After a stinky 4 hour plane ride from Bangkok we arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, around 11:00pm. We were met by our driver who drove us the 3 hours into Kandy. If I hadn't had 3 + years training on the crazy streets in Taipei, I would've been extremely uncomfortable and scared on that drive. Thankfully, although they have their own brand of crazy, I could at least see that there was a flow to the madness.
The name of the game was passing, even on curvy two lane roads. The center line is used as a 3rd passing lane, which is only a real problem when a car going both directions is trying to pass at the same time, then it becomes 4 lanes. They use their horns and lights a lot to communicate. But watch out people and animals on the shoulder walking along, if extra space is needed, that is where the cars and trucks default to make space. Okay, I hear it even as I type it. The driving was crazy.
We arrived around 3am to a humble little hotel called the Nature Walk, and promptly went to bed. Good thing I didn't see what the old pillow I'd slept on looked like until the morning, wow!
We awoke in the morning to visitors, monkeys! They stole some coconut lights out of Carrie and Ross's open window, took it up on the roof and when it was discovered they were not food, they were carelessly chucked to the ground. These guys are sneaky!
Once Nathan heard this he put out some bait for the monkeys and they were outside our room in moments. The one above even tried to come in, I quickly shut the doors but Nathan kept tapping on the window and the monkey totally lunged at Nathan and scared the crud out of him. We had a pretty good laugh.
Though I can never quite forget that this is what their fangs look like. Monkeys are much cooler from a distance.
Our first order of business was the famous Temple of the Tooth, supposedly housing one of Buddha's teeth. Millions from India and Sri Lanka come to see it each year. It was a holiday the day we went through so there were families everywhere. All the families we observed had a mother and father, many little children, lot's of babies, often a grandparent or two. I never saw one stroller the entire trip, they hold their little ones where ever they go. All were dressed humbly but modestly (at the temple, many were in white), the 3 guys and I even had to put on sarees because our shorts didn't go well below our knees.
I liked this, you tie pieces of cloth around and say prayers for mothers and children.
Brandie and I out in the courtyard around the original temple structure. The wood carvings were very intricate and ornate.
In another area we observed monks leading worshippers in prayer, they all ran the same string through their hands as they prayed.
My most favorite part of the trip was seeing these humble, beautiful people. Especially the children. You've never seen so many adorable babies in your life. They have lot's of black hair, lovely olive skin and these big eyes outlined with the longest eye lashes you've ever seen.
I did have the epiphany that the way I was feeling about their beautiful children is how the Chinese must feel about my children. I became a happy hypocrite by asking to take a picture or two of some irresistible babies. I love this one of this grandma and her granddaughter. She was very friendly with us and an understandably proud grandmama.
The grounds of the temple were quite large and the views were picturesque. This picture was where I had my first, I can't believe I'm in
Sri Lanka, moment. Not something even a few years ago I would've ever thought I'd say.
Ross, Carrie, Me, Nathan, Brandie, and Jeremiah at the temple.
Leaving the temple we ran into a group of sweet school children, we were giving em all high 5's on our way out, and they were trying out their english on us.
This was our view from the little place where we ate lunch. A rain storm passed through and we could actually see the curtain of rain moving toward us. It passed fairly quickly, revealing this beautiful view.
I really love this picture. I love the colors and the bikes and the old man with the white hair sitting by his wheel. Guess what that big wheel is for? Sharpening knives and tools, who would've guessed?
Sri Lanka has access to many different kinds of beautiful woods and we went to a wood carving shop and spent quite a bit of time watching and later looking through the showroom of all they had. I could've spent a lot of time (and $!) in that place. (We did get a beautiful souvenir, when it arrives I will post about it.)
Ross, Nathan, Jeremiah
But we had heard so much about the cheap shopping in Kandy, and our driver wasn't showing us even after we'd repeatedly asked. As we were walking down the street after being taken to yet another expensive tourist showroom, a humble looking man comes up to us girls and says, "You know your driver won't take you to the cheap market because he doesn't get a commission there. The market is right there around the corner, and it closes at 5pm. Here, I'll show you."
And so began our first of several times being hustled. Thankfully we were never taken for more than a few dollars, but our experience in the "market" is one to be remembered.
The humble man and his "brother" (pictured above) were hurrying us through this market, talking a million miles a minute and going with us into shops and bossing the shop people around. We started to get suspicious when they would say things like, "The shops are closing and they won't open up again for a week!" then, "Tell them!" they would say to the shop keepers and these poor shop keepers would look at us and reluctantly agree.
They would do anything to get us to buy something, claiming loudly all along that they would get nothing for their efforts and were just trying to help us. They showed me a nice brand of shorts that were several sizes too big so I said no thank you. The "brother" then grabs the shorts, wraps the waist of the shorts around my neck and claims, No! See, they will fit perfectly! We all had a pretty good laugh about that.
Carrie bought a "leather" purse she was pretty happy about, whether or not it was real leather. But on our trip home when the shoe polish-like coating started rubbing off all over her white pants, ruining them, we had to laugh at ourselves, lest the hustler "brothers" get the last laugh.
After we escaped the market that was closing right that very minute! (ha!) we headed to a traditional dance performance that we'd read about online. Ummm, the costumes were beautiful but the dancers were terrible! In any given picture each dancer will be doing a different phase of the same step, or a different one altogether. Seriously, they were really quite bad. But the costumes were cool.
For dinner we went to a place we'd read online that we couldn't miss: Helga's. I was not expecting what we walked in to. The place looked like a hoarder had started decorating and a mentally unwell friend, perhaps, had been given permission to paint the walls. It was indescribable. I put the above picture in so you could see the crazy, all over on the walls, hanging down everywhere, even the dishes on the table were random and strange.
Check out the huge candles (below), you may have to enlarge the picture to see well. These candles must have taken years to create, just drippings over drippings for years, the bottom getting all dusty, gray and gross. But perfect for a haunted house... or Helga's.
It took over an hour for our dinner to be made. After we got over the initial, WTHeck of the place, and as we waited for our food, we set up the camera to take some pictures, leaving a digital trail of evidencein case we all disappeared...
The thing that has to be said, as most of the online reviews agreed, Helga's was in fact a place you just had to see for yourself. And also, the food was shockingly, unbelievably good.
