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
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