One Week in Sri Lanka 07/10

My first stop after Korea was Sri Lanka. My friends Ruvi and Shereen are here with their little girl Rekha to adopt a baby. They got little Aasha a few days before I got there, so I got to play with a little 3-month-old cutie. She's got incredibly big, cute eyes! I call her Wiggle Worm because she squirms all over the place when you hold her.

The first day there I tooled around Colombo with Ruvi. Riding in the car was very scary at first! Nobody is paying attention to the lines on the road, you just go with the flow. Passing is a regular thing, in the city and out. I felt like we were going to hit people head-on more than a few times. And there are other obstacles on the road besides cars, like cows!

The night of the first day we drove inland to Sigiriya, an old rock fortress in the middle of the country. We got to stay at a beautiful hotel in the wilderness. You can read more about the climb in my Sigiriya post, or learn about Sigiriya itself here or on Wikipedia.

Heading further east from Sigiriya that night, we stayed in Trincomalee. On the west coast (in Colombo) it was monsoon season, so we went east where the beaches were nice and blue. We stayed in another beautiful hotel on the beach and hung out there for a day and a half. The hotel had a beautiful pool surrounded in trees. There were monkeys in the trees and you had to be careful not to get hit by the remains of fruit they were eating and throwing on the ground. There were also more than enough ants, which I hate. In the morning, I reached for my water bottle and took a drink, and it felt like there was sand all over it...so I looked and it was little ants! They were all over my mouth, inside and out! So I freaked out and ran to the bathroom to rinse and wash and kill those nasty little things. That was pretty awful. After that I learned to look before I drink.


We headed back to Colombo and since Ruvi and Shereen had another friend from Arizona come to stay, they moved me to Ruvi's little sister's house. By house I mean mansion-maze. Driving up, you honk so the guard will open the garage (the front garage). Going in, you walk through the downstairs which happens to be her in-law's part of the house. Take the elevator up to the third floor and you come to their part of the house (Michelle, her husband Surain, and their two little boys). To get to the guest room, you go outside to their tv room and down the stairs to the second floor, which has a beautiful sitting room with high ceilings that opens to a balcony walk-way overlooking the yard (in which I saw my first firefly in years!). I stayed in my own little room and bathroom down there. Michelle and Surain were awesome hosts. They fed me lots of great meals (cooked by their personal cook), the local liqour Arrack, and coffee in the mornings (brought down by a maid). They took me out too. Michelle showed me some great shops so I could get some good hot-weather clothes, and when she couldn't show me around she had one of her drivers take me to temples and on Thursday, then Thursday to Galle Fort on the south coast (see Galle Fort post). One of the nights they took me out to dinner too, to a gorgeous gallery and restaurant. Sri Lanka is pretty sweet because even in that uber-swanky restaurant with amazing food, it was still very cheap. All the food in this country is amazing and inexpensive. I've got to learn how to cook Sri Lankan food!







On Friday, Shereen's parents and brother came in from Malaysia (where she is from). We picked them up and went to the Hilton where the family stayed so they could all be together in one place. So I just hung out with the family for my last day. I did walk down to the beach for a bit though. I realized I really hadn't walked around in Colombo at all, since everyone drives everywhere. The reason I noticed this was because I was getting all kinds of stares and smiles from men! They were really out-going about it too...it sort of reminded me of Mexico, except these guys were much more respectful about it. Vast difference from Korea, where I didn't seem to get noticed at all!


Sri Lanka was a really beautiful country to see; I'm glad I went. I thought it would be like India, but it really is its own country, with its own culture and people.