainous amounts of time on terribly old buses that don’t
necessarily get you to where you want to go and then leaving yourself at the
hands of tuk tuk drivers to ferry you in between locations. As an example, we
looked up how long it takes to get from Colombo airport to the city by bus in
Lonely Planet. Their guideline was between 1 and 3 hours- when there’s 20
million people and the road network is mostly one lane each way, estimating
traffic times is quite an imprecise occupation. In that regard, as we wanted to
do things fairly efficiently and hassle free we decided against using the buses and instead
gave ourselves a helping hand and far less headaches by flashpacking with our
own driver for 5 days. So much easier! Here’s where I introduce our driver for
the next five days, Nimal
So with our driver picking us up, it was time for us to explore
outside of Colombo. Sri Lanka has a great variety of things to see and do- lots
of historical sites and natural sites to view. Polonoruwa was one the first of
the historical sites- it is like a smaller version of the Angkor Watt temples,
some very cool old buildings, thousands of years old.
Of course to say that all we came across was statues and old
buildings would be to gloss over the near death experience we had- the first
chapter of that book will be called “The Attack of the Angry Monkey”- the
second chapter will be called “What was I thinking snapping a photo in the face
of that Angry Monkey?”. The second chapter reads “Not a notion”!
Whatever I was
thinking, it’s a great photo and thankfully a local intervened to shoo him off before he actually got any
closer to us, although he was pretty fricking close! We don’t know what sparked
him to go ape (!) at us, our driver told us they’re usually very calm but
whatever annoyed him, we weren’t sticking around to find out if it was still
annoying him. Next site please!
To distract us from the above we moved onto Sigiriya, where
we climbed The Lions Rock which stands out over the skyline of the region.
Mightily impressive in its own right but then once you climb it you find
ancient paintings on the walls and the ruins of an old monastery on top of the
rock. It most certainly was a place where you could find your inner peace.
Views for miles all around.
Foodwise in Sri Lanka, mealtime is very much curry, curry, curry.
It is served for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you so choose- “would you like
it with noodles or rice?”, “Potato curry, pumpkin curry, chicken curry, fish
curry?”. So many choices! When you do order rice and curry, it comes out with a
huge array of accompaniments as pictured. Really gorgeous food…. but maybe not for every meal!
Of course you can also vary it up by choosing to have fried rice/
biryani instead which was what we did one day in a local restaurant. When we
looked around halfway through the meal we realized that we were the only ones
given cutlery. Everyone else was scooping the rice off the plate with their
hands and feeding themselves. Funny, they were surprisingly efficient at it,
not sure it’d catch on at home though!
The next day we dragged ourselves our of bed at 2am to trek
up Adams Peak, a pilgrimage the locals descend on the area to do each year,
their Croagh Patrick I suppose, to view the sunrise. All going beautifully
until about 5am when clouds descended and stayed surrounding the peak meaning
that no photos of sunrise were taken, a few of clouds were taken but they’re
not as good. Oh well, at least we got some exercise. On the way back down we
did get some lovely pictures of the scenery and the peak so definitely not a morning
wasted.
Once we’d descended and got breakfast, we embarked on one of the
highlights of our trip- a train journey from Hatton to Ella- second class
tickets purchased as the windows (and doors) open so perfect for photography! Amazing views from the train over the four hours- all tea plantations along the
way with rolling hills and valleys all around. Racked our brains and we
couldn’t come up with scenery we’ve seen that compares to it. Spectacular.
We
did a train journey in Australia a few years back from Darwin to Alice Springs but as the
windows didn’t open, you couldn’t photograph anything and it just dulled the
whole experience. Where's the fun in a journey like that if you can’t stick
your leg out the door and take lots of photos!?
Enough with the sites, next we moved onto animals and spent
a day doing a safari in Yala National Park- neither of us had done a safari
before, huge amount to see. Our guide came highly recommended as apparently he
had a great eye for seeing animals- funny, as far as we could see his main
attribute was having lots of contacts in his mobile phone, constantly making
and receiving calls to find out where animals were and how he could find them.
Not that we’re complaining, between him and his buddies we got to see all we
wanted and more! Highlight was coming across two leopards chilling out in the
morning sun high up in the trees. Scary creatures- you couldn’t outrun them,
you couldn’t climb a tree to hide from them, not sure you could out anything
them. Your best chance if being chased would be to be with someone that you
could outrun! Thankfully it didn’t come to that. As well as observing the
leopards we had close encounters with a few elephants, crocodiles, water
buffalo and lots of others. After our earlier experience we stayed well clear
of the monkeys!
So this is where we left our driver behind and went the public transport route for last 5 days. Tough times! So here we find ourselves in the beach area of the country down south. We stayed in Unawatuna one of the more developed areas- lovely spot, beach is beautiful, water is perfect. Good for a few days R&R. Spent one day in Mirissa another beach area 30 minutes down the road. If going again, would stay there, much less developed and peaceful and has the most incredible waves. Not good for peaceful swimming but great craic to play in!
And so ends the Sri Lankan
adventure, a great country, lovely people, delighted we visited. Next stop
Malaysia.....
Our route: Fly
Perth to Colombo, Colombo to Kandy, Kandy to Sigriya (via Polonuruwa), Adams
Peak, train Hatton to Ella, Tissa (Yalla National Park), Unawatuna, Galle, fly
Colombo to Kuala Lumpar
