All over red rover

Wow, that was like the fastest 3 months ever!  I’ve already been back at work a week. 

 

So here’s my final post on my last few weeks in Sri Lanka and I just like to start with saying a big, giant, fantastic thanks to Sandy and Samadhi, my friends from work who looked after me and showed me around Sri Lanka.  I’ve seriously been the laziest tourist ever and just let them organise everything!

 

They introduced me to their friends and family too, who were all lovely.  There was Juggie who was never far from a bottle of Sri Lankan red rum, ‘Lighning Harry’ who has a fantastic story on getting expelled from boarding school and Nilu who makes the best chocolate mousse I have ever tasted –  it was amazingly yummy.

Another very special person in Sri Lanka is Mahinda Rajapaksa.  He’s the Sri Lankan President and Samadhi loves him.  He’s less popular than Abbott and he tries to remedy this with lots of pictures of himself being smiley and walking.  And these pictures are everywhere!  Seriously, like huge billboards every 500 metres. 

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post Sandy likes the resort life, so we did a bit more of that with a road trip to the east coast.  Except for some of the rough roads almost getting me to the vomity stage it was great.  There were beautiful beaches with water so flat it was like being in a big pool and we played volleyball, rode jet skis and bribed police. 

Yep, bribed police.  Somehow we managed to get pulled over for speeding 3 times in 3 days with 3 different drivers.  But the done thing in Sri Lanka is to hop out of the car, have a chat to the copper, slip him a tenner and off you go.

As well as mad driving and paying cops another favourite Sri Lankan past time is talking about the weather.  We talk about the weather in Melbourne and Dad can talk about the weather til the cows come home, but he’s a farmer and in Victoria THE WEATHERS CHANGES!  In Sri Lanka it’s the same every day, yet still everyone wants to mention that it’s hot like it’s a new thing.

Robina and I teased Sandy and Samadhi when they complained about the heat because we thought they should be used to it – but apparently no one gets used to it – ever.  Their friends would say it’s hot, as would the radio dj’s, tuk-tuk drivers and hotel staff.  I figured it must be the go-to conversation so when I came into the hotel one day said to the hotel dude, ‘Gee, it’s a bit warm out there.’  He stared at me blankly. ‘It’s hot,’ I said.  The blank look disappeared and he started nodding, then smiled and started picking on me about my red face!  But that’s the thing with the Sri Lankan weather conversation, you can’t say it’s warm.  It’s hot.  It’s either hot, or was hot or will be hot, any other descriptive efforts are just wasted.

One of the places we went to on our road trip was Sigiriya, The Lion Rock.  It’s an ancient city built around, into and on top of a big rock.  You walk through the old ruins of what was a castle, past moats that they used to put crocodiles and pools where the king would watch ‘his ladies’ swimming.  And in the middle is the big rock and a big climb up to the top.  However, we only had two intrepid explorers on our trip, so it was just Sandy and I who made the hike up to the top.  But it was well worth the sweaty, humid climb.  The mountain that the castle is built into is the highest in the region so there are 360 degree views and on the way up there are wall paintings that are thousands of years old.  Amazing.

 

Another great place we went to was Polonnaruva, a medieval city.  More ruins, big ones with temples and lots of budda statues, all very cool.

 

When we got back to Colombo the city was busy preparing for the Vesak festival.  The main festival was starting the evening after I left (poo), but a lot of the lanterns were up and lit up the city better than Christmas.  There's lanterns, glowing flowers and fairy lights, the river was lit up and boats floated upon the river also covered in lanterns in a rainbow of colours.  All along the streets were stalls where people were building huge lantern sculptures with a myriad of coloured lanterns and moving parts like carousels.   

Also as part of the festival people set up street stalls and make and give away food and drink to people for free!  

:( Pity I was on my way back to Melbourne when it was all happening,  but ah well, now to plan the next one I guess ;)  

 

Welcome to Paradise

I was at the airport with Robina.  We were queuing for our flight and talking about going back to work, returning to Melbourne in winter, how great Sri Lanka has been and thoroughly depressing ourselves when suddenly we were like ‘Hang on, why are we getting upset?  We’re not going home yet!’  We were actually on our way to the Maldives a place often referred to as Heaven on Earth.

In Male (ma-lee), the Maldivian capital, we met Robina’s friend Tegan at the airport and early the next morning the three of us boarded a seaplane to take us to our resort island.

Oh by the way, it’s Maldives like for ‘forgives’, not Maldives like ‘skydives’.

The flight was amazing.  Crystal clear waters in vibrant blues and greens washing over shallow reefs and dotted with small tropical islands.  From the plane I could actually see dolphins swimming and jumping out of the water! 

Arriving at our island we were greeted by welcome drums and a man saying ‘Welcome to Paradise’.  We were taken to our room where we discovered we had been upgraded from the garden villas to a beach villa.  The water was literally 10 feet from our doorstep and upon closer inspection I discovered that swimming up and down in the warm, shallow waters were baby reef sharks and stingrays.  We called our little reef shark Bruce Jr after the shark in Finding Nemo.  Our little Brucy was so cute, about 20cm long with a black tip on his little fin and he’d swim up and down past us all day. 

So we spent four days swimming and snorkelling, I went diving, we tried kayaking and spent a lot of time and effort on the all you can eat buffets for every meal.  We had the same couple of waiters every day and they were just lovely.  Each day we would have lunch and hang out chatting, having a tequila sunrise or two and the waiters would laugh at us as we left telling us that we’d been there so long it was already dinner time.

So at the end of our four days I left Robina and Tegan on the island (they were flying out that evening) and returned to the airport for my flight back to Colombo.  However, the one hour flight back took a little longer than expected.  After sitting on the tarmac for an hour and half while the pilot told us there were technical difficulties they were checking the pilot finally decided to do that old IT trick and turn it off and on again.  So we sat in the dark for 15 minutes before we were finally told to get back off the plane.

This was just the start of a 12 hour wait before I finally got a flight home.  Yep, that's no typo - 12 hours!  And that was hours and hours of not being told anything by the airline and just being made to sit in the tiniest airport in the world that doesn't even have any wifi.  Poor Sandy and Samadhi turned up at the airport in Colombo to pick me up and I wasn't there!  And you should have seen the look on Robina's face when they turned up for their 10pm flight and I was still there!  They had also been delayed, however it was their seaplane that got delayed and the poor things got stuck on the island for an extra 3 hours!

Hey there Lucky Eyes

This trip has not only been fun, but educational.  This week Robina learnt that rubber comes from trees and I learnt that I don’t like pedicures.  I think I prefer going to the dentist, but my blue toenails do look pretty fantastic.

As well as manis & pedis, Robina, Samadhi & I went for massages.  I don’t really like massages but occasionally will let myself get talked into going because everyone craps on about how great they are.  So this time I got a full body powder massage and a head massage.  The powder massage was like a scrub so rough not tickly which was good.  The head massage was actually ok until the stupid woman stuck her fingers in my ears!  It was like getting a wet willy, eww. 

Driving in Sri Lanka is a pretty hairy experience.  People don’t believe in using lanes or blinkers – just horns.  Motorbikes and tuk-tuks (3-wheeled enclosed motorbikes) are everywhere and the bus drivers may just be insane.  100k will take you about2 ½ hours.    

Sandy is a good driver but still as crazy as the rest of them.  Robina gave me a motion sickness tablet which knocked me out but I woke up at one stage to Robina and Samadhi screaming as a bus came flying round the corner towards us on the wrong side of the road!

 

So the crazy roads led us out to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage.  There were heaps of elephants there, we got to feed one fruit and feed bottles to the babies – it’s kinda like feeding a really big poddy calf and they drink a 2 litre bottle in literally 5 seconds!

 

 

Then they walk all the elephants down to the river where they hang out for the morning, playing in the water, some getting a scrub with a broom and couple of young elephants getting a bit antsy.  Ah teenage love, it was all very awkward and the poor fella couldn’t quite get it together.

 

So there I am getting some photos and quietly singing 'Nellie the elephant' to myself when Samadhi comes up and says she need some money because she accidentally had her palm read by a fortune teller and now has to tip the guy.  So the dude takes the money then turns to Robina and starts telling her how she loves music and dance and Fridays.  Apparently she also has a good child bearing spot or line on her hand.  He told me that I have lucky eyes and should be in the society of famous people or something like that.  Well Mr Fortune-teller we’ll see.

Croctastic safari adventure time!

Yes my European adventure is over, but lucky for me it’s not home time yet.  I still have a month in Sri Lanka!  For those who don’t know, my desire to visit Sri Lanka has been fuelled entirely by my workmates Sandy and Samadhi, Sri Lankans who regularly go home only to send me photos of pristine beaches, baby elephants and wild leopards. 

A few days after I booked flights to Sri Lanka Samadhi told me I was a pain in the bum.  As my project manager she says this on a fairly regular basis, but this time it was because she now has to organise this holiday.  Apparently you can’t just go to Sri Lanka without them. 

Then Robina, another friend at work heard about our holiday and decided she’d like to visit Sri Lanka as well.  So here we all are, happy bananas hanging out on the beach in Unawatuna and going on safari in the Yala National Park.

Unawatuna is about 100k from Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka and where Sandy and Samadhi live.  It’s a beachy little tourist town, but it was out of season so nice and quiet.

We hung out with Sandy and Samadhi’s friends and family at the beach, had some dinner along with some super cheap cocktails and then headed to a local club, The Happy Banana, to show off our dance moves.  Needless to say, Sam and Juggie were pretty impressed with the moves Robina and I were pulling out.

I also went diving, but that was a bit of a misadventure.  It’s out of the dive season so the water was pretty gritty with only 2-3 metre visibility and a bit of swell.  If you’re going out for a dive and starting to feel sea-sick they say the best thing to do is get in the water because you don’t get sea-sick under the water.  I now know this is not true – it is entirely possible to get sea-sick underwater.

I was fine until the end of the dive when we were doing our 3 min stop.  I was keeping level with the guide and because of the visibility all I could see was him – nothing else, it was like we were both suspended in space.  I could feel the swell was moving us about but it looked like we were both still, it was a very weird sensation and annoyingly pretty much made me feel like vomiting straight away.  

From Unawatuna we went to Yala.  Here we stayed at a resort called Jetwing.  After months of backpacking in cheap hostels and staying with friends holidaying with Sandy is like having a grown up holiday.  This resort had the hugest pool I’ve ever seen – it was like 150m long and the beds were these giant king size, four-poster things and they were so so comfy.  And the all you can eat buffets for breakfast and dinner… I’ll definitely need to start running again when I get home.

Biggest pool ever

But the best thing about the resort that it is in the Yala National Park.  We did both the evening and morning safari and saw heaps of animals.  Crocodiles, elephants, buffalo, these weird looking stork things, deer and lots of wild peacocks.  We also saw four leopards.  It was my first chance to take photos with my new camera so I think all the leopard sightings may have been some new camera karma coming my way.  That and Sandy’s mad leopard spotting skills.

 

On the evening safari our driver was on a mad mission and driving like a crazy man (and that’s pretty crazy by Sri Lankan driving standards!) and Sandy started yelling to stop.  We then backed up and and Sandy was like ‘there’s a leopard’.  I looked over and saw a yellow thing lying flat in the grass.  I zoomed in and was about to take a photo when I looked to the right of the yellow thing and there was the leopard just sitting there like a big house cat.  Turns out I was about to take a photo of a big yellow elephant poo – not my fault ok, I didn’t have my glasses on!   

 

The morning safari was also cool.  We had a crocodile run across the road in front of us, saw one of the most ridiculous sunrises I've ever seen and Sandy and I saw the only leopard that was seen all day, again thanks to Sandy's awesome spotting skills.

 

Gone baby gone

Sad faces everyone, my European adventure is almost over. 

My last stop was Paris.  The last time I came to Paris I was sure I wouldn't think much of it, but I had the best time ever so this time my expectations were high. 

Paris is a great walking city.  Most of the major tourist spots are walking distance from each other; Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe,  Sacre Coeur, Montemartre, Moulin Rouge, Notre-Dame, etc and there are lots of parks and trees and lovely old buildings.  The river is wide and bright and a lovely colour (not like our dirty old brown Yarra).  Even decrepit old buildings in Paris have a certain charm.  

 

So Emily who I just been hanging out with in Belgium was heading to Paris to meet Jenni, our friend who is studying in the Netherlands.  Our friend Katy, Jenni's sister was over for a visit & Jenni's friend Mark came to Paris with them too. 

They had a nice little apartment they had found on AirBnB which was decorated with about a thousand Eiffel Towers; you know, just in case you forgot you were in Paris.

So we did a lot of wandering about in the daytime, punctuating our walks with regular stops for lunch or beer.  And back in the apartment there was a lot of wine drinking and snacking.  Snacking French with lots of baguettes and cheeses.  And snacking Aussie with mint slices and twisties which Katy had brought over for the girls.

One afternoon we went to the Eiffel Tower and did as many locals and tourists do and sat in the park below the tower for some drinks on the grass.  It was a beautiful warm Spring day and we lazed around in the sunshine soaking up the atmosphere and the wine.

 

 

 

On my last day I went to see Notre-Dame which is pretty impressive.  Afterwards I went for a stroll and found a nice little park by the river.  The sky was blue, the grass was green and the cherry blossoms were drifting from the trees like pretty pink snowflakes.  Paris springtime a great inspiration for artistic pursuits so I planted myself on the grass, took a few photos and got out my laptop to do some writing.

Later I got up to leave and was like 'hmmm, something is missing.'  It was my camera.  It was gone!  I had taken some photos and sat it down right next to me so I could take some more later and it was gone!  I don't know how it got pinched, but I was not happy.  I loved that camera. 

So off I went to the police station to report it and get a statement.  Obviously this happens a lot, they barely asked a question.  Just got me to fill out the 'I'm a tourist and I got shit pinched' form which they then typed up and that was it.

Oh well, good excuse for an upgrade I guess :)