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 ;)