I have now been back in Blighty for a couple of days, and although there is less motivation to write this blog, now that I am back in regular contact with the world I left behind almost 6 weeks ago, for completeness' sake, I need to type aimlessly one more time.
Our final day in Sri Lanka was based mainly around the Esala Perahera in Kandy, which is a 10 day long festival, which is similar in my opinion to british carnivals. If you replace the majorettes with Dancing Sri Lankan men with fire and drums and the floats with elephants adhorned with christmas lights then you have a pretty good representation of the Esala. It increases in magnitude from the 1st day to the 10th, starting with approximately 40 elephants, and inflating to closer to 100 by the end of the period - we caught the 1st day which is perportedly the "least impressive".
In a style that you will have become accustommed to, we didn't merely queue on the street and wait for the procession to start but were invited to join members of the Vet Faculty in the Tranquiliser team (which had the coolest stash in the world) to help inspect the elephants to ensure they were in good health and not in Must etc. After the obligatory period of waiting around for things to start, we were treated to a 1.5 hour Perahera, which although after about an hour became somewhat repetative, still lived up to the hype of one of the best festivals in south asia! Once it finished, and the last elephant had passed into memory, we decided that it was time to go home and pack, judging by the fact it was 10pm, and we left our house at 4am!
Although long (36 hours from door to door for me), the journey home was pretty uneventful - Rediculous consumption of free alcohol, and reaching the plane from dubai as they made their last boarding call were all the excitement that were afforded to us.
That brings me to here, now, sitting in my study in my house in West Buckland, contemplating my trip. I always planned to write a small peice about my final impression of Sri Lanka at this point but have decided agaisnt it. My impression of my trip will change from hour to hour, day to day, so anything I write here will be out of date before anyone ever reads it, so you will have to ask me yourself what my momentary opinion of my trip is next time you see me. I think that all there is left to say is thankyou to anyone who has managed to read my blog this far - I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Oh and of course... Ceylon, and thanks for all the fish xxx
Wednesday 18 August 2010
Saturday 14 August 2010
Proboscine Park
For a long time I have been anticipating going to Pinawalla Elephant Orphanage, an hour west of Kandy. It was established in the early 70s with 5 orphaned elephants, and has since developed into a herd of 86 elephants, with the most successful captive breeding program for elephants in the world - 50 live births since its establishment.
We arrived early in the morning so that we could see the elephants before the tourists flogged the park at about 9am. We entered what was effectively a giant open elephant house, with some elephants chained to the floor and others roaming around. Over the next hour all of the elephants were progressively unchained and released to go up the hill to another viewing area more open to the public. Whilst there we walked freely amongst the elephants, stroked them and fed them. There were even a couple of 1-2 year old elephants that were really playful - just imagine a playful puppy the size of a cow with a flexible, inquisitive phallic nose and you pretty much have the experience we had. It was fantastic to interact with the elephants, both young and old - it was surprisingly similar to being amongst a herd of cows, with the elephants showing a similar degree of docile inquisitiveness and endless hunger for plantlife.
A stark reminder to the role of this centre as an orphanage and a centre for protecting elephants was presented starkly in the form of one elephant, who had stepped on a land mine. She has three legs, and although she has adapted to walk, she cannot walk quickly and would not keep up with a wild herd. They did try to build her a prosthetic, although she rejected it in favor of her new gait and her adaptations to life with 3 legs.
There was one incident where one elephant was obviously not too fond of us, and tried to head-butt us, and then tried to punch us with her trunk. We were pretty happy for the chain at this point, but judging by the rest of the herd we encountered this is a relatively unique case amongst females. The males however are innately slightly more aggressive, especially in Mush (their testosterone fuelled equivalent of "heat" in female dogs) when they have to be Chained up away from the herd until mush is over.
When all of the elephants had been released and walked up to the larger feeding plain, the tourists began to arrive in droves. This was the first point in which our idealistic vision for the orphanage started to break down. The early part of the morning had been an intimate experience with the elephants, but on the arrival of I would estimate 300 tourists (just the beginning) turned the whole place into a spectacle. The whole vista seemed like something out of Jurrasic Park (hence the blog name), with these huge lumbering creatures bumbling across the view, with the backdrop of a tropical forest. This was further helped by the fact that a lot of the noises of various creatures on Jurrasic Park are in fact taken from elephant noises, occasionally in composite with other creatures to create the desired effect.
Next we received our second dose of disappointment with the running of the orphanage, as the two young elephants we had played with earlier were taken to one of the elephant sheds, chained to the floor, and then surrounded by at least 500 tourists, all squabbling for a place close to the barrier, which the elephants could reach at the very end of its tether. You could then pay a nominal fee to queue to feed a bottle of milk to the elephant, whilst all of the other people taunted the young elephants, poked them in the face, encouraged by the poor creatures growls of discontent to poke more (mainly the children who didn't seem to have any appreciable parental presence).
The elephants were then herded by mahoots (obviously using their spear) down to the river to wash. The river is overlooked by seating for what must be 1000 people in various "elephant view hotels" and cafes etc. These seats were all taken, and many more people still were standing, both in the stands and down by the water itself, up to the "do not cross" line. Here the tourists became even more abhorant, throwing anything they could find to see if they could get the elephants to eat it. Just in the period of time we were there we saw several full drinks cartons (including the carton) and a tube of pringles (including the tube) thrown to the elephants for their delectation. Much to my horror the elephants ate the pringles, tube and all (not the metal bit) but it left me wondering what kind of people could make the journey all the way to Sri Lanka, to visit wildlife, and show its welfare such contempt.
With 16,000kg of food being required daily, as well as the employment of mahoots, vets, and many other administrative staff, the money from the tourists is essential for the maintenance of the park, and the work it is doing to conserve elephants , although I just wish that there was a way to attract tourists to the park without creating stress for its resident elephants.
Talking to the head Vet at the orphanage was an eye-openning experience. He explained the concern he had for the stress that tourists could cause the elephants (not to mention the pringle related damage) but he also explained the help they gave to the weaker members of the herd as well as the breeding program they have to help preserve the animals for future generations. Weaker members bathe in the river seperately to the main herd, and are given extra care, and food, which they certainly would not get in the wild. Another had its scapula (shoulder blade) broken in a fight with another elephant, and instead of being left to die, she is being given calcium supplements and is having most of her weight supported in a large cradle device made in-house, giving her the best chance to recover and rejoin the herd in a couple of months time.
Overall, I fully understand and appreciate the controversy which has formed around Pinnawalla in the press, as although it does provide care for orphaned elephants, and those born in captivity, these elephants can only ever be described as "semi-wild", as they can never be reintroduced to the wild, even if they encourage herd interactions of a similar kind to those you see in the natural world. It is a brilliant facility, with dedicated workers, but the need for money from tourists is changing it from what could be a true recreation of wild life for the elephants in semi-captivity to a conveyor-belt of spectable for the benefit of the tourists, sometimes to the detriment of the very elephants that the centre is there to look after.
This is likely to be my last blog from here - I am going to attend the Kandy Perahera (Kind of a carnival, but exchange the floats with elephants draped with Christmas lights - similar to what I saw in Anuradhapura) although I leave here at 4am on Monday. I feel I have one more blog in me, but it shall not be written until I am safely back in Blighty. So thanks to anyone who has stuck with me so far - only one more to read :) xx
We arrived early in the morning so that we could see the elephants before the tourists flogged the park at about 9am. We entered what was effectively a giant open elephant house, with some elephants chained to the floor and others roaming around. Over the next hour all of the elephants were progressively unchained and released to go up the hill to another viewing area more open to the public. Whilst there we walked freely amongst the elephants, stroked them and fed them. There were even a couple of 1-2 year old elephants that were really playful - just imagine a playful puppy the size of a cow with a flexible, inquisitive phallic nose and you pretty much have the experience we had. It was fantastic to interact with the elephants, both young and old - it was surprisingly similar to being amongst a herd of cows, with the elephants showing a similar degree of docile inquisitiveness and endless hunger for plantlife.
A stark reminder to the role of this centre as an orphanage and a centre for protecting elephants was presented starkly in the form of one elephant, who had stepped on a land mine. She has three legs, and although she has adapted to walk, she cannot walk quickly and would not keep up with a wild herd. They did try to build her a prosthetic, although she rejected it in favor of her new gait and her adaptations to life with 3 legs.
There was one incident where one elephant was obviously not too fond of us, and tried to head-butt us, and then tried to punch us with her trunk. We were pretty happy for the chain at this point, but judging by the rest of the herd we encountered this is a relatively unique case amongst females. The males however are innately slightly more aggressive, especially in Mush (their testosterone fuelled equivalent of "heat" in female dogs) when they have to be Chained up away from the herd until mush is over.
When all of the elephants had been released and walked up to the larger feeding plain, the tourists began to arrive in droves. This was the first point in which our idealistic vision for the orphanage started to break down. The early part of the morning had been an intimate experience with the elephants, but on the arrival of I would estimate 300 tourists (just the beginning) turned the whole place into a spectacle. The whole vista seemed like something out of Jurrasic Park (hence the blog name), with these huge lumbering creatures bumbling across the view, with the backdrop of a tropical forest. This was further helped by the fact that a lot of the noises of various creatures on Jurrasic Park are in fact taken from elephant noises, occasionally in composite with other creatures to create the desired effect.
Next we received our second dose of disappointment with the running of the orphanage, as the two young elephants we had played with earlier were taken to one of the elephant sheds, chained to the floor, and then surrounded by at least 500 tourists, all squabbling for a place close to the barrier, which the elephants could reach at the very end of its tether. You could then pay a nominal fee to queue to feed a bottle of milk to the elephant, whilst all of the other people taunted the young elephants, poked them in the face, encouraged by the poor creatures growls of discontent to poke more (mainly the children who didn't seem to have any appreciable parental presence).
The elephants were then herded by mahoots (obviously using their spear) down to the river to wash. The river is overlooked by seating for what must be 1000 people in various "elephant view hotels" and cafes etc. These seats were all taken, and many more people still were standing, both in the stands and down by the water itself, up to the "do not cross" line. Here the tourists became even more abhorant, throwing anything they could find to see if they could get the elephants to eat it. Just in the period of time we were there we saw several full drinks cartons (including the carton) and a tube of pringles (including the tube) thrown to the elephants for their delectation. Much to my horror the elephants ate the pringles, tube and all (not the metal bit) but it left me wondering what kind of people could make the journey all the way to Sri Lanka, to visit wildlife, and show its welfare such contempt.
With 16,000kg of food being required daily, as well as the employment of mahoots, vets, and many other administrative staff, the money from the tourists is essential for the maintenance of the park, and the work it is doing to conserve elephants , although I just wish that there was a way to attract tourists to the park without creating stress for its resident elephants.
Talking to the head Vet at the orphanage was an eye-openning experience. He explained the concern he had for the stress that tourists could cause the elephants (not to mention the pringle related damage) but he also explained the help they gave to the weaker members of the herd as well as the breeding program they have to help preserve the animals for future generations. Weaker members bathe in the river seperately to the main herd, and are given extra care, and food, which they certainly would not get in the wild. Another had its scapula (shoulder blade) broken in a fight with another elephant, and instead of being left to die, she is being given calcium supplements and is having most of her weight supported in a large cradle device made in-house, giving her the best chance to recover and rejoin the herd in a couple of months time.
Overall, I fully understand and appreciate the controversy which has formed around Pinnawalla in the press, as although it does provide care for orphaned elephants, and those born in captivity, these elephants can only ever be described as "semi-wild", as they can never be reintroduced to the wild, even if they encourage herd interactions of a similar kind to those you see in the natural world. It is a brilliant facility, with dedicated workers, but the need for money from tourists is changing it from what could be a true recreation of wild life for the elephants in semi-captivity to a conveyor-belt of spectable for the benefit of the tourists, sometimes to the detriment of the very elephants that the centre is there to look after.
This is likely to be my last blog from here - I am going to attend the Kandy Perahera (Kind of a carnival, but exchange the floats with elephants draped with Christmas lights - similar to what I saw in Anuradhapura) although I leave here at 4am on Monday. I feel I have one more blog in me, but it shall not be written until I am safely back in Blighty. So thanks to anyone who has stuck with me so far - only one more to read :) xx
Chilling, Relaxing, Having a lion lager!
Since Trincomalee, I have to admit not all that much has happened. As ashamed as I should be to say this, we have relapsed into a state similar to that of holiday in the UK - watching a few films, going on cycle rides and strolls, and having a few beers/arrack in the evening. I couldnt say that we have integrated into the culture here, for the reason of the observer effect mentioned in a previous blog, but I would certainly say we have become accustomed to the ways of the country. I have said throughout the trip that as soon as I was fully comfortable with the country, it was time to go home, so in many ways this is good as it is coinciding well with the end of our trip. Even though we are feeling much more at ease here, there have still been some events of note since Trinco, which I at least found fun or interesting.
Firstly, in wildlife watch, we have finally seen a live snake - we saw it slithering towards Kandy lake on one of our common walks of its perimiter. I thought I identified it as a small scale viper, although this might be me being melodramtic, and thus should not be taken as verbatum! In other news, we saw a pair of porcupines on leads today being taken for a walk by a local. They were being walked just like any dogs would be in the UK, and what was weirder was that nobody else seemed to take much notice of it - I suppose that they all must just know this person as porcupine-woman and are used to it.
The wildlife here also seems to show a inclination towards powerlines, as we realised that all of the bats that we had seen hanging from power lines didnt seem to move at all from day to day, and were in fact fried bats who had been cooked over the period of a few days by the electricity. Similar fates seem to befall monkeys here, as we saw a blackened monkey running on its hind legs as it clearly could not put its front paws onto the floor. We dubbed the monkey "burny", and assumed that its condition was due to the power lines. This was however questioned when we saw that locals were throwing the equivalent of french bangers at monkeys to keep them away from their house, so "burny" might in fact be "explodey"... either way it isn't a fantastic effect that humanity is having on wildlife.
This poweline vs animal struggle is by no means a one sided battle, with both sides taking regular casulties. We have had a number of monkey-related power cuts during our stay, although these seem far more accepted than power cuts are in the UK. The family purely gets out the candles, lights them and then gets on with their evening. Two nights ago myself Ben and Sophie ended up playing pictionary by candlelight which in my opinion was brilliant fun, and much better than mindlessly watching a film for the evening.
Another thing that we entertained ourselves with was attaching ourselves to a Vet Surgeon for the day, observing operations on Dogs, and the different methods used here for the procedures. Firstly of note is the somewhat more "trial and error" method of anesthesia. The dog undergoing a spey was knocked out by some thiopentone, and then just left. Only when the dog had her eyes open and was twitching (with half of its uterus out of the incision on the table) was more thiopentone adminstered. This combined with a "take it all out and have a good look around" approach to surgery made for in my opinion a justification of the 500 rupee (3 pound) charge for the procedure. I didn't have the heart to ask what the survival rate was.
Finally of note was the experience of cycling in Sri Lanka, which I attempted for the first time yesterday. My overshaddowing observation is that it isn't safe. I have cycled in Cambridge for 3 years, and am thus used to busses passing within a foot of you on a regular basis. I am however not used to making physical contact with busses as they overtake me around a blind corner towards oncoming traffic - that was new! The build quality of the bikes out here seems to leave a bit to be desired too. The bike was shiney and looked new, but after cycling about a mile down the road, the front brake cable had come detached and the suspension had loosened so that my pedals were about an inch off the floor as I cycled. However the topper came half a mile later as the left pedal took leave from its attachement to the bike, and decided that it would much prefer to be lying on the road. After walking the 1.5 miles back to a garage, I got the various maladies corrected and decided that busses are cheaper, better and safer than cycling, and put the bike back in the shed, with no intention of taking it out again - unsurprisingly.
I have finally gone to Pinnawalla Elephant orphanage, although I feel that it warrants its own blog, so here endeth the 15th lesson.
Firstly, in wildlife watch, we have finally seen a live snake - we saw it slithering towards Kandy lake on one of our common walks of its perimiter. I thought I identified it as a small scale viper, although this might be me being melodramtic, and thus should not be taken as verbatum! In other news, we saw a pair of porcupines on leads today being taken for a walk by a local. They were being walked just like any dogs would be in the UK, and what was weirder was that nobody else seemed to take much notice of it - I suppose that they all must just know this person as porcupine-woman and are used to it.
The wildlife here also seems to show a inclination towards powerlines, as we realised that all of the bats that we had seen hanging from power lines didnt seem to move at all from day to day, and were in fact fried bats who had been cooked over the period of a few days by the electricity. Similar fates seem to befall monkeys here, as we saw a blackened monkey running on its hind legs as it clearly could not put its front paws onto the floor. We dubbed the monkey "burny", and assumed that its condition was due to the power lines. This was however questioned when we saw that locals were throwing the equivalent of french bangers at monkeys to keep them away from their house, so "burny" might in fact be "explodey"... either way it isn't a fantastic effect that humanity is having on wildlife.
This poweline vs animal struggle is by no means a one sided battle, with both sides taking regular casulties. We have had a number of monkey-related power cuts during our stay, although these seem far more accepted than power cuts are in the UK. The family purely gets out the candles, lights them and then gets on with their evening. Two nights ago myself Ben and Sophie ended up playing pictionary by candlelight which in my opinion was brilliant fun, and much better than mindlessly watching a film for the evening.
Another thing that we entertained ourselves with was attaching ourselves to a Vet Surgeon for the day, observing operations on Dogs, and the different methods used here for the procedures. Firstly of note is the somewhat more "trial and error" method of anesthesia. The dog undergoing a spey was knocked out by some thiopentone, and then just left. Only when the dog had her eyes open and was twitching (with half of its uterus out of the incision on the table) was more thiopentone adminstered. This combined with a "take it all out and have a good look around" approach to surgery made for in my opinion a justification of the 500 rupee (3 pound) charge for the procedure. I didn't have the heart to ask what the survival rate was.
Finally of note was the experience of cycling in Sri Lanka, which I attempted for the first time yesterday. My overshaddowing observation is that it isn't safe. I have cycled in Cambridge for 3 years, and am thus used to busses passing within a foot of you on a regular basis. I am however not used to making physical contact with busses as they overtake me around a blind corner towards oncoming traffic - that was new! The build quality of the bikes out here seems to leave a bit to be desired too. The bike was shiney and looked new, but after cycling about a mile down the road, the front brake cable had come detached and the suspension had loosened so that my pedals were about an inch off the floor as I cycled. However the topper came half a mile later as the left pedal took leave from its attachement to the bike, and decided that it would much prefer to be lying on the road. After walking the 1.5 miles back to a garage, I got the various maladies corrected and decided that busses are cheaper, better and safer than cycling, and put the bike back in the shed, with no intention of taking it out again - unsurprisingly.
I have finally gone to Pinnawalla Elephant orphanage, although I feel that it warrants its own blog, so here endeth the 15th lesson.
Monday 9 August 2010
Stars,Ships and Troopers - Trincomalee Part II
The buffet was spectacular, unlimited cups of tea, and meat from every animal you could imagine, and some you couldn't gave a very welcome change from the choice of fish, chicken and egg curry and rice we had come accustomed to. The food was served with a kind of disdain from the head waiter who clearly saw that this kind of establishment was not where we would normally dine, but as we ate ourselves into a meat induced stupor, his disdain became comical, as we ate at least double the food that the price we paid suggested we should receive. 2 hours after starting our mission to financially cripple the hotel though the medium of binge eating, we waddled out of the restaurant back into the hotel grounds.
We relaxed here for about an hour, pretending we were wealthy enough to stay in such a place, enjoying the live music, and the ambiance around the pool area. All these people were clearly jet-set, and we enjoyed our 3 hours among them, before the moment when we would inevitably have to return to our sink-less hovel, and resume our lives and semi-tramps. Before accepting this reality we managed to walk most of the way back to our hovel before deciding that a rest was in order, primarily to let our food baby settle, but with spectacular secondary benefits. We looked up at the sky and realised that there was an utter lack of light pollution, which normally obscures the view of the stars, making less of them visible.
We could see more stars than I could ever dream of seeing in England, and the milky way, and countless constellations that I used to know the names of were vividly clear. What was extra special though was the fact that one of the large meteor showers of the year is occuring at the moment, which, in the low light conditions filled the sky with as many as 1 shooting star every minute. We lay on the beach, recovering from our gluttony for several hours, until the undoubted stellar highlight occured. There was a powercut along the beach, plunging what was left of light pollution into total darkness. This cut lasted all of 10 seconds, but right in the middle of it, the biggest, brightest shooting star I've ever seen traversed the sky, leaving a glow of its trail for several more seconds, before the power cut came to an end, bringing us back to some semblance of reality!
Across the bay there were also about 50-70 light sources bobbing up and down with the waves. We assumed this was some kind of a line of buoys, but we found out the next day it was a hareem of fishing boats, fishing at night as it provided them with the best catch. This would of course explain the fact that Fish had featured heavily in every meal we had had at Trinco up until this point, and also why all the boats seemed to be on land during the day, with nobody manning them!
The next day, we went into Trinco to give it another chance, by looking at its two major cultural sites - Fort Frederick and the garrison cemetary. Fort Frederick was built in the late 1600s by the dutch, and subsequently owned in turn by the dutch, french and british at various times over the next few centuries. It was bombed in 1942 by the Japanese as part of the pacific campaign, and has since been converted into a Sri Lankan military base, presumably to help maintain order after the civil war. The fort itself is open to the public, with only certain garrisons and barracks being out of bounds - It was interesting to compare the UK military base with one in Sri Lanka, seeing deer freely wander around the base, and bus loads of tourists pass through this base (although I am sure this is the exception in Sri Lankan bases as apposed to the norm!).
The major appeal of the fort is a Hindu Temple built in 1980, at the far end of the Headland on which the fort sits. It sounds bad to say this but once you have seen one Temple, you have seen most, and we spent little time wandering around it before heading back towards the centre of Trinco, where the garrison cemetary is. In contrast to the cemetary at Kandy, it was in terrible disrepair - it obviously had not fared well in the tsunami, although it was equally clear that little attention had been paid to the site since the Sri Lankans gained independance from the British. There were goats and deer casually walking around the dilapidated site, and it was sad to think that this was the final resting place of so many British and commonwealth servicemen, and also of Jane Austins Brother, Rear Admiral Charles Austen.
With the feeling that our original thoughts about Trinco had been confirmed, we returned to the hovel to relax by the beach for one last evening before heading back to Kandy. As the area was so hot, in the thirties, the early morning and the evening were the only times that you could relaistically leave shade for any period of time - as we found out to our skins detriment whilst on pigeon island. We relaxed in and around the sea until the sun went down, and then from then on in watched the light blue sky turn progressively to darker blue and black, and then watched the stars appear in the sky. We ended up going to bed ridiculously early that night, as we planned to be up to see sunrise from the east-facing beach the following morning at half 5!
We managed to get up, although to our disappointment it was somewhat cloudy, making the sunrise fall just short of perfect (although it was still awesome). This incentive to get up early also gave us time to enjoy the beach and sea at Trinco one last time before at about 9am the temperature became too hot to be out of shade, at which point we headed back to Kandy via another stupidly long bus!
Overall, although Trinco itself was a bit of a dive, I was glad we came for the areas north of Trinco itself, if for no other reason than the presence of fish justifying the name of this blog, changing it from an inane pun to an inane pun which at least partially descibes the trip! The beach was beautiful, and so were the fish, the wildlife and the scenery; however I am slightly split about the idea that a 200 dollar a night resort can exist 4km away from a town which is still receiving help from the UN in a humanitarian crisis... something doesn't quite add up there.
Anyway, enough rambling, I only have 1 more week here, so I should be out doing stuff. I fully intend to have a bit of a rest tomorrow, although after that I have been assured that I will actually go to the elephant orphanage, and who knows, they might have been telling the truth this time! xx
We relaxed here for about an hour, pretending we were wealthy enough to stay in such a place, enjoying the live music, and the ambiance around the pool area. All these people were clearly jet-set, and we enjoyed our 3 hours among them, before the moment when we would inevitably have to return to our sink-less hovel, and resume our lives and semi-tramps. Before accepting this reality we managed to walk most of the way back to our hovel before deciding that a rest was in order, primarily to let our food baby settle, but with spectacular secondary benefits. We looked up at the sky and realised that there was an utter lack of light pollution, which normally obscures the view of the stars, making less of them visible.
We could see more stars than I could ever dream of seeing in England, and the milky way, and countless constellations that I used to know the names of were vividly clear. What was extra special though was the fact that one of the large meteor showers of the year is occuring at the moment, which, in the low light conditions filled the sky with as many as 1 shooting star every minute. We lay on the beach, recovering from our gluttony for several hours, until the undoubted stellar highlight occured. There was a powercut along the beach, plunging what was left of light pollution into total darkness. This cut lasted all of 10 seconds, but right in the middle of it, the biggest, brightest shooting star I've ever seen traversed the sky, leaving a glow of its trail for several more seconds, before the power cut came to an end, bringing us back to some semblance of reality!
Across the bay there were also about 50-70 light sources bobbing up and down with the waves. We assumed this was some kind of a line of buoys, but we found out the next day it was a hareem of fishing boats, fishing at night as it provided them with the best catch. This would of course explain the fact that Fish had featured heavily in every meal we had had at Trinco up until this point, and also why all the boats seemed to be on land during the day, with nobody manning them!
The next day, we went into Trinco to give it another chance, by looking at its two major cultural sites - Fort Frederick and the garrison cemetary. Fort Frederick was built in the late 1600s by the dutch, and subsequently owned in turn by the dutch, french and british at various times over the next few centuries. It was bombed in 1942 by the Japanese as part of the pacific campaign, and has since been converted into a Sri Lankan military base, presumably to help maintain order after the civil war. The fort itself is open to the public, with only certain garrisons and barracks being out of bounds - It was interesting to compare the UK military base with one in Sri Lanka, seeing deer freely wander around the base, and bus loads of tourists pass through this base (although I am sure this is the exception in Sri Lankan bases as apposed to the norm!).
The major appeal of the fort is a Hindu Temple built in 1980, at the far end of the Headland on which the fort sits. It sounds bad to say this but once you have seen one Temple, you have seen most, and we spent little time wandering around it before heading back towards the centre of Trinco, where the garrison cemetary is. In contrast to the cemetary at Kandy, it was in terrible disrepair - it obviously had not fared well in the tsunami, although it was equally clear that little attention had been paid to the site since the Sri Lankans gained independance from the British. There were goats and deer casually walking around the dilapidated site, and it was sad to think that this was the final resting place of so many British and commonwealth servicemen, and also of Jane Austins Brother, Rear Admiral Charles Austen.
With the feeling that our original thoughts about Trinco had been confirmed, we returned to the hovel to relax by the beach for one last evening before heading back to Kandy. As the area was so hot, in the thirties, the early morning and the evening were the only times that you could relaistically leave shade for any period of time - as we found out to our skins detriment whilst on pigeon island. We relaxed in and around the sea until the sun went down, and then from then on in watched the light blue sky turn progressively to darker blue and black, and then watched the stars appear in the sky. We ended up going to bed ridiculously early that night, as we planned to be up to see sunrise from the east-facing beach the following morning at half 5!
We managed to get up, although to our disappointment it was somewhat cloudy, making the sunrise fall just short of perfect (although it was still awesome). This incentive to get up early also gave us time to enjoy the beach and sea at Trinco one last time before at about 9am the temperature became too hot to be out of shade, at which point we headed back to Kandy via another stupidly long bus!
Overall, although Trinco itself was a bit of a dive, I was glad we came for the areas north of Trinco itself, if for no other reason than the presence of fish justifying the name of this blog, changing it from an inane pun to an inane pun which at least partially descibes the trip! The beach was beautiful, and so were the fish, the wildlife and the scenery; however I am slightly split about the idea that a 200 dollar a night resort can exist 4km away from a town which is still receiving help from the UN in a humanitarian crisis... something doesn't quite add up there.
Anyway, enough rambling, I only have 1 more week here, so I should be out doing stuff. I fully intend to have a bit of a rest tomorrow, although after that I have been assured that I will actually go to the elephant orphanage, and who knows, they might have been telling the truth this time! xx
Finding Nemo - Trincomalee part I
5 and a half hours on a bus - not just an ordinary national express bus, but one of the Sri Lankan "hold on for you life" masterpieces is a pretty long time. I wont dwell on the journey as much as the destination, but it was pretty dire - although entirely worthwhile for the experiences we got at the other end of it!
We arrived at Trincomalee (aka Trinco) at approx midday, to be greeted by 35 degree heat - the stuff that I could feel burning my fragile western skin as soon as I disembarked from the bus. We were confronted with what in my opinion was the opposite of the tropical paradise I was expecting just from the location and the stories I had been told. 80% of the shops were closed, presumably permanently after the strife the city has endured since the 2004 tsunami, and over the civil war, and bullet holes were visible on several walls around the bus stop. This should have come as no real surprise to me judging by the number of military road blocks on the road from Habarana to Trinco, and the fact that it was off limits to tourists until only 2008 (or even 2009 by some reports). Open sewers, a lack of westerners, relative hostility from the locals and many UN vehicles passing by left myself and Ben thinking, is this the right place - have we made a mistake.
We went about finding the promised accomodation from the regional Veterinary office, as we did in Newara Eliya, but after inquiring in Gvt. office after Gvt. office, came to the conclusion that such an office did not even exist in trinco, and was in a small town called Upeveli, 4km north of Trinco. A Sri Lankan bus ride, and an hour of trying to follow some atrocious napkin instructions to this office turned up nothing except a dubious looking farm, at which point we gave up, and decided to look for accommodation off our own backs in Upeveli. We looked around a few misc. establishments and were confronted with a mix of mould, insects and overt structural instability, so decided that the beach there, which the guide assured us was touristy, was the best way to find somewhere to spend our 3 nights.
We came across a small place called French gardens, which was in the guide as a cheapy, and was approx 50m from the sea. Upon seeing that it had 2 beds, a functioning shower and toilet and was only 6 pounds a night between the two of us, we were utterly sold! Sure it didnt have a sink, and the shower was just a giant pipe pointed at the floor, we had a room by the Indian ocean, in season, for 6 pounds... we still won! The beach was entirely flawless - flat, blue Indian ocean lapping at the fine, golden sands - small fishing boats perched on the scorching ground, waiting for their nighttime launch. Even the cows wandering up and down the beach couldn't spoil the ideal view and feel of the place. Any feeling that we had come to the wrong place simply vanished, and as we walked up the coastline, we discovered that there were many hotels, including a 200 dollar a night beast nestled in the small bay, just firing up their businesses after the tourist drought of the civil war.
We had a pleasent enough nights sleep, and woke up the next day ready to go to the fabled Pigeon island we had heard so much about to go snorkelling amongst the coral reefs, or what was left of them after the tsunami. after a 15 minute boat ride in what was effectively a bath tub with an outboard, we were left to our own devices with a group of french, italian and spanish tourists on this small island. The beaches of the island were oddly enough not made of sand, but purely of broken peices of coral, and coral ground down nearly as fine as normal sand, giving an eerie reminder of quite how much damage the 2004 tsunami must have done to this stretch of coast, and its ecosystem Not wanting to waste a moment, we got straight in, and snorkelled out amongst the reefs. They have recovered impressively since the tsunami, and I had the exact same panorama through my snorkel that is visible on any Animal Planet show, slowly navigating amongst the coral, seeing endless numbers of fish species pass by!
Small channels had been carved out of the reef to allow us to swim out into the deeper waters without having to come into contact with the coral. The purpose of this was two-fold - Firstly to prevent us from damaging the fragile coral with our western clumsyness and our disregard for nature, but also as, unbeknown to me, getting cut by coral hurts... ALOT, bleeds endlessly and come up in a huge allergic reaction. By the time I had realised this it was far too late, and I was to be bleeding for the rest off my time at the island, which becomes relavent later. A couple of hours, and multiple encounters with coral, angel fish arrow fish and even puffer fish later, we heard there were small (3-4 ft) blacktip sharks in some of the shallow reefs off the island. Having been assured they are safe, and partially beleiving it, we hopped in, bleeding and all to confront the graceful predators of the deep.
Firstly to our surprise they arent predators of the deep at all, these sharks were purely found in the shallow coral-filled areas, flawlessly navigating the shallow waters, which we couldnt even consider following them through without experiencing a world of coral cut related pain. Realising they were in fact scared of us, and would flee on our approach, I made a game with myself - chase the shark... whenever I saw one I would swim after it and see how long I could keep up before it either outswam me, or went into too shallow water. I even impressed myself, keeping up with it until I had to surface for breath (I dove to chase it, as I can use the flippers better underwater than on the surface). Of course there is a good chance it was purely cruising away from me effortlessly, but I prefer to put it down to my fish-like underwater agility!
We tried to play a game of finding nemo, spotting all of the characters from the film, although, perhaps ironically, we didnt see a single sea anemone or clown fish. I saw Dory, a puffer fish, a shark, and other misc fish that I recognised, but NO NEMO, or a sea turtle, which although it was a bit of a shame, I got over it very quickly whenever I realised I was snorkelling in the Indian ocean, surrounded by coral reefs. I did come across a wall of jelly-fish at one point, which was not cool, but I got far fewer stings than I would have expected, and lived to blog another day :)
We left the island very satisfied, although starving, having not realised we would have to go from 10am-5pm without food. We got back to our hotel after another bath-boat ride and a stint on the back of a pickup truck. At this point we decided to go to the 200 dollar a night hotel for their 12 pound all you can eat buffet, to restock ourselves for the next day of strenuous relaxation by the beach. I will leave this blog here, and resume at the point were we arrived for our all you can eat bonanza!
We arrived at Trincomalee (aka Trinco) at approx midday, to be greeted by 35 degree heat - the stuff that I could feel burning my fragile western skin as soon as I disembarked from the bus. We were confronted with what in my opinion was the opposite of the tropical paradise I was expecting just from the location and the stories I had been told. 80% of the shops were closed, presumably permanently after the strife the city has endured since the 2004 tsunami, and over the civil war, and bullet holes were visible on several walls around the bus stop. This should have come as no real surprise to me judging by the number of military road blocks on the road from Habarana to Trinco, and the fact that it was off limits to tourists until only 2008 (or even 2009 by some reports). Open sewers, a lack of westerners, relative hostility from the locals and many UN vehicles passing by left myself and Ben thinking, is this the right place - have we made a mistake.
We went about finding the promised accomodation from the regional Veterinary office, as we did in Newara Eliya, but after inquiring in Gvt. office after Gvt. office, came to the conclusion that such an office did not even exist in trinco, and was in a small town called Upeveli, 4km north of Trinco. A Sri Lankan bus ride, and an hour of trying to follow some atrocious napkin instructions to this office turned up nothing except a dubious looking farm, at which point we gave up, and decided to look for accommodation off our own backs in Upeveli. We looked around a few misc. establishments and were confronted with a mix of mould, insects and overt structural instability, so decided that the beach there, which the guide assured us was touristy, was the best way to find somewhere to spend our 3 nights.
We came across a small place called French gardens, which was in the guide as a cheapy, and was approx 50m from the sea. Upon seeing that it had 2 beds, a functioning shower and toilet and was only 6 pounds a night between the two of us, we were utterly sold! Sure it didnt have a sink, and the shower was just a giant pipe pointed at the floor, we had a room by the Indian ocean, in season, for 6 pounds... we still won! The beach was entirely flawless - flat, blue Indian ocean lapping at the fine, golden sands - small fishing boats perched on the scorching ground, waiting for their nighttime launch. Even the cows wandering up and down the beach couldn't spoil the ideal view and feel of the place. Any feeling that we had come to the wrong place simply vanished, and as we walked up the coastline, we discovered that there were many hotels, including a 200 dollar a night beast nestled in the small bay, just firing up their businesses after the tourist drought of the civil war.
We had a pleasent enough nights sleep, and woke up the next day ready to go to the fabled Pigeon island we had heard so much about to go snorkelling amongst the coral reefs, or what was left of them after the tsunami. after a 15 minute boat ride in what was effectively a bath tub with an outboard, we were left to our own devices with a group of french, italian and spanish tourists on this small island. The beaches of the island were oddly enough not made of sand, but purely of broken peices of coral, and coral ground down nearly as fine as normal sand, giving an eerie reminder of quite how much damage the 2004 tsunami must have done to this stretch of coast, and its ecosystem Not wanting to waste a moment, we got straight in, and snorkelled out amongst the reefs. They have recovered impressively since the tsunami, and I had the exact same panorama through my snorkel that is visible on any Animal Planet show, slowly navigating amongst the coral, seeing endless numbers of fish species pass by!
Small channels had been carved out of the reef to allow us to swim out into the deeper waters without having to come into contact with the coral. The purpose of this was two-fold - Firstly to prevent us from damaging the fragile coral with our western clumsyness and our disregard for nature, but also as, unbeknown to me, getting cut by coral hurts... ALOT, bleeds endlessly and come up in a huge allergic reaction. By the time I had realised this it was far too late, and I was to be bleeding for the rest off my time at the island, which becomes relavent later. A couple of hours, and multiple encounters with coral, angel fish arrow fish and even puffer fish later, we heard there were small (3-4 ft) blacktip sharks in some of the shallow reefs off the island. Having been assured they are safe, and partially beleiving it, we hopped in, bleeding and all to confront the graceful predators of the deep.
Firstly to our surprise they arent predators of the deep at all, these sharks were purely found in the shallow coral-filled areas, flawlessly navigating the shallow waters, which we couldnt even consider following them through without experiencing a world of coral cut related pain. Realising they were in fact scared of us, and would flee on our approach, I made a game with myself - chase the shark... whenever I saw one I would swim after it and see how long I could keep up before it either outswam me, or went into too shallow water. I even impressed myself, keeping up with it until I had to surface for breath (I dove to chase it, as I can use the flippers better underwater than on the surface). Of course there is a good chance it was purely cruising away from me effortlessly, but I prefer to put it down to my fish-like underwater agility!
We tried to play a game of finding nemo, spotting all of the characters from the film, although, perhaps ironically, we didnt see a single sea anemone or clown fish. I saw Dory, a puffer fish, a shark, and other misc fish that I recognised, but NO NEMO, or a sea turtle, which although it was a bit of a shame, I got over it very quickly whenever I realised I was snorkelling in the Indian ocean, surrounded by coral reefs. I did come across a wall of jelly-fish at one point, which was not cool, but I got far fewer stings than I would have expected, and lived to blog another day :)
We left the island very satisfied, although starving, having not realised we would have to go from 10am-5pm without food. We got back to our hotel after another bath-boat ride and a stint on the back of a pickup truck. At this point we decided to go to the 200 dollar a night hotel for their 12 pound all you can eat buffet, to restock ourselves for the next day of strenuous relaxation by the beach. I will leave this blog here, and resume at the point were we arrived for our all you can eat bonanza!
The Tea Empire Strikes Back
Ok so there was a reshuffling of events, and the visit to pinewalla was moved until hopefully sometime this week, and our Trip to Trincomale was moved to the weekend just gone (hense the extended silence on the blog). Before I start on Trinco, a couple of things happened between my last blog and Trinco which I think people might want to hear (and I certainly want to remember, this blog being primarily my diary of events in Sri Lanka)
You cant come to Sri Lanka without buying some tea... It just cant be done; after our dissapointment at Pedros in Newara Eliya we thought about trying to purchase some tea closer to home (well Kandy). We decided that the tea plantation that we visited on our 3 temples route was a good place to try and get reasonable priced tea, without paying the tea dealers cut - and obviously getting tea directly from the factory is pretty dam awesome. We started off walking towards the factory when all of a sudden we came accross a building with the standard, kind of flat-pack tea factory appearence. We had a closer look and discovered an abandonned, degrading factory, with the original machinery slowly rusting in the buildings shell.
Unexpectadly a figure emerged from behind the machinery claiming that he owned the factory and that we should come and have a look around. Now, at this point all kinds of alarm bells were chiming... probably rightly so, but we still decided to go into the crumbling factory to speak to the mysterious shaddow man - he was wearing a shirt... he has to be legitimate, right? It turns out he was the owner of a 150 hectare tea estate near Matale, and had just purchased the factory as the gvt. was no longer allowing the construction of new factories. In two months he hoped to process his leaves at this factory instead of selling them on for processing. Here is where our lie began... we told him we were interested in importing large quantities of Tea into the UK, to which his ears pricked up, and he offered to send us free samples of his tea for market research (receipt pending).
With this fantastic lie in tow, we moved on to the functional factory, and sat in the factory office talking to the manager about the prospect of import. He was talking in terms of containers per month, reduced rates for orders of over 48,000kg, at which point we changed tact to samples for market research and got 4 250g samples (2g is enough for a cup of tea) for 500 rupees, 3 pounds. We did the standard procedure of exchanging email addresses and left the factory highly satisfied with our acheivement, and in awe of our improv. acting abilities :)
The next day, and final day before Trinco went relatively standardly until the early evening when we went into Kandy, and discovered behind the tooth temple lay a British Garrison Cemetary. Myself, Ben, and the french girl who we saved from overpriced hotel tyranny (Sophie) were the only three visiters to that Cemetary all day, although it was to me more impressive than many of the temples we have visited. It was renovated from its vandelised state for a visit from Prince Charles in 1998, which sadly could not happen due to the bomb outside the temple of the tooth in that year. However, it was beutifully preserved, save the foot (/hoof?) prints of wild boar which have sullied some of the graves. Being shown around the site by its sole, unpaid proprietor was an experience in its own right, and hearing of the lives of the people in the graves, including the young man killed "by elephant" was incredible, and overshaddowed even the baby elephants visible from the corner of the site.
We were more than happy, for once, to donate money to the continued maintenance of the grounds.
From then we relaxed over dinner, and watched a film, before packing for the trip to Trincomale, a place that was devestated by the 2004 tsunami, and until 2008 was out of bounds to tourists due to the civil war - It does however have an awesome beach :) x
You cant come to Sri Lanka without buying some tea... It just cant be done; after our dissapointment at Pedros in Newara Eliya we thought about trying to purchase some tea closer to home (well Kandy). We decided that the tea plantation that we visited on our 3 temples route was a good place to try and get reasonable priced tea, without paying the tea dealers cut - and obviously getting tea directly from the factory is pretty dam awesome. We started off walking towards the factory when all of a sudden we came accross a building with the standard, kind of flat-pack tea factory appearence. We had a closer look and discovered an abandonned, degrading factory, with the original machinery slowly rusting in the buildings shell.
Unexpectadly a figure emerged from behind the machinery claiming that he owned the factory and that we should come and have a look around. Now, at this point all kinds of alarm bells were chiming... probably rightly so, but we still decided to go into the crumbling factory to speak to the mysterious shaddow man - he was wearing a shirt... he has to be legitimate, right? It turns out he was the owner of a 150 hectare tea estate near Matale, and had just purchased the factory as the gvt. was no longer allowing the construction of new factories. In two months he hoped to process his leaves at this factory instead of selling them on for processing. Here is where our lie began... we told him we were interested in importing large quantities of Tea into the UK, to which his ears pricked up, and he offered to send us free samples of his tea for market research (receipt pending).
With this fantastic lie in tow, we moved on to the functional factory, and sat in the factory office talking to the manager about the prospect of import. He was talking in terms of containers per month, reduced rates for orders of over 48,000kg, at which point we changed tact to samples for market research and got 4 250g samples (2g is enough for a cup of tea) for 500 rupees, 3 pounds. We did the standard procedure of exchanging email addresses and left the factory highly satisfied with our acheivement, and in awe of our improv. acting abilities :)
The next day, and final day before Trinco went relatively standardly until the early evening when we went into Kandy, and discovered behind the tooth temple lay a British Garrison Cemetary. Myself, Ben, and the french girl who we saved from overpriced hotel tyranny (Sophie) were the only three visiters to that Cemetary all day, although it was to me more impressive than many of the temples we have visited. It was renovated from its vandelised state for a visit from Prince Charles in 1998, which sadly could not happen due to the bomb outside the temple of the tooth in that year. However, it was beutifully preserved, save the foot (/hoof?) prints of wild boar which have sullied some of the graves. Being shown around the site by its sole, unpaid proprietor was an experience in its own right, and hearing of the lives of the people in the graves, including the young man killed "by elephant" was incredible, and overshaddowed even the baby elephants visible from the corner of the site.
We were more than happy, for once, to donate money to the continued maintenance of the grounds.
From then we relaxed over dinner, and watched a film, before packing for the trip to Trincomale, a place that was devestated by the 2004 tsunami, and until 2008 was out of bounds to tourists due to the civil war - It does however have an awesome beach :) x
Tuesday 3 August 2010
Don't vote for Pedro
They say that for every 100m you climb vertically, the temperature drops 1 degree C. N Eliya is at 2100m above sea level, wheras Kandy is 600m, so on face value you would expect it to be actually rather chilly up there, as 30 degrees in Kandy turns to 15 degrees midday temperature. Despite all of this hint, I valiently decided that as its Sri Lanka, it can never be cold, and thus I packed a T-shirt and a pair of shorts in my spare clothes before we set off for the Station.
The long grueling climb from Peradiniya station to Nu-oya (the closest station to N Eliya) takes 4 hours on a good day (and that day was evidently not a good day), but we didn't mind this as train journeys are, as I have explained an experience in their own right! As we progressed along the slow ascent, the scenery progressed from the tropical palms and broad-leaved plants of lower areas, passing through coniferous woodland with occasional plains to scrubby moorland above the timberline. Tea plantations were dispersed throughout the experience, covering swathes of countryside, with small tea processing factory's with their workers accommodation scattered amongst them.
When we arrived finally in Nuwara Eliya, surreal doesnt really cover it. British architecture, golf courses, fields of carrots and even a race course greeted our entry to the town, and along with the temperate grasses, stinging nettles and drizzle I felt almost at home! Sure the centre of the racecourse was a landfill, the pavements were collapsing in on themselves and the buildings all had tin rooves, but that was just the gentle reminder that I was in fact still in Sri Lanka, and not in a quiet town in the Dales.
We wandered around the lake to find our accomodation at the regional Veterinary office, and on the word of the Guide, set off for Pedros Tea Factory, which was perportedly open until 6pm, and offered free tours. We arrived, to be greeted by a tourist fee for a tour of a factory that wasnt working that day as there were no leaves, and closed in 10 minutes (we arrived at 10 to 5!). They promptly tried to sell us tea at a price that is twice what we know we can pay for it in Kandy... all in all Pedro wasn't quite as happy-making as we may have hoped.
To quench this dissapointment we felt a trip to a pub was in order, so we went to the "locals" pub, which we beleived would be the cheaper option than the obviously touristy place up the road. We had some fantastic 9% beer, and 40p double shots of Arrack (coconut whisky), and just after I saw the dead rat floating in urine in the loos, decided to check out the more touristy pub. That pub was signinficantly cheaper than the rat-urine pub, which made us sad, along with the fact that we were already significantly drunk at 8pm. All memory's point to us making it back to the accomodation, with only minor blood wounds suffered by Ben in the 5km journey at about 10:30pm at which point we collapsed for a nights sleep.
Here is where the "chilly" in Nuwara Eliya had its pinch... lieing there, shivering wrapped in a blanket fully clothed I was not impressed... and was forced to eat my words that it would secretly actually still be warm up there. We woke up to a rolling mist, chilly winds, and a very datrtmooresque temperature, and to top it off, we both had caught gastroenteritis from some dodgy rice and curry the night before. Hugely disenfranchised by the whole experience, we decided to bin the rest of the plans for Nuwara Eliya, dose up on Imodium, and take the 2 hour bus back to Kandy, where I actually feel like I'm near the equator!
So here I am, back in Kandy, nicely warm, and with my Gastrointestinal fail recovering, having just watched a few films. However, people here seem to have caught onto where we are living, as today, despite the fact that we live a long way up a dead end hill, several beggars came directly to our bedroom window and started knocking on the windows asking for money... I was not impressed - If a mans home is his castle, I need a moat! Anyway, am now about to go and do alot of sleeping, followed hopefully by a trip to the elephant orphanage later this week with the Tranquilizer team... what could possibly go wrong :) xx
The long grueling climb from Peradiniya station to Nu-oya (the closest station to N Eliya) takes 4 hours on a good day (and that day was evidently not a good day), but we didn't mind this as train journeys are, as I have explained an experience in their own right! As we progressed along the slow ascent, the scenery progressed from the tropical palms and broad-leaved plants of lower areas, passing through coniferous woodland with occasional plains to scrubby moorland above the timberline. Tea plantations were dispersed throughout the experience, covering swathes of countryside, with small tea processing factory's with their workers accommodation scattered amongst them.
When we arrived finally in Nuwara Eliya, surreal doesnt really cover it. British architecture, golf courses, fields of carrots and even a race course greeted our entry to the town, and along with the temperate grasses, stinging nettles and drizzle I felt almost at home! Sure the centre of the racecourse was a landfill, the pavements were collapsing in on themselves and the buildings all had tin rooves, but that was just the gentle reminder that I was in fact still in Sri Lanka, and not in a quiet town in the Dales.
We wandered around the lake to find our accomodation at the regional Veterinary office, and on the word of the Guide, set off for Pedros Tea Factory, which was perportedly open until 6pm, and offered free tours. We arrived, to be greeted by a tourist fee for a tour of a factory that wasnt working that day as there were no leaves, and closed in 10 minutes (we arrived at 10 to 5!). They promptly tried to sell us tea at a price that is twice what we know we can pay for it in Kandy... all in all Pedro wasn't quite as happy-making as we may have hoped.
To quench this dissapointment we felt a trip to a pub was in order, so we went to the "locals" pub, which we beleived would be the cheaper option than the obviously touristy place up the road. We had some fantastic 9% beer, and 40p double shots of Arrack (coconut whisky), and just after I saw the dead rat floating in urine in the loos, decided to check out the more touristy pub. That pub was signinficantly cheaper than the rat-urine pub, which made us sad, along with the fact that we were already significantly drunk at 8pm. All memory's point to us making it back to the accomodation, with only minor blood wounds suffered by Ben in the 5km journey at about 10:30pm at which point we collapsed for a nights sleep.
Here is where the "chilly" in Nuwara Eliya had its pinch... lieing there, shivering wrapped in a blanket fully clothed I was not impressed... and was forced to eat my words that it would secretly actually still be warm up there. We woke up to a rolling mist, chilly winds, and a very datrtmooresque temperature, and to top it off, we both had caught gastroenteritis from some dodgy rice and curry the night before. Hugely disenfranchised by the whole experience, we decided to bin the rest of the plans for Nuwara Eliya, dose up on Imodium, and take the 2 hour bus back to Kandy, where I actually feel like I'm near the equator!
So here I am, back in Kandy, nicely warm, and with my Gastrointestinal fail recovering, having just watched a few films. However, people here seem to have caught onto where we are living, as today, despite the fact that we live a long way up a dead end hill, several beggars came directly to our bedroom window and started knocking on the windows asking for money... I was not impressed - If a mans home is his castle, I need a moat! Anyway, am now about to go and do alot of sleeping, followed hopefully by a trip to the elephant orphanage later this week with the Tranquilizer team... what could possibly go wrong :) xx
Sunday 1 August 2010
We'll take the bus to the next one, I swear
Thought I would pop in a quick blog before my trip to Nuwara Eliya tomorrow (I have looked up the spelling so I dont have to use the cop out "hill country" any more!). Firstly, myself and Ben were heroic yesterday, which I thought was of note. We saved a French Damsel in Disrtress from the tyrany of a 40 dollar a night (and pretty meagre) hotel experience. She has been here a week and was reccomended a hotel by friends for her months stay in Sri Lanka, which she dutifully attended and "negotiated" 40 dollars a night for half board. Now in a country where 8p gets you 20km on a bus, this is never on, so we sorted her out new accomadation for approx 60USD... A MONTH *pause for applause* :D
After our act of heroism, we decided that a physical test of endurance was in order, so we decided to undertake the 3 temple loop, which is outlined in the guide as best navigated by bike, TukTuk or bus. We Walked... naturally. 20km in England isnt an easy walk, but it is certainly acheivable by the vast majority of people, so how hard could it be! It turns out that 30 degree heat and searing sunlight can affect the ease of walking, and the random up-down gradient assortment didnt help. The three temples themselves were somewhat unimpressive, although this might be due to the law of deminishing returns - Each buddhist temple you see makes the next one inevitably less impressive (and we have seen alot). The walk itself however provided more than worth its own effort, as we walked through villages and townships relatively unspoiled by tourist influence, and paddy fields which reminded me just how far from home i really am!
Beyond the temples, there are a few other things of note from our journey. Firstly we stumbled across a tea factory, and were offered a tour by its manager. I knew very little about tea before coming here - it grows in bushes, and is somehow put into bags which make a tasty beverage. Going to the factory I gained a whole new appreciation for the teamaking process, and for the role of fermentation of the tea leaves in making black tea (Fermentation... makes every drink worth drinking). I wont bore you with the technicalities of tea grading... but needless to say... there was more than I thought to that too! We also accidentally crashed a Muslim wedding as we investigated a Cultural centre, which seemed to act as a kind of village hall arrangement... and was paying host to a wedding today... slightly awkward but definately a box ticked! We also saw a road killed lizard.... which was novel...
I did however realise one thing today - that no matter how far away from tourist areas we go, we can never experience true Sri Lankan culture. The reason for this is known to physicists as the uncertainty principle, or observer effect - by observing an event, you in yourself change that event. There is no way that its going to be business as usual in a small Sri Lankan village when two white people are walking through - Im sure most Sri Lankans aren't greeted as they walk through a village with waves, shouts and demands of money from the children... Ironically enough I think that the more touristy the area, the less this observer effect is, and the more likely you are to see that area in its normal state, without affecting it with your presence!
Anyway thats my little philisophical journey done, as I am up early tomorrow for a phyisical one to the mountains, more tea factorys, and what is described as a "chilly" place by Sri Lankans... lets see how the English fare there!
After our act of heroism, we decided that a physical test of endurance was in order, so we decided to undertake the 3 temple loop, which is outlined in the guide as best navigated by bike, TukTuk or bus. We Walked... naturally. 20km in England isnt an easy walk, but it is certainly acheivable by the vast majority of people, so how hard could it be! It turns out that 30 degree heat and searing sunlight can affect the ease of walking, and the random up-down gradient assortment didnt help. The three temples themselves were somewhat unimpressive, although this might be due to the law of deminishing returns - Each buddhist temple you see makes the next one inevitably less impressive (and we have seen alot). The walk itself however provided more than worth its own effort, as we walked through villages and townships relatively unspoiled by tourist influence, and paddy fields which reminded me just how far from home i really am!
Beyond the temples, there are a few other things of note from our journey. Firstly we stumbled across a tea factory, and were offered a tour by its manager. I knew very little about tea before coming here - it grows in bushes, and is somehow put into bags which make a tasty beverage. Going to the factory I gained a whole new appreciation for the teamaking process, and for the role of fermentation of the tea leaves in making black tea (Fermentation... makes every drink worth drinking). I wont bore you with the technicalities of tea grading... but needless to say... there was more than I thought to that too! We also accidentally crashed a Muslim wedding as we investigated a Cultural centre, which seemed to act as a kind of village hall arrangement... and was paying host to a wedding today... slightly awkward but definately a box ticked! We also saw a road killed lizard.... which was novel...
I did however realise one thing today - that no matter how far away from tourist areas we go, we can never experience true Sri Lankan culture. The reason for this is known to physicists as the uncertainty principle, or observer effect - by observing an event, you in yourself change that event. There is no way that its going to be business as usual in a small Sri Lankan village when two white people are walking through - Im sure most Sri Lankans aren't greeted as they walk through a village with waves, shouts and demands of money from the children... Ironically enough I think that the more touristy the area, the less this observer effect is, and the more likely you are to see that area in its normal state, without affecting it with your presence!
Anyway thats my little philisophical journey done, as I am up early tomorrow for a phyisical one to the mountains, more tea factorys, and what is described as a "chilly" place by Sri Lankans... lets see how the English fare there!
Friday 30 July 2010
We will, we will Rock you! - The cultural Triangle Part II
We arrived in Dambulla, having seen a herd of wild elephants just off the side of the road at a watering hole (very cool), and set about visiting the only thing worth visiting in the area, the cave temples. Now how we have been getting into all of the cultural triangle areas without paying is a letter from the Cultural Triangle office, saying that we are doing research and need to access these areas. We assumed that as long as we had some collection tubes with us, we should capitalize on this opportunity and visit some of the areas whilst we were separated from the main research group.
To reach the entrance to the cave temples, there is a 150m vertical ascent (over about half a km horizontally), which we surmounted with vigour, to reach the ticket office at the top. We took off our shoes (sacred site etc) and paid 25 rupees (tourist rip off anyone) to store our shoes. We were then promptly denied entry to the site as we didnt have a stamp on the letter by an extremely Jobsworth security guard. We dutifully (still without shoes) descended the mountain, got a stamp, and re-climbed the monster in the 35 degree heat, to be told that we had got the wrong stamp, and would have to go back and get another from some kind of head monk.
I decided that it was a waste of energy for both of us to repeat the down and up journey, so valiently let Ben wander down and back up again in search of the stamp. Seeing a dispondant Ben re-emerge 25 mins later having been told by the monk that "you are white, you are foreign, you must pay full price" didn't fill me with much hope. Lukily the security guard took pity on us and let us enter, although for the hour and a bit we had spent wrangling a free entrance, the 5 caves weren't quite as impressive as we hoped, so 10 minutes later we were walking back down the hill, slightly dissapointed, and waving away touts with slightly more vigour than normal!
After this we got a bus to our Guest house near Sigiria, and settled in for the night quite early, as apparently wild elephants roam the road after about 8pm, and thus that was when the gates were closed... *cough* guy wanted to go home early? *cough*. The next morning however we woke up, and decided all of a sudden that today was a good day to go ride an elephant, having read about the possibility in the guide. We made our way to Habarana, and were presented with at least 10 people flocking to try and sell us elephant rides. We settled on the most legit looking person (mainly judged by the number of teeth, and ability to speak english), and after some furious bartering from 20 euros to approx 10 pounds, we approached Raja, the elephant to ferry us around the place for an hour of pure stereotypical gap-yah-ishness. It was an incredible experience, especially being perched on his neck for 10 minutes, with my previous riding experience consisting of sitting on a pig whilst it was walking, once... It was a once in a lifetime oppertunity, but I still felt saddened at how the elephants were treated, being shouted at by the mahoot who was effectively weilding a pike at the elephants knees... which left me in 2 minds about it.
From here we moved on to Sigiria town, and the "other rock"... a large rock near the main Sigiria rock (see my facebook again for pics). We climbed the rock by steep steps for about 20 mins, and after a 5 min scramble over boulders we made it to the summit, which was incredible. None of my pictures can do the panorama justice, but the view over the unsullied landscape was breathtaking, and the view of Sigiria Rock itself was postcard perfect (and I in fact recognised from many post cards)! All was well and good until an elderly Sri Lankan walked over and sat next to us, started pointing at things and naming them "jungle" and "rock". This flagrant disregard for our privacy really ruined the seclusion, so we decided to leave, with the tout in rapid pursuit. He started holding out his hand asking for money for his services, which did not go down well, having not asked to be stalked up the rock by a "guide". He was dismissed somewhat harshly, but the fact that he just wandered up to us and expected money really ground our gears! After descending the rock, we drank some water from a random well (again 35 degree heat is not good), and lived to tell the tale, and headed back to the guest house before we would inevitably be killed by an elephant!
The next day was Sigiria day, when we would mount the "lion rock", and would finally meet up with our research companions in Dambulla. My highlight of the walk to the site entrance from the bus stop was undoubtedly Ben walking along with his loaf of bread for breakfast, and suddenly being surrounded by monkeys hissing and bearing their teeth! We beat a hasty retreat with the monkeys pawing at Bens loaf, and him throwing chunks in our wake to try and quench the monkeys hunger before our face was next on the menu! Luckily this was successful and we progressed onto the site entrance.
After much less hastle from the ticket office at Sigiria, we entered the complex, which is the large rock with the palace situated at its summit, surrounded by endless ruined gardens and buildings. We decided to summit the rock as soon as possible, as it was 10am, and would only get hotter and more sweat provoking. The ascent was steep, but filled with things to stop and see such as the mirror wall (a wall covered in ancient graffiti and poems) and the cave paintings, so we made the top of the 200m rock in about 45 minutes, and got to look at fantastic views similar to those of the day before, but in the setting of the ruins of an ancient temple... not too shabby! We made the most of our free entry to the site (which normally costs 25 dollars) by having a nap on top of the rock in the shade, and playing a game called "avoid the rabid stray dogs" which is always fun!
After a couple of hours we descended the rock and via the Sigiria museum made our way to Dambulla, where we were to meet with the rest of the researchers. Now there had always been a bit of contention over who was supposed to pay for hotels, us or the Japanese researchers. When we met up with the others in Dambulla, they told us the room price and asked for the sum. At this point myself and Ben had between us less than half the sum of the room, having expected another night in a hotel, so we decided it was best to ask for a lift to the bus stop and head back to Kandy a day early (we didn't want to pay money for a night in a hotel purely for the pleasure of picking up more piles of steamy science). After 2 hours standing on one of the crazy death buses we arrived at Kandy, went to KFC to satisfy our need for cooked meats, then headed home for a MASSIVE SLEEP!
As I write this I am 2 days and a lot of relaxation after this epic journey to the Cultural triangle, and having made the acquaintance of some other foreigners in the university (Australia and France), we are planning a weekend of westernised exploits, followed by a trip for me and Ben into the Hill country early next week, and the promise of trips out with an elephant tranquilizer team towards the end of next week... all signs point to a lot of hard research work in our immediate future!
xx
To reach the entrance to the cave temples, there is a 150m vertical ascent (over about half a km horizontally), which we surmounted with vigour, to reach the ticket office at the top. We took off our shoes (sacred site etc) and paid 25 rupees (tourist rip off anyone) to store our shoes. We were then promptly denied entry to the site as we didnt have a stamp on the letter by an extremely Jobsworth security guard. We dutifully (still without shoes) descended the mountain, got a stamp, and re-climbed the monster in the 35 degree heat, to be told that we had got the wrong stamp, and would have to go back and get another from some kind of head monk.
I decided that it was a waste of energy for both of us to repeat the down and up journey, so valiently let Ben wander down and back up again in search of the stamp. Seeing a dispondant Ben re-emerge 25 mins later having been told by the monk that "you are white, you are foreign, you must pay full price" didn't fill me with much hope. Lukily the security guard took pity on us and let us enter, although for the hour and a bit we had spent wrangling a free entrance, the 5 caves weren't quite as impressive as we hoped, so 10 minutes later we were walking back down the hill, slightly dissapointed, and waving away touts with slightly more vigour than normal!
After this we got a bus to our Guest house near Sigiria, and settled in for the night quite early, as apparently wild elephants roam the road after about 8pm, and thus that was when the gates were closed... *cough* guy wanted to go home early? *cough*. The next morning however we woke up, and decided all of a sudden that today was a good day to go ride an elephant, having read about the possibility in the guide. We made our way to Habarana, and were presented with at least 10 people flocking to try and sell us elephant rides. We settled on the most legit looking person (mainly judged by the number of teeth, and ability to speak english), and after some furious bartering from 20 euros to approx 10 pounds, we approached Raja, the elephant to ferry us around the place for an hour of pure stereotypical gap-yah-ishness. It was an incredible experience, especially being perched on his neck for 10 minutes, with my previous riding experience consisting of sitting on a pig whilst it was walking, once... It was a once in a lifetime oppertunity, but I still felt saddened at how the elephants were treated, being shouted at by the mahoot who was effectively weilding a pike at the elephants knees... which left me in 2 minds about it.
From here we moved on to Sigiria town, and the "other rock"... a large rock near the main Sigiria rock (see my facebook again for pics). We climbed the rock by steep steps for about 20 mins, and after a 5 min scramble over boulders we made it to the summit, which was incredible. None of my pictures can do the panorama justice, but the view over the unsullied landscape was breathtaking, and the view of Sigiria Rock itself was postcard perfect (and I in fact recognised from many post cards)! All was well and good until an elderly Sri Lankan walked over and sat next to us, started pointing at things and naming them "jungle" and "rock". This flagrant disregard for our privacy really ruined the seclusion, so we decided to leave, with the tout in rapid pursuit. He started holding out his hand asking for money for his services, which did not go down well, having not asked to be stalked up the rock by a "guide". He was dismissed somewhat harshly, but the fact that he just wandered up to us and expected money really ground our gears! After descending the rock, we drank some water from a random well (again 35 degree heat is not good), and lived to tell the tale, and headed back to the guest house before we would inevitably be killed by an elephant!
The next day was Sigiria day, when we would mount the "lion rock", and would finally meet up with our research companions in Dambulla. My highlight of the walk to the site entrance from the bus stop was undoubtedly Ben walking along with his loaf of bread for breakfast, and suddenly being surrounded by monkeys hissing and bearing their teeth! We beat a hasty retreat with the monkeys pawing at Bens loaf, and him throwing chunks in our wake to try and quench the monkeys hunger before our face was next on the menu! Luckily this was successful and we progressed onto the site entrance.
After much less hastle from the ticket office at Sigiria, we entered the complex, which is the large rock with the palace situated at its summit, surrounded by endless ruined gardens and buildings. We decided to summit the rock as soon as possible, as it was 10am, and would only get hotter and more sweat provoking. The ascent was steep, but filled with things to stop and see such as the mirror wall (a wall covered in ancient graffiti and poems) and the cave paintings, so we made the top of the 200m rock in about 45 minutes, and got to look at fantastic views similar to those of the day before, but in the setting of the ruins of an ancient temple... not too shabby! We made the most of our free entry to the site (which normally costs 25 dollars) by having a nap on top of the rock in the shade, and playing a game called "avoid the rabid stray dogs" which is always fun!
After a couple of hours we descended the rock and via the Sigiria museum made our way to Dambulla, where we were to meet with the rest of the researchers. Now there had always been a bit of contention over who was supposed to pay for hotels, us or the Japanese researchers. When we met up with the others in Dambulla, they told us the room price and asked for the sum. At this point myself and Ben had between us less than half the sum of the room, having expected another night in a hotel, so we decided it was best to ask for a lift to the bus stop and head back to Kandy a day early (we didn't want to pay money for a night in a hotel purely for the pleasure of picking up more piles of steamy science). After 2 hours standing on one of the crazy death buses we arrived at Kandy, went to KFC to satisfy our need for cooked meats, then headed home for a MASSIVE SLEEP!
As I write this I am 2 days and a lot of relaxation after this epic journey to the Cultural triangle, and having made the acquaintance of some other foreigners in the university (Australia and France), we are planning a weekend of westernised exploits, followed by a trip for me and Ben into the Hill country early next week, and the promise of trips out with an elephant tranquilizer team towards the end of next week... all signs point to a lot of hard research work in our immediate future!
xx
Thursday 29 July 2010
Indiana Jones and the Temples of Poo - The cultural triangle part I
Ok, so its been a while since my last blog, as I have been out and about in the Dry Zone, with little access to internet. LOADS has happened in the last few days, so Ive decided to split the cultural triangle into two parts, this being the first:
Before we left for the cultural triangle, we didn't really do anything too exciting - I had my day of gastritis, and a few days in the hospital and the Lab, both of which I have already described ad nauseum, so I will begin on Saturday, and our journey from Kandy to Polonorawa. We left the university at about midday with some Japanese researchers who are researching the transfer of diseases (especially entamoeba dysentry) from monkey to man, via taking monkey fecal samples and analysing them. We were recruited for the study as extra labour, with free accommodation and entry to the cultural triangle sites in return (I would like to add that this blog is best read along with my pictures on facebook - as I cannot describe anything I have seen here to do it justice)
4 hours later we arrived 120km (you work out the average speed!) away in the ancient capital city of polonorawa, and much to our surprise found ourselves driven to our accommodation in the regional monkey sanctuary, which has played host to such legends as Sir David Attonbourgh in the past (spelling prob wrong). This was situated next to the biggest "Tank" in Sri Lanka (A tank being a man made lake, made 1000 years ago by damming a river... its 26 square miles big!). This tank was the local fishing lake, bath, washing machine, swimming pool, elephant watering hole, and a fantastic setting to see storks, kingfishers and countless other nameless birds and small amphibians!
After stopping off at "Monkey Camp" to drop off our kit, we were taken to the ruins of the ancient city itself, including a 100 year old palace, which had over 7000 rooms when it was complete. A few touts trying to sell awful tourist tat later, we had explored many of the most impressive areas of the site, including a huge Stuta (Dome with sticky out thing on top - Buddhist religious symbol), we went back to camp for dinner, far too much chat about monkey social groupings with the 25 year proprietor of the camp, and an earlyish night, for reasons which will become apparent!
5am is early. Very early in fact. However, it turns out most monkeys defacate at approx 6-7am after waking up in their sleeping tree, so if you want to collect those steaming little piles of science when they are fresh, its a sacrifice you have to make! However, I did not begrudge this as soon as I saw the incredible sunrise over the Tank, and got to look around the ruins (following monkeys of course) before the tourists were out of bed, and more importantly when people were not trying to sell us tat!
From here, after some brief sample analysis, and sightings of a brown mongoose (the reason why snakes are rare in the area!), and various awesome dragonflys, we moved on to Anuradhapura, the first, and most ancient capital of the early Sri Lankan throne, which houses the largest Stuta in the world (third largest ancient structure after the great pyramid and another Egyptian pyramid... which apparently contains enough bricks for a wall 3m high from London to Edinburgh!). We arrived late afternoon and stopped off to explore the site, which is much larger than Polonorawa, and was packed out with worshipers due to the fact that it was both a Sunday, and a Full moon day.
Packed out with Temple elephants and buddhist worshipers, we saw the procession of bowls and saffron robes to be given to newly ?ordained monks, with the procession lined with people touching and blessing the robes. The pure scale of the site, and the fact that it was rammed with people who had evidently travelled long distances accross Sri Lanka to be there (we heard of people travelling from 300km away to be there for the event as a kind of pilgrimage). This event culminated in the evening with a kind of carnival through the centure of Anuradhapura, with dancers, far too many people on 3m high stilts hopping on one leg (these stilts were literally strapped onto their legs... bad move I rekon!), and a veritable circus of elephants covered in what I can only describe as christmas lights! Oh and alot of people were throwing fire in all guises around the place... which was fun...
After this we turned in for the night (at about midnight) and got some nice "rest" in our sweatbath of a rest-house room before the quest for steaming piles of science would begin the next day. The next morning we moved to another set of ruins, about 10km away from Anuradhapura, where there were purportedly more monkeys. After climbing up into the jungle following monkeys until we weren't entirely sure where we were any more (we made it out obviously... but it did feel very Indiana Jones as we did it), we made our way back to the vehicles to move onwards. *wildlife note: Here we saw possibly the best animal I have ever seen, the giant land squirrel... imagine a squirrel that is the size of a medium size dog, and could probably eat a cat... and you are about there.... IT WAS AWESOME. See facebook for a couple of pics of it*
From here we drove down to Dambulla, near Sigiria, and were dropped off by the Japanese researchers, as they were going to go back to Kandy to further process the samples, whilst we explored the Sigiria area over the next few days. I dont want to spoil the next blog, but it involves walking up a 100m high temple twice, (three times for Ben), and old man following us up a hill and expecting to get paid, and Ben being bullied by monkeys... but thats for part II
xx
Before we left for the cultural triangle, we didn't really do anything too exciting - I had my day of gastritis, and a few days in the hospital and the Lab, both of which I have already described ad nauseum, so I will begin on Saturday, and our journey from Kandy to Polonorawa. We left the university at about midday with some Japanese researchers who are researching the transfer of diseases (especially entamoeba dysentry) from monkey to man, via taking monkey fecal samples and analysing them. We were recruited for the study as extra labour, with free accommodation and entry to the cultural triangle sites in return (I would like to add that this blog is best read along with my pictures on facebook - as I cannot describe anything I have seen here to do it justice)
4 hours later we arrived 120km (you work out the average speed!) away in the ancient capital city of polonorawa, and much to our surprise found ourselves driven to our accommodation in the regional monkey sanctuary, which has played host to such legends as Sir David Attonbourgh in the past (spelling prob wrong). This was situated next to the biggest "Tank" in Sri Lanka (A tank being a man made lake, made 1000 years ago by damming a river... its 26 square miles big!). This tank was the local fishing lake, bath, washing machine, swimming pool, elephant watering hole, and a fantastic setting to see storks, kingfishers and countless other nameless birds and small amphibians!
After stopping off at "Monkey Camp" to drop off our kit, we were taken to the ruins of the ancient city itself, including a 100 year old palace, which had over 7000 rooms when it was complete. A few touts trying to sell awful tourist tat later, we had explored many of the most impressive areas of the site, including a huge Stuta (Dome with sticky out thing on top - Buddhist religious symbol), we went back to camp for dinner, far too much chat about monkey social groupings with the 25 year proprietor of the camp, and an earlyish night, for reasons which will become apparent!
5am is early. Very early in fact. However, it turns out most monkeys defacate at approx 6-7am after waking up in their sleeping tree, so if you want to collect those steaming little piles of science when they are fresh, its a sacrifice you have to make! However, I did not begrudge this as soon as I saw the incredible sunrise over the Tank, and got to look around the ruins (following monkeys of course) before the tourists were out of bed, and more importantly when people were not trying to sell us tat!
From here, after some brief sample analysis, and sightings of a brown mongoose (the reason why snakes are rare in the area!), and various awesome dragonflys, we moved on to Anuradhapura, the first, and most ancient capital of the early Sri Lankan throne, which houses the largest Stuta in the world (third largest ancient structure after the great pyramid and another Egyptian pyramid... which apparently contains enough bricks for a wall 3m high from London to Edinburgh!). We arrived late afternoon and stopped off to explore the site, which is much larger than Polonorawa, and was packed out with worshipers due to the fact that it was both a Sunday, and a Full moon day.
Packed out with Temple elephants and buddhist worshipers, we saw the procession of bowls and saffron robes to be given to newly ?ordained monks, with the procession lined with people touching and blessing the robes. The pure scale of the site, and the fact that it was rammed with people who had evidently travelled long distances accross Sri Lanka to be there (we heard of people travelling from 300km away to be there for the event as a kind of pilgrimage). This event culminated in the evening with a kind of carnival through the centure of Anuradhapura, with dancers, far too many people on 3m high stilts hopping on one leg (these stilts were literally strapped onto their legs... bad move I rekon!), and a veritable circus of elephants covered in what I can only describe as christmas lights! Oh and alot of people were throwing fire in all guises around the place... which was fun...
After this we turned in for the night (at about midnight) and got some nice "rest" in our sweatbath of a rest-house room before the quest for steaming piles of science would begin the next day. The next morning we moved to another set of ruins, about 10km away from Anuradhapura, where there were purportedly more monkeys. After climbing up into the jungle following monkeys until we weren't entirely sure where we were any more (we made it out obviously... but it did feel very Indiana Jones as we did it), we made our way back to the vehicles to move onwards. *wildlife note: Here we saw possibly the best animal I have ever seen, the giant land squirrel... imagine a squirrel that is the size of a medium size dog, and could probably eat a cat... and you are about there.... IT WAS AWESOME. See facebook for a couple of pics of it*
From here we drove down to Dambulla, near Sigiria, and were dropped off by the Japanese researchers, as they were going to go back to Kandy to further process the samples, whilst we explored the Sigiria area over the next few days. I dont want to spoil the next blog, but it involves walking up a 100m high temple twice, (three times for Ben), and old man following us up a hill and expecting to get paid, and Ben being bullied by monkeys... but thats for part II
xx
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Railway travel in Sri Lanka
In my latest “main” blog, I commented on how we travelled down to Colombo, and to these various beaches along the West Coast by Train, but I did not go into just what an experience train travel is in the country. I have already described to you the colonial feel to the railways themselves and the Stations along the track, but I was amazed to find that this historic feel was maintained on the trains themselves.
The choice of First, Second or Third class in itself makes me think of the British rail network as it must have been in the early parts of last century (of course now everyone in Britain travels by our very own “third class”). However, the choice of third class allowed us to travel the 120km from Kandy to Colombo for a sum of 150 rupees, slightly less than a pound. The carriages looked straight from a history book, with dim flickering lights (It was still dark as we went aboard the train), and a wooden interior, with bench seating sprawling from a thin central corridor. All the seats were taken, and there were already a large number of people filling the gang way, so we moved back towards the buffet car, which was mostly open space, but provided us with a clear space to sit with our bags for the journey.
I suppose you all must think we are mad for going for third class for a 3 hour journey, when a first class observation seat (at the opposite end of the train to the locomotive, with a large window allowing vision out of the back/front of the train, depending on the direction of travel) costing only 450 rupees (3 pounds). At first it was because we are spectacularly cheap (as I am sure you have gathered by now), but in retrospect it was one of the best travel decisions we have ever made.
Health and safety have evidently not caught hold in this country to the extent which it has in the UK, and the doors on the side of the train in third class are left entirely open throughout the journey. On a normal journey by car or train you are sitting within an enclosed environment, viewing the landscape through a window, in a state of abject detachment, in a similar way to how you might see a scene on a television, or in a photo. When you take advantage of this portal into the surroundings, you experience the passing of scenery in an entirely different way. By grabbing the alighting handles (as hard as you can obviously) and putting yourself outside of the train, into the environment, you experience the journey not passively, but actively, seeing the track disappear below you, feeling the air rush by you, truly sensing the sounds, sights and smells of the areas you pass (and even occasionally being slapped in the face by a palm leaf!). You travel though villages communicating with those you pass (almost catching a mango someone threw to me), experiencing the atmosphere and being involved in your surroundings, which in my opinion makes the journey by rail just as important as the destination here!
There are however some disadvantages to being forced into such a small environment for prolonged periods of time. Many people ride the train to busk, beg and sell food to passengers. They walk around with CT scans or letters from their doctor, outlining medical procedures they cannot afford, or drugs which they cannot obtain. The sheer volume of these people is awful, and the sums of money they need to raise (assuming credibility of their story – another matter entirely) is large, even by our standards at several thousand pounds. It creates a somewhat awkward environment as you never know who needs help, and who is scamming you, and you can never know if any money you chose to give is going to a truly good cause or not.
Overall, Sri Lankan train journeys offer a much better price, experience and feel than those in the UK, although their infrequency (3-4 hours on average, some longer journeys only once or twice a day), and the veritable circus of people trying to steal your money somewhat take the edge off a fantastic system.
Tuesday 20 July 2010
Its fun to stay at the YMCA!
Ok so I have now recovered from our weekend in Colombo, and ALOT happened there, so I will almost certainly miss out some relatively major chunks!
We got the 6:20 train from Peradiniya to Colombo, stepped off the train and exited the station (the train journeys themselves are worthy of their own blog post... which I will probably make). Colombo is not a pretty place... the smell of sulphur billowing from the green (??) river was our first clue that this was not going to be a tropical paradise. This feeling was confirmed when we saw our first dozen beggars, and were harrassed by our first 20 or so Tuk-Tuks "Where you going... I take you... Where you going... Why you walking..." SHUT UP! There was the standard array of con artists who asked "do you not recognise me from your hotel" and "I friend, I show you to room", and litter scattered all over the place. This was confounded by the police officers armed with AKs placed every hundred metres down every road, and the military patrols that we saw going about the place!
We decided that before we tried to explore any further, we would find out where we would be staying that night, so we walked over the the YMCA and asked to see our room. The outside of the building was less than attractive, but thats nothing compared to the room! When flushed the toilet sprayed everywhere, the sheets which we knew were once white were a shade of brown, the window consisted of a peice of plastic dangling down from the outside of the building! Still, for 2 pounds a night, we were both convinced we could cope with this if we went and bought cheap camp beds, so we set off to do some shopping.
First stop was Majestic City, the City Mall, which featured 5-6 shops selling counterfeit DVDs, just as many selling illegally aquired designer clothing, and a spatting of shops selling random assortments of technology and tat. Needless to say I now own some Armarni and Boss clothing, and Ben went a bit nuts on burbarry, and we picked up the whole series of "The Pacific" for about 7 pounds... When in Rome...
We then checked out the "beach" at Colombo, which consisted of a railway track, broken glass and a weird green tint to the water that looked like food colouring (same colour as the sulphur river). We were not overly impressed with Colombo at this point, as you might guess, so we tried to check out some of the cultural aspects of the city, checking out the National museum. Now I do object to tourists paying 500 Rupees when locals pay 5 to get into a museum, but it was still worth it, despite the "white tax", as we got to look at the full history of the island, and learn about the ancient ruins of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa which we should be visiting this weekend. We stopped off on the seafront for a bit of dinner, which was great until the horizontal rain drove us back to the YMCA to consider staying for the night, despite not finding camp beds.
We reached the pit of horror, and thought "we will just take off the matress and sleep on the planks, we will probably be ok". 3 fleas and a moment of joint fear later we found ourself checking into the grand oriental hotel for the night. We had warm showers :) then set off to the club underneath the hotel to see what the Colombo nightlife could be like. I first sensed problems when we were told as we went down the stairs that "it was fine to touch" as the bouncer grabbed my moob. a minute later we were sitting at the bar with scantily clad women introducing themselves to us... another minute later we had "left something in our room" and had escaped! Next thing we see is a car with one man and three women crawl past us roll down its window, and have one of the girls proclaim "hello" in that way only special women can...
Not too badly phased we wandered away and found our way to a british style pub called "In... on the green" where we met and chatted to several slovakian girls who were travelling Sri Lanka for 3 weeks. We had a pint of 9% beer, 2 shots of arrack (a kind of whisky made from coconuts) and felt far too tipsy before heading back to the hotel for the night.
The next day was much more tame, as we headed to Alusgema, a coastal resort south of Kandy. It had stretches of fantastic golden beaches, a sea so warm it could have been bath water, and of course the touts who appear from the bushes to offer you a hotel to stay in, a place to eat... and of course "English boys really like Sri Lankan girls, do you want to meet any?"... Brilliant.
After this we made the several hour (as all journeys are) journey back into Colombo and out into the suburbs to meet up with miss Di Luzio and Khema in a place where I still dont know where it is... We just got off the bus when we were told! We had an awesome night of shisha, lasange (I miss western food) and the highlight, swimming in the cobra pool in a lightning storm (dont worry, we hit the water with a big stick before getting in to make sure the cobras werent in there at the time!).
The next day, we went back to Colombo to renew our Visas, and travelled to mount lavina, a decent beach near Colombo before heading back to Kandy. In true tradition, we used our "white persons credibility" (the ability of white people to never be questioned when they walk into expensive hotels) to walk down to a private beach, and enjoy a few hours reading and feeding palm squirrels nuts (check them out they are adorable). We took the train back to Kandy and wandered home. The culmination of the trip was when I arrived home, felt ill and just CHUNDERED EVERYWHERE! (had to say it) We still cant figure out what it was that destroyed my stomach but I'm just going to blame Colombo and its filth!
We got the 6:20 train from Peradiniya to Colombo, stepped off the train and exited the station (the train journeys themselves are worthy of their own blog post... which I will probably make). Colombo is not a pretty place... the smell of sulphur billowing from the green (??) river was our first clue that this was not going to be a tropical paradise. This feeling was confirmed when we saw our first dozen beggars, and were harrassed by our first 20 or so Tuk-Tuks "Where you going... I take you... Where you going... Why you walking..." SHUT UP! There was the standard array of con artists who asked "do you not recognise me from your hotel" and "I friend, I show you to room", and litter scattered all over the place. This was confounded by the police officers armed with AKs placed every hundred metres down every road, and the military patrols that we saw going about the place!
We decided that before we tried to explore any further, we would find out where we would be staying that night, so we walked over the the YMCA and asked to see our room. The outside of the building was less than attractive, but thats nothing compared to the room! When flushed the toilet sprayed everywhere, the sheets which we knew were once white were a shade of brown, the window consisted of a peice of plastic dangling down from the outside of the building! Still, for 2 pounds a night, we were both convinced we could cope with this if we went and bought cheap camp beds, so we set off to do some shopping.
First stop was Majestic City, the City Mall, which featured 5-6 shops selling counterfeit DVDs, just as many selling illegally aquired designer clothing, and a spatting of shops selling random assortments of technology and tat. Needless to say I now own some Armarni and Boss clothing, and Ben went a bit nuts on burbarry, and we picked up the whole series of "The Pacific" for about 7 pounds... When in Rome...
We then checked out the "beach" at Colombo, which consisted of a railway track, broken glass and a weird green tint to the water that looked like food colouring (same colour as the sulphur river). We were not overly impressed with Colombo at this point, as you might guess, so we tried to check out some of the cultural aspects of the city, checking out the National museum. Now I do object to tourists paying 500 Rupees when locals pay 5 to get into a museum, but it was still worth it, despite the "white tax", as we got to look at the full history of the island, and learn about the ancient ruins of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa which we should be visiting this weekend. We stopped off on the seafront for a bit of dinner, which was great until the horizontal rain drove us back to the YMCA to consider staying for the night, despite not finding camp beds.
We reached the pit of horror, and thought "we will just take off the matress and sleep on the planks, we will probably be ok". 3 fleas and a moment of joint fear later we found ourself checking into the grand oriental hotel for the night. We had warm showers :) then set off to the club underneath the hotel to see what the Colombo nightlife could be like. I first sensed problems when we were told as we went down the stairs that "it was fine to touch" as the bouncer grabbed my moob. a minute later we were sitting at the bar with scantily clad women introducing themselves to us... another minute later we had "left something in our room" and had escaped! Next thing we see is a car with one man and three women crawl past us roll down its window, and have one of the girls proclaim "hello" in that way only special women can...
Not too badly phased we wandered away and found our way to a british style pub called "In... on the green" where we met and chatted to several slovakian girls who were travelling Sri Lanka for 3 weeks. We had a pint of 9% beer, 2 shots of arrack (a kind of whisky made from coconuts) and felt far too tipsy before heading back to the hotel for the night.
The next day was much more tame, as we headed to Alusgema, a coastal resort south of Kandy. It had stretches of fantastic golden beaches, a sea so warm it could have been bath water, and of course the touts who appear from the bushes to offer you a hotel to stay in, a place to eat... and of course "English boys really like Sri Lankan girls, do you want to meet any?"... Brilliant.
After this we made the several hour (as all journeys are) journey back into Colombo and out into the suburbs to meet up with miss Di Luzio and Khema in a place where I still dont know where it is... We just got off the bus when we were told! We had an awesome night of shisha, lasange (I miss western food) and the highlight, swimming in the cobra pool in a lightning storm (dont worry, we hit the water with a big stick before getting in to make sure the cobras werent in there at the time!).
The next day, we went back to Colombo to renew our Visas, and travelled to mount lavina, a decent beach near Colombo before heading back to Kandy. In true tradition, we used our "white persons credibility" (the ability of white people to never be questioned when they walk into expensive hotels) to walk down to a private beach, and enjoy a few hours reading and feeding palm squirrels nuts (check them out they are adorable). We took the train back to Kandy and wandered home. The culmination of the trip was when I arrived home, felt ill and just CHUNDERED EVERYWHERE! (had to say it) We still cant figure out what it was that destroyed my stomach but I'm just going to blame Colombo and its filth!
Friday 16 July 2010
Carry on Doctor
Before we start - Wildlife report: We have now witnessed possibly the most majestic of Sri Lankas wildlife... THE GIANT LAND SNAIL! Now monkeys are cool, and the monkeys we saw crawling around Kandy city centre are alright... but having seen this graceful beast, I might as well go home, my work here is done!! :) Although that is the only new addition on our animal count, we went to the Parasitology Dept. today, and got a lesson on how to identify the 5 different types of deadly land snakes in Sri Lanka: Russells Viper, small scale viper, cobra, Ceylon Crait, Indian Crait (at sea it is easy - ALL sea snakes can kill). My conclusion was in general, snake = run (and scream like a little girl). However, it is good to know that some snakes are not poisonous, such as the python, which can only kill you by constriction...
Right, onto the last two days. We have been attached to the medical wards at Peradeniya Teaching Hospital, and have been attending ward rounds with the final year medical students, following around the registrar/consultant discussing all the cases in the ward. Now being aware that most people are not medical freaks, and wont care what diseases I saw, I'll just say I saw some tropical diseases that I'm likely never to see in the UK... which is cool!
The hospital itself was weird, as it was precisely like stepping back 40 years in teaching methods, with the bad-ass consultant wandering around the place, diagnosing at will, with his minions following in awe!
However, what confused me the most was that although this hospital had money for CT, MRI and neurosurgeons, there was no facility to wash hands before reaching the wards, let alone between patients. The wards themselves were entirely open to the elements and there were so few beds that half of the people on the wards, even inpatients, had to sit on chairs along the sides to await attention! Overall it was an exciting experience, but it left me somewhat skeptical about the doctors priorities - Diagnosis technology vs basic hygiene. We should be going back to the hospital to the surgical departments next week sometime so perhaps this will change my opinions.
Another point that I noticed at the hospital was that of language in Sri Lanka. All of the medicine is discussed and undertaken in English, which most people in the population can understand a small amount of, but few outside the academic sphere are fluent in. Therefore there is a constant switch between English between the Doctors, and Sinhalese (Or Tamil, depending on the patient) when communication to the patient is required. We saw this from the odd angle of only being able to understand the medical aspect of the conversation, and not being able to converse with the patients, weirdly detaching ourselves from the medicine. All of this reminds me of the Latin - English divide of the past, where Latin, the language of the Learned was used almost to confuse/impress those who could not speak it. This really reinforces a Doctor-knows-best mentality over here, and the patients are entirely trusting of the doctors, being cooperative of any examination they wish to perform. This was of course surprising for us coming from the culture of "my doctor knows nothing and is crap" that we have in the UK (and moreso in the USA).
As we have spent alot of our time in the hospital recently, there has been a slight lack of interesting occurances for myself and Ben - So I apologise that this blog is a bit less jovial than my last few. However, we are up at 5am tomorrow to get the Train to Colombo, where we are staying for 3 days in a 2 pound a night YMCA and meeting up with miss Di Luzio... what could possibly go wrong :P xx
Right, onto the last two days. We have been attached to the medical wards at Peradeniya Teaching Hospital, and have been attending ward rounds with the final year medical students, following around the registrar/consultant discussing all the cases in the ward. Now being aware that most people are not medical freaks, and wont care what diseases I saw, I'll just say I saw some tropical diseases that I'm likely never to see in the UK... which is cool!
The hospital itself was weird, as it was precisely like stepping back 40 years in teaching methods, with the bad-ass consultant wandering around the place, diagnosing at will, with his minions following in awe!
However, what confused me the most was that although this hospital had money for CT, MRI and neurosurgeons, there was no facility to wash hands before reaching the wards, let alone between patients. The wards themselves were entirely open to the elements and there were so few beds that half of the people on the wards, even inpatients, had to sit on chairs along the sides to await attention! Overall it was an exciting experience, but it left me somewhat skeptical about the doctors priorities - Diagnosis technology vs basic hygiene. We should be going back to the hospital to the surgical departments next week sometime so perhaps this will change my opinions.
Another point that I noticed at the hospital was that of language in Sri Lanka. All of the medicine is discussed and undertaken in English, which most people in the population can understand a small amount of, but few outside the academic sphere are fluent in. Therefore there is a constant switch between English between the Doctors, and Sinhalese (Or Tamil, depending on the patient) when communication to the patient is required. We saw this from the odd angle of only being able to understand the medical aspect of the conversation, and not being able to converse with the patients, weirdly detaching ourselves from the medicine. All of this reminds me of the Latin - English divide of the past, where Latin, the language of the Learned was used almost to confuse/impress those who could not speak it. This really reinforces a Doctor-knows-best mentality over here, and the patients are entirely trusting of the doctors, being cooperative of any examination they wish to perform. This was of course surprising for us coming from the culture of "my doctor knows nothing and is crap" that we have in the UK (and moreso in the USA).
As we have spent alot of our time in the hospital recently, there has been a slight lack of interesting occurances for myself and Ben - So I apologise that this blog is a bit less jovial than my last few. However, we are up at 5am tomorrow to get the Train to Colombo, where we are staying for 3 days in a 2 pound a night YMCA and meeting up with miss Di Luzio... what could possibly go wrong :P xx
Wednesday 14 July 2010
Lets get this research on track, or has it gone a bit off the rails?
And so we intrepidly walked the 2 miles to our lab on Monday morning, with visions of solving the worlds most poignant scientific problems, and being home for tea and medals. Alas, it wasn’t to be, as everyone in the Lab either spoke no English, or were busy organising the 2nd year Vet exams at the university, so we were instructed to go for a walk. There are a few spoilers on my Facebook photos, but in essence, we found our way to the small Railway station next to our Lab, and noticed people were casually walking along the track. Not wanting to miss out on some potential danger, and some exciting culture, we started to explore the track between Kandy and Peradeniya.
The locals were evidently not used to tourists using this method of getting around, and we got a good few odd glances, as well has fruit handed to us by a friendly family who lives by the track (this was a jack fruit, which was in essence slimey sweet pulp covering a mysteriously testicle like seed – a fruit arrangement common of the fruits of the region that are not exported, I wonder why). The old school stations, with the original colonial signalling systems, as well as the tropical surroundings made the whole experience feel like something out of an early Indiana Jones movie, and made for excessive photography only equalled by Japanese tourists in Cambridge!
Finally there was THE BRIDGE, which was just south west of our local station. It was about 100m long, with a narrow maintanece walkway comprised of steel strips to one side. It spanned a large river, and gave breathtaking views up and down the valley, although (apart from making sure we had a couple of pictures) we did not linger there for too long, for obvious reasons.
The wildlife here just keeps giving and giving, and a group of wild monkeys, casually wandering around the university campus, a flock (right collective noun?) of fruit bats which must have numbered in the thousands flying over campus in a continuous stream for about an hour, and a disturbingly large scorpion (lukily dead) have kept our eyes peeled, checking around for the next taxonomical surprise which lies around the corner. (We have been told that in the area there are small leapods, mongeese, porcupines and deer, which I am still eager to see, along with the hundreds of frogs I hear every night, but never see!)
Bens money woes were almost deepened the other day when we tried for a second time to cash his travellers cheques after the mishap in Kandy on Sunday. After signing his cheques (I don’t know whether he used his new or old signature), they cashier disappeared for about 10 minutes, without warning. Now I was ready to go “wait outside”, and watch the arrest of my friend, as the fraud police swept in to take him away, primarily so that there was only one bail that our host out here would have to pay, but before I fled the wrath of the Sri Lankan legal system (just as an example, trying to take drugs into the country is the death penalty – as we were repeatedly told at the airport), they returned with his money, and Ben is now solvent again.
As for the more normal aspects of our life here (if there are any), we have now gone entirely local, eating Rice and Curry for every meal (and at 100 rupees – 60p a pop, who can blame us), although the lack of cutlery was disconcerting at first… I like knives and forks! Getting around the place also took a slightly more crazy turn as we decided to take the 9p busses to and from Kandy. Just a few facts to give you the feel of these busses: Imagine how packed the tube is at absolute rush hour – Now imagine you are in a 1970s Indian built bus which has a clutch that gives the whole bus a parkinsonian tremor as you pull away – put this bus onto the roads described in an earlier blog, and imagine a driver that doesn’t ever want to come to a complete stop (even at bus STOPS)… and you are pretty much there. They are a fantastic way to make small journeys, but for anything longer I am inclined to take the train!
Now, being in a hot country, especially with the propensity to sweat excessively that I have meant that we decided some washing was in order. It was much to my surprise when I asked my host where to get my washing done that he brought me a bucket and some washing powder. Now I don’t know if any of you will have hand washed your clothes, but I can assure you that it is not fun – 1 minute to wash the clothes in the suds, and 15 mins to rinse all the suds out of the clothes, to ensure that next time there is tropical rain, I don’t turn into a one man foam party! I am writing this having just finished washing my clothes, and have decided that I can wear shirts more than one day before changing them! I also feel that this is a good time to mention the fact that we only have a cold shower here too, as this is the only time that I might be able to squeeze the slightest bit of sympathy out of you all for my strife :P.
I have just realised that I didn’t really mention anything else about the lab work, but that’s because there is nothing else really. A few more railway wanders and an afternoon of immunoflouresence assays to find anti-rickettsial antibodys in patient serum from the local hospital is all that we have to show for our efforts (not that I’m complaining). However, we have talked to the Prof. of Medicine at the medical school here, and hopefully we should be going into the hospital for the next two days to get a 1st hand experience of tropical diseases like Dengue, Leptospirosis and Rickettsia, and I for one am looking forward to putting on my white coat tomorrow (here you still have to wear one) and really experiencing tropical medicine!
xx
The locals were evidently not used to tourists using this method of getting around, and we got a good few odd glances, as well has fruit handed to us by a friendly family who lives by the track (this was a jack fruit, which was in essence slimey sweet pulp covering a mysteriously testicle like seed – a fruit arrangement common of the fruits of the region that are not exported, I wonder why). The old school stations, with the original colonial signalling systems, as well as the tropical surroundings made the whole experience feel like something out of an early Indiana Jones movie, and made for excessive photography only equalled by Japanese tourists in Cambridge!
Finally there was THE BRIDGE, which was just south west of our local station. It was about 100m long, with a narrow maintanece walkway comprised of steel strips to one side. It spanned a large river, and gave breathtaking views up and down the valley, although (apart from making sure we had a couple of pictures) we did not linger there for too long, for obvious reasons.
The wildlife here just keeps giving and giving, and a group of wild monkeys, casually wandering around the university campus, a flock (right collective noun?) of fruit bats which must have numbered in the thousands flying over campus in a continuous stream for about an hour, and a disturbingly large scorpion (lukily dead) have kept our eyes peeled, checking around for the next taxonomical surprise which lies around the corner. (We have been told that in the area there are small leapods, mongeese, porcupines and deer, which I am still eager to see, along with the hundreds of frogs I hear every night, but never see!)
Bens money woes were almost deepened the other day when we tried for a second time to cash his travellers cheques after the mishap in Kandy on Sunday. After signing his cheques (I don’t know whether he used his new or old signature), they cashier disappeared for about 10 minutes, without warning. Now I was ready to go “wait outside”, and watch the arrest of my friend, as the fraud police swept in to take him away, primarily so that there was only one bail that our host out here would have to pay, but before I fled the wrath of the Sri Lankan legal system (just as an example, trying to take drugs into the country is the death penalty – as we were repeatedly told at the airport), they returned with his money, and Ben is now solvent again.
As for the more normal aspects of our life here (if there are any), we have now gone entirely local, eating Rice and Curry for every meal (and at 100 rupees – 60p a pop, who can blame us), although the lack of cutlery was disconcerting at first… I like knives and forks! Getting around the place also took a slightly more crazy turn as we decided to take the 9p busses to and from Kandy. Just a few facts to give you the feel of these busses: Imagine how packed the tube is at absolute rush hour – Now imagine you are in a 1970s Indian built bus which has a clutch that gives the whole bus a parkinsonian tremor as you pull away – put this bus onto the roads described in an earlier blog, and imagine a driver that doesn’t ever want to come to a complete stop (even at bus STOPS)… and you are pretty much there. They are a fantastic way to make small journeys, but for anything longer I am inclined to take the train!
Now, being in a hot country, especially with the propensity to sweat excessively that I have meant that we decided some washing was in order. It was much to my surprise when I asked my host where to get my washing done that he brought me a bucket and some washing powder. Now I don’t know if any of you will have hand washed your clothes, but I can assure you that it is not fun – 1 minute to wash the clothes in the suds, and 15 mins to rinse all the suds out of the clothes, to ensure that next time there is tropical rain, I don’t turn into a one man foam party! I am writing this having just finished washing my clothes, and have decided that I can wear shirts more than one day before changing them! I also feel that this is a good time to mention the fact that we only have a cold shower here too, as this is the only time that I might be able to squeeze the slightest bit of sympathy out of you all for my strife :P.
I have just realised that I didn’t really mention anything else about the lab work, but that’s because there is nothing else really. A few more railway wanders and an afternoon of immunoflouresence assays to find anti-rickettsial antibodys in patient serum from the local hospital is all that we have to show for our efforts (not that I’m complaining). However, we have talked to the Prof. of Medicine at the medical school here, and hopefully we should be going into the hospital for the next two days to get a 1st hand experience of tropical diseases like Dengue, Leptospirosis and Rickettsia, and I for one am looking forward to putting on my white coat tomorrow (here you still have to wear one) and really experiencing tropical medicine!
xx
Monday 12 July 2010
This is the way, to Kandy mountain
P.S. Ben and I are writing our blogs without consulting eachother, so that we can give two perspectives of our stay - so if you want to, check out his blog arrack to the future (I am following it so you should be able to find it easily).
This morning we were dropped into Kandy for our first experience of Sri Lanka on foot. The first discovery we made was how reluctant a bank is to cash travelers cheques if you have changed your signature so that it is different to your driving license. Turns out very (courtesy of Ben). After this the bank of Coleman was set up with the travelers cheque I had successfully cashed, and we were on our way.
My first impression of Kandy is organised chaos. Everyone knows where they are going, what they are doing, and how to do it (except us of course). Hundreds of fruit stands, small traders and "guides" (see later) lined the streets, and gave it a real hussle and bussle. They even had the army controlling traffic at crossings to try and protect pedestrians from the onslaught of Sri Lankan traffic.
Another major impression of Kandy is that conversation costs... alot. I am used to a pleasent conversation at the side of the road, or in a temple being free... but not here. When we arrived at some of the buddist shrines in Kandy, we got chatting to a local about the statues of Budda, and when we turned to walk away, he started asking for "something for his services"??? We gave him 50 rupees (about 30p) and escaped with the knowledge that people want our money.
To try and stop this flow of money for conversation, we came up with the "wave off" and say no thankyou approach. This is effective, but not as awesome as the american approach which seemed to be the "bullshit" approach of replying to all questions with phrases like "my friend eats monkey feces and testicles". We have been tempted to take up this approach until we head a local reply with the phrase "me too!"!
Around the lake in Kandy there was an incredible amount of wildlife - monitor lizards (1.5m long), turtles, fruit bats and scores of birds. These were all awesome, but the cream of the day was when we saw the elephants in the temple (domesticated elephants) being washed by trainers. For a small fee (obviously) they let us take photos stroking the elephants, which seemed surprisingly docile throughout this whole process (box ticked!!).
We then noticed an arrogantly large statue of the budda on top of a mountain nearby (now dubbed Kandy mountain), so we decided to go have a gander. After a 200m climb in 35 degree heat, we made it to the top, and went onto the plateau where the statue was. We met a number of monks at the top, who explained that the statue was still under construction (the back of it was scaffolding). The monks were extremely friendly, and calm in nature, a lovely contrast to the chaos of the town below (which incidentally you got awesome views of from up the top).
After an incredible local dance show (obviously with many people all to happy to take your money for a "guided tour" on your way out), and a decent steak and onion at Devon(?!) resteraunt, we decided we wouldnt risk the chaos of the bus at this time of night, and so we would take a three wheeled "tuk-tuk" back to the University. Now, we know from talking to people out there that this is a 250 rupee fare - but the tourist effect was so strong that we were asked by several drivers we asked to pay 500! (still only 2 pounds 50, but thats not the point). We rapidly learnt how to haggle, and managed to get the ride back for 300 (nobody would offer us the local rate, no matter how hard we tried).
One or two near death experience later we arrived back at the university, and walked back to where we are staying. We casually commented that we had seen alot of cool wildlife, but no dodgy arachnids (mistake). When i was writing up this blog I heard "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD" billow from the bathroom, and saw a very pale Ben run out. Turns out spiders with a leg span of about 20cm splayed do exist, and one happened to be in our bath room. Due to our lack of knowledge of spider danger out here, several ideas were mooted - Attack it with the bin - mosquito spray - close the door and hope it crawls into a hole a dies. None of these seemed good so we both turned into massive girls and got the person who owns the house to deal with it. He killed it with a broom, but it was too late - every movement, every sound was automatically transformed into something trying to kill us!
Anyway, I have missed out many things that happened in Kandy because this is already getting far too long, and my readership has probably halved in the last 2 paragraphs so I shall leave it here for now. Now that the spider is dead we will try and sleep and get ready for the first day actually in the Lab. Lets see how much Gap will be in this Gap-month. xx
This morning we were dropped into Kandy for our first experience of Sri Lanka on foot. The first discovery we made was how reluctant a bank is to cash travelers cheques if you have changed your signature so that it is different to your driving license. Turns out very (courtesy of Ben). After this the bank of Coleman was set up with the travelers cheque I had successfully cashed, and we were on our way.
My first impression of Kandy is organised chaos. Everyone knows where they are going, what they are doing, and how to do it (except us of course). Hundreds of fruit stands, small traders and "guides" (see later) lined the streets, and gave it a real hussle and bussle. They even had the army controlling traffic at crossings to try and protect pedestrians from the onslaught of Sri Lankan traffic.
Another major impression of Kandy is that conversation costs... alot. I am used to a pleasent conversation at the side of the road, or in a temple being free... but not here. When we arrived at some of the buddist shrines in Kandy, we got chatting to a local about the statues of Budda, and when we turned to walk away, he started asking for "something for his services"??? We gave him 50 rupees (about 30p) and escaped with the knowledge that people want our money.
To try and stop this flow of money for conversation, we came up with the "wave off" and say no thankyou approach. This is effective, but not as awesome as the american approach which seemed to be the "bullshit" approach of replying to all questions with phrases like "my friend eats monkey feces and testicles". We have been tempted to take up this approach until we head a local reply with the phrase "me too!"!
Around the lake in Kandy there was an incredible amount of wildlife - monitor lizards (1.5m long), turtles, fruit bats and scores of birds. These were all awesome, but the cream of the day was when we saw the elephants in the temple (domesticated elephants) being washed by trainers. For a small fee (obviously) they let us take photos stroking the elephants, which seemed surprisingly docile throughout this whole process (box ticked!!).
We then noticed an arrogantly large statue of the budda on top of a mountain nearby (now dubbed Kandy mountain), so we decided to go have a gander. After a 200m climb in 35 degree heat, we made it to the top, and went onto the plateau where the statue was. We met a number of monks at the top, who explained that the statue was still under construction (the back of it was scaffolding). The monks were extremely friendly, and calm in nature, a lovely contrast to the chaos of the town below (which incidentally you got awesome views of from up the top).
After an incredible local dance show (obviously with many people all to happy to take your money for a "guided tour" on your way out), and a decent steak and onion at Devon(?!) resteraunt, we decided we wouldnt risk the chaos of the bus at this time of night, and so we would take a three wheeled "tuk-tuk" back to the University. Now, we know from talking to people out there that this is a 250 rupee fare - but the tourist effect was so strong that we were asked by several drivers we asked to pay 500! (still only 2 pounds 50, but thats not the point). We rapidly learnt how to haggle, and managed to get the ride back for 300 (nobody would offer us the local rate, no matter how hard we tried).
One or two near death experience later we arrived back at the university, and walked back to where we are staying. We casually commented that we had seen alot of cool wildlife, but no dodgy arachnids (mistake). When i was writing up this blog I heard "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD" billow from the bathroom, and saw a very pale Ben run out. Turns out spiders with a leg span of about 20cm splayed do exist, and one happened to be in our bath room. Due to our lack of knowledge of spider danger out here, several ideas were mooted - Attack it with the bin - mosquito spray - close the door and hope it crawls into a hole a dies. None of these seemed good so we both turned into massive girls and got the person who owns the house to deal with it. He killed it with a broom, but it was too late - every movement, every sound was automatically transformed into something trying to kill us!
Anyway, I have missed out many things that happened in Kandy because this is already getting far too long, and my readership has probably halved in the last 2 paragraphs so I shall leave it here for now. Now that the spider is dead we will try and sleep and get ready for the first day actually in the Lab. Lets see how much Gap will be in this Gap-month. xx
Fancy a tipple before lunch?
P.S. I am sorry that several blogs from different days will come out at the same time, I am writing them on MS word then publishing them whenever I can.
As predicted, sleep didn’t really Happen before leaving Bens for the coach in the morning, but a little bit happened in the Coach, and apart from having my passport swabbed for explosives(!), we passed through to departures without any problems.
However, when we reached departures, our adventure really began, when we were offered a free sample of some “Snow Queen” premium vodka. We weighed up the fact that it was free, and the fact that it was 7am, and decided it was worth a tipple… That and our pint at 8am set us up well for the first flight.
A lifetime of flying easy-jet didn’t set me up for the glories of our first Emerites flight to Dubai. Screens in seats, up to date films, and complementary alcohol every hour or so made us far more tipsy that it is reasonable to be at midday. We also got a bit too excited when we were looking through the “under the aircraft” camera whilst going over Baghdad.
We got to Dubai at about 8pm (their time), and headed straight to the tallest building in the world (its name escapes me at the moment) on their metro. Two major thoughts about Dubai – 1) the use of unnecessarily big buildings to prove they are rich, and 2) don’t try and walk anywhere! The latter was discovered when we tried to walk from the airport to “the creek” after the metro closed – about a mile as the crow flies. After crossing one 5 lane road and walking through 2 neighbourhoods which looked like mugging central, and travelling about 400m total (as the crow flies) in 45 mins, we thought it would be best to spend the 2am-9am period of our stopover in airport departures. After a few hours of talking to randomers (including a south African doctor who might offer us an elective there!) and riding those travelling escalators up and down the airport, we finally set off for Colombo (via Male in the Maldives).
After another flight of several hours (and Ben having a G and T which did NOT agree with his tiredness), and an hour sat in the aircraft in the Maldives, we arrived in Colombo just after sunset. The queue for Immigration was a bit nerve-wracking as we didn’t actually get VISAs in the end before leaving the UK, but we got in anyway so all was good. We then started the 2.5 hour drive from the Airport to our accommodation (at this point we still didn’t know where it would be - the driver didn’t speak English, but seemed to know where to take us).
Where can I start on Sri Lankan Driving… my old saying that its not too close unless you hit rings true here. I did not know it was possible to fit a car, 2 bikes, 2 three-wheelers and a cow side by side across a road, but it turns out you can! Overtaking seems to occur primarily on corners (especially around the inside of corners), with busses overtaking lorries favouring this tactic mainly. Luckily in our tiredness induced stupor we found this experience fun, not realising the eternal danger we were in.
Finally we arrived at our accommodation – A friend of our lab supervisor who has offered us his spare room with en suite as accommodation. After an extensive search for things with more legs than we have, we went to bed after our 48 hours of sleep deprivation joy, and thought about what would happen when we finally saw this country in the day time!
As predicted, sleep didn’t really Happen before leaving Bens for the coach in the morning, but a little bit happened in the Coach, and apart from having my passport swabbed for explosives(!), we passed through to departures without any problems.
However, when we reached departures, our adventure really began, when we were offered a free sample of some “Snow Queen” premium vodka. We weighed up the fact that it was free, and the fact that it was 7am, and decided it was worth a tipple… That and our pint at 8am set us up well for the first flight.
A lifetime of flying easy-jet didn’t set me up for the glories of our first Emerites flight to Dubai. Screens in seats, up to date films, and complementary alcohol every hour or so made us far more tipsy that it is reasonable to be at midday. We also got a bit too excited when we were looking through the “under the aircraft” camera whilst going over Baghdad.
We got to Dubai at about 8pm (their time), and headed straight to the tallest building in the world (its name escapes me at the moment) on their metro. Two major thoughts about Dubai – 1) the use of unnecessarily big buildings to prove they are rich, and 2) don’t try and walk anywhere! The latter was discovered when we tried to walk from the airport to “the creek” after the metro closed – about a mile as the crow flies. After crossing one 5 lane road and walking through 2 neighbourhoods which looked like mugging central, and travelling about 400m total (as the crow flies) in 45 mins, we thought it would be best to spend the 2am-9am period of our stopover in airport departures. After a few hours of talking to randomers (including a south African doctor who might offer us an elective there!) and riding those travelling escalators up and down the airport, we finally set off for Colombo (via Male in the Maldives).
After another flight of several hours (and Ben having a G and T which did NOT agree with his tiredness), and an hour sat in the aircraft in the Maldives, we arrived in Colombo just after sunset. The queue for Immigration was a bit nerve-wracking as we didn’t actually get VISAs in the end before leaving the UK, but we got in anyway so all was good. We then started the 2.5 hour drive from the Airport to our accommodation (at this point we still didn’t know where it would be - the driver didn’t speak English, but seemed to know where to take us).
Where can I start on Sri Lankan Driving… my old saying that its not too close unless you hit rings true here. I did not know it was possible to fit a car, 2 bikes, 2 three-wheelers and a cow side by side across a road, but it turns out you can! Overtaking seems to occur primarily on corners (especially around the inside of corners), with busses overtaking lorries favouring this tactic mainly. Luckily in our tiredness induced stupor we found this experience fun, not realising the eternal danger we were in.
Finally we arrived at our accommodation – A friend of our lab supervisor who has offered us his spare room with en suite as accommodation. After an extensive search for things with more legs than we have, we went to bed after our 48 hours of sleep deprivation joy, and thought about what would happen when we finally saw this country in the day time!
Thursday 8 July 2010
The calm before the storm.
Due to the demand of at least 3 people, I am setting up this Blog to chronicle the adventures of myself and Ben in Sri Lanka in our "Gap Month". We are sitting here, in Foxley, Wiltshire, awaiting 3am, when a coach will majestically whisk us off to Gatwick, for the start of the 28 hour journey to Colombo.
I'm pretty excited if im honest - having never been further east than Berlin, the idea of a 13 hour stopover in Dubai, a quick hop off the plane in the Maldives, and 5 weeks in Sri Lanka seems like a pretty good way to break up the summer!
Currently having the classic debate of whether it is worth trying to get some sleep before the coach, although we both know that we probably wont bother/wont be able to! In fact, skrew it, sleep is for the weak, and is what plane journeys are for right?
Still have no idea where we will be staying out there, or what we will be doing, but that just adds to the adventure of it all I suppose. Dont think there is too much more I can say at the moment except I hope all three of the people who said they would read this enjoy my blog, and I'll let you know more about what I'm doing for the next 5 weeks when I know myself!!
Speak to you all soon :) x
I'm pretty excited if im honest - having never been further east than Berlin, the idea of a 13 hour stopover in Dubai, a quick hop off the plane in the Maldives, and 5 weeks in Sri Lanka seems like a pretty good way to break up the summer!
Currently having the classic debate of whether it is worth trying to get some sleep before the coach, although we both know that we probably wont bother/wont be able to! In fact, skrew it, sleep is for the weak, and is what plane journeys are for right?
Still have no idea where we will be staying out there, or what we will be doing, but that just adds to the adventure of it all I suppose. Dont think there is too much more I can say at the moment except I hope all three of the people who said they would read this enjoy my blog, and I'll let you know more about what I'm doing for the next 5 weeks when I know myself!!
Speak to you all soon :) x
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