The most awesome post ever maaaaaaaan!

1) Some things we've neglected to mention...Back in Colombo:
Alice and I were walking around the bus station, well Alice was actually trailing behind me while I marched along, when suddenly two men stopped me. They grabbed me, turned me around, and were pointing backwards in distress. Alice, you see, was carrying her large backpack in exactly the way that the manufacturer intended - on her back. She was also carrying a small backpack. Where was she carrying this one? On her front! It isn't called a frontpack Alice. Well, all this additional weight made Alice a little top heavy, and in the chaos of the bussling bus station she was too overwhelmed to cope with the gravitional pull of the earth's mass and as a result went face first towards the sidewalk. If it wasn't for her frontpack which served as a buffer she would have seriously damaged her unusually long teeth - nothing Anne couldn't handle - but she wouldn't have been much to look at for the next 4 months. I leisurely sauntered back to see if she was okay, trying not to laugh, as she lay face down flailing unable to get up. She resembled an overturned turtle, her little arms groping around trying to overcome the hefty hump on her back.
Immediately afterwards, we crossed the street to wait for a bus and a bird shat on me. Well not me, but my bag, which in a materialistic capitalist kind of way is an extension of myself as I bought it with the rewards of my hard labour. Alice said it was karma for laughing at her. I call it animal physiology/digestion. I wiped it off with a bunch of paper I had in my pocket, but my black and green bag is now black, green and white dispite my best efforts. (A Japanese man next to me in the computer place just sneezed really loudly - it was scary.)

2) Back in Arugam Bay

After writing our last blog we went to bed at a reasonable time, and actually made it out surfing the next morning. We woke up at 7:30 and shared a tuktuk with a German guy named Johannes to Peanut Farm - a local surf point. The tuktuk that we hired was the nicest I've seen yet. It had custom metal anchor detailing inside, with a stereo system that had mp3 capabilities, not to mention a number of other after market additions like faux chrome hub caps. We strapped three surf boards to the roof, stopped for bananas in the market, and then headed down the highway. We pulled off after about 10 minutes and went down a windy dirt road towards the beach, driving through heaps of gigantic elephant turds. We got to the beach, and it was unfortunately lacking in surf, so we turned around and went to another place called Whisky Point where we spent the afternoon. The waves were pretty good, but it was busy, so Alice and I spent most of the time trying to stay out of people's way. We had fun, but were exhausted by the end of the day. Surfing is a lot of work.

We've befriended a Kiwi who co-owns a restraurant here with a local guy. His name is Mark, and the restaurant is called The Green Room. We went there for dinner and noticed that the music playing was awesome - Band of Horses, followed by The Gorillaz, and then Massive Attack. As my ipod died on the plane ride over here, I have been sharing Alice's ipod which is loaded full of music obtained from Kris' library. I have made it a well known fact that I think Kris' taste in music is generally bad, and I tease her at any opportunity - to her great psychological trauma. I must admit, and intend to send her a personalized email attesting to this fact, that she actually had a lot of music that I really enjoyed - BUT - after listening to the same things over almost 2 months Alice and I were ready for a change. After dinner we approached Mark and asked him if we could poach some music from his itunes library as we enjoyed what we had heard so far of his tastes, and banked on the rest of his collection being at least moderately good. He agreed, and the next evening, over complimentary (ripe) mango juices we stole approximately 3500 songs. I am happy. Unfortunately we lost all of Kris' music - this is not sarcasm, we do miss some things. (love you Kris :) ) While chatting with Mark we told him about how this community is seriously in need of a good backbacker book swap - and so The Green Spot library was born. Today we brought in 4 books that Alice and I were through with in exchange for 2 books from Mark (not yet to be delivered). In 5 years we expect to return to find a well developed library, and a commemorative plaque on the wall paying tribute to our brilliance. "People will read again" engraved beneath our names.

Alice is on the second leg of her Tour de Lanka. Yesterday she rented a bicycle, described to me as nothing more than some scarps of rusted metal welded together, and she peddled herself approximately 30 kms around the eastern coast. Not one to relax in this seaside paradise, she did the same thing today except went 40 kms - on a better bike - and actually saw a crocodile. I asked to come. She wasn't having it. I'm learning not to come between Alice and her exercise.

Yesterday while Alice was training for the post-oil appocalypse when peddle power is the only means of generating electricity, I was eating copious amounts of sandwhiches. We discovered this little local shop down the street from our cabana that sells Jaffles - essentially like a grilled cheese sandwhich - for about 75 cents each. You can add boogie booge fancy stuff like avacado and tomato, or omelette which pushes each one to just over a buck - which I did. I have had 4 in the last 36 hours. While eating sandwhiches, I also met a lot of people - many of whom I liked, a couple I didn't. Either way it was a very relaxing afternoon which left me feeling mentally charged up after having been subjected to Alice and her hill climbing agenda for a month and a half.

After Alice's 30km ride yesterday we were supposed to meet at a yoga studio at 4pm. She showed. I didn't. It was raining, I was full of sandwhiches, and couldn't remember exactly where it was. When I say raining, I mean pouring. I thought about Dinesh and what his advice would have been. "I think it is best you don't yoga in the rain, it is better you eat now, yes?." "Yes Dinesh". Did make it to yoga this evening however, and Alice and I are now that much closer to enlightenment. The studio is run by a couple - he is from California, she is from Israel. The guy led the class today, and his voice was almost distracting in how perfectly it captured the SoCal surfer style. "Just feel the flow of the ocean and the moon maaaaaaan. Become a wave." We are now waves.

After careful consideration, and chaning plans many times, we have settled on extending our Sri Lankan visa so that we can apply for an Indian visa from here once I have my new passport - instead of spending a month in Nepal before going to India. It will save us a couple hundred dollars, and according to our surfer yoga dude Kevin, "yeah man, you know Nepal is cold right now, yeah man, coooooold."

That is all.

P.S. We've started playing cribbage again after I quit when Alice beat me that time we slept in garbage outside on a mountain in Java. Curiously we've discovered that the person who wins invariably is the person who keeps score. Weird.

Leave some comments or we'll stop writing. We mean it. We do this for you! Let us know you f* read it.

Nuwara Eliya to Arugam Bay

We are now in Arugam Bay, a beautiful beach on the east coast of Sri Lanka. We arrived here two nights ago from Nuwara Eliya, where I convinced Dave we needed to spend an extra night. We spent the extra day in Nuwara Eliya attempting to climb Mt Pedro, the highest hill in the area, but we couldn't find the trail so we spent three hours walking around looking instead.

The road to Arugam Bay couldn't have been more than 250km, but it took over 8 hours by bus to get here as there was construction (the road winds through the hill country and was only really wide enough for one vehicle on the corners-so even without construction it would have been a long trip). One particularly large jolt sent us at least six inches out of our seats.

Arugam Bay is my new favorite beach- the sand is perfect, the waves are small so it's easy to just float around in the water, there are people here, but not too many, the food is great, nobody tries to sell you a carved wooden statue, sarong, bracelet, bows and arrows or anything else useless you don't need anywhere, especially on the beach- and it's not humid- just hot, sunny and perfect.

We are, again, staying very close to a mosque. I'm not sure if, because of Ramadan, the calls to prayer are starting at 4:44am, or if this is a regular occurrence in Arugam Bay, but Dave and I wake up every morning, while it's still dark, to the loudest, most forceful calls I've heard yet. The worst part is, when the wailing stops the roosters wake up and start their own calls, shortly followed by a variety of birds that nest in the trees right outside our door.

We had thought about going surfing today, but stayed up all night dancing, so we slept in too late to go. Tomorrow we'll make more of an effort. On the plus side, Dave lay in the sun all day and developed only a minor sunburn on his back.

The last 4 days...

From Galle, we went to Dinesh's village Ambalangoda which is near Elpitiya. Dinesh teaches English on Saturday mornings free of charge to poor children in his village. He has built a fairly impressive school, equipped with tables and chairs that Dinesh built himself, attached to his family home. We were welcomed at the school by about 15 children and two of Dinesh's former teachers who now assist him with his school. Normally there are a few more students but they were writing government exams on this particular day and were therefore absent. The school was only opened in January so the children, aged between 5-13, have only had 7.5 months of instruction and were a little shy, at first.

Alice and I spent the morning drawing pictures, writing out songs, and going through basic "I spy style" vocabulary. By the end the children didn't want to leave, and kissed our feet in appreciation. Dinesh's teachers, two old little frail men with supreme manners, could hardly contain their appreciation - with one of them saying that he hadn't had a happier day in his life other than his wedding.

On a funnier note, they said that the name Alice is very popular in Sri Lanka, but "only for fat, old women".

We all had lunch in Dinesh's house where he lives with his mother, older brother Manoj, sister and her two sons (11 and 2.5). We dropped our stuff off at one of Dinesh's "Sirs" houses (former teachers), where we stayed for two nights. Dinesh and Manoj then took us by tuktuk to see some of the economic cornerstones of Sri Lanka, plantations. We first went to a tea plantation. The tea fields are full of women with giant bags of tea on their backs, the weight of which is supported by a single strap across their foreheads. The women are mostly, if not all, Tamil as the British tried to get Sinhalese people to work their plantations, but the Sinhalese (lions) told them to take off, eh.



There is no hiding the fact that Sri Lanka is a country rich in tea. Over the weekend with Dinesh and his family we were served tea approximately every 2.5 hours. Alice is lactose intolerant - generally intolerant, really. Each and every time we were offered tea, in a mousy voice Alice will exclaim, "no milk please". All but her last two cups over the weekend were served the traditional Sinhalese way: 1/3 heavy cream, 1/3 sugar, 1/3 hot water splashed with tea flavours.

After the tea plantation we saw a cinnamon plantation, as well as a rubber plantation. We were aiming to see a palm oil plantation in the same day, but Dinesh had a date with his girlfriend so we had to defer it until the next day. After the round of plantations we had a nice dinner with Dinesh, his Sirs, and his Sir's neighbour Sameera. We were sent to bed early as Dinesh said a phrase which Alice and I will forever associate with him: "I think it is best that..." you go to bed. Dinesh often thought it best that we do certain things, but he would never actually say "do this", it was always just "best if" we did so and so. Sometimes we thought it not best to do whatever Dinesh thought best, but there was never any persuading him otherwise.



The second day in the village we took in a lot. Manoj drove us to a nearby temple (Sailatarama Vihara), home to the largest sleeping Buddha statue in Asia. We also rented a river boat and went up river to a temple on a small island. We got some great photos of the mangrove vines along the river and also of a small fish farm we visited. The fish farm was basically a floating raft made from boards and floating plastic barrels. The whole thing nearly sank thanks to a large Russian/Ukranian family of tourists who yelled at each other the whole time, and turned out to be drunk. As they got back into their boat, the dad - a massive man - lifted up his huge arm to reveal a half finished bottle of booze. I, fit and nimble, had a hard time balancing on the narrow boards of floating farm. This man had very little grace and it is amazing he didn't end up in the crocodile pit.




On our way home we stopped at a house along the road where a family processes cinnamon. It was a really interesting thing to see as all I had ever seen was the end product. Muirhead has photos that we will post later, but the process involves a bunch of people sitting on the floor with knives.



We made plans to play cricket with Dinesh and his friends, but the game was rained out so we went and got our filthy clothes and did laundry at Dinesh's house. They had a washing machine, but no running water, so the process involved rewiring the light circuitry from the bulb to the machine and fetching pales of water from the well and pouring them into the machine at appropriate times. We spent the whole afternoon, hiding from the rain, sitting drinking tea and playing with Dinesh's nephew Supun (2.5) who is possibly the cutest kid in the history of human reproduction (photo to come later). He is either going to be a cricketer or a drag queen as he was running around with a ball and bat that was bigger than he was, while wearing about a dozen necklaces and bracelets that he made Alice put on him.



(Alice and Supun)
Dinesh's mother made us one of our best meals so far and we were completely stuffed as Dinesh kept piling food on our plates. On our way to Dinesh's Sir's house we stopped because Dinesh thought, "It is best if we get some hoppers and curry for you to eat later, yes? You will be hungry sometime in the night, yes?" We said no "We don't think it is best. We won't be hungry later. We are too full." Despite our protests, we pulled over and he went and stood in the rain to get us some curry and egg hoppers to be consumed at some point in the night (?). We of course didn't eat them because we were too full from the meal we had only hours before. In the morning Dinesh asked "Did you eat the hoppers?" And we said, "NO DINESH! WE WERE TOO FULL. DID YOU EAT?" To which he laughed and replied, "no, I was full from dinner." Alice ended up eating the left over meal on the steps of a technical college near the bus station in Colombo (while I ate crackers and ginger ale because I am still a little sick - btw the ginger ale in this country is the bomb and I think I am going to bring a can home for Robyn, the greatest lover of the ginger ale) - so it came in handy after all, but if Dinesh had it his way we would have woken up at 3am to sit down to a delicious meal of daal and hoppers.



(Dinesh and his family)

We hung our laundry to dry at Dinesh's Sir's house, but as it was raining all throughout the night the clothes did not dry, and two days later are still in fact quite wet- but clean. Dinesh's Sir has a daughter who is about 11 and a nephew who is 12. These kids were very shy and spoke almost no English. When we met they were playing cards and we joined their game, not knowing the rules, and having no ability to communicate. The human mind prevailed and Alice and I quickly caught on. It turned out they were playing a local version of Ontario's national sport, Euker - a game that Robyn had spent numerous hours trying to teach both Alice and I. I won three games in a row. Thanks Bobby (xoxoxox). Now I have played Euker in two continents.

That night we were sitting around at Dinesh's Sir's house, drinking tea. Dinesh looked at Alice and said "I think it is best if you sleep now. I think you are tired, yes?" Alice and I looked at each other and laughed as we had discussed the unique way that Dinesh makes suggestions. I asked if I was going to be sent to bed as well, and he said "No, but I think it is best if she goes to bed. She looks sleepy, yes." Alice obeyed, and I was pleased that I didn't have to go to bed yet.

In the morning we folded up our wet clothes, packed our bags, and Dinesh and Manoj drove us to the bus station. Dinesh walked us on board, sat us down, paid for our tickets and then stood outside our bus window looking anxiously at us as if he didn't trust us to survive away from his dotting attention. Just to be safe, he disappeared, only to return a minute later, sticking his arm through the window to give us a box of crackers saying something like, "I think it is best if you have some biscuits."

Dinesh was a glorious host and we now belong to his family as brothers and sisters. We will meet again in a few weeks in Colombo where we will be staying at one of his Sirs' homes there.

We are now in NuwaraEliya in the Kandy region, in the central part of the country. It is very cool here, humid, and misty due to the high elevation. Alice and I have put on our warmest clothes but still have a chill. The whole scene reminds me a lot of Prince Rupert, less the ocean. We slept in late, as we spent 12 hours in transit yesterday on one of Sri Lanka's finest public buses - complete with diesel exhaust that funneled directly into our window from an exhaust system that was literally deafening. Alice and I shared the headphones to her ipod, and we had it cranked just to over take the noise from the exhaust. Once we arrived our ears were ringing, and we may have done permanent damage.

Today we climbed "single tree hill" which gives a beautiful view of the local landscape which offers a lake, misty hill tops, and vast tea plantations. Everywhere along the road up the hill there were Tamil women picking tea - each saying "Hello. Photo?" We had a mango mid way up the hill, our first in weeks. We will now be returning to the relative warmth of our blankets, ready to have new adventures now that we have blogged ourselves out.



(Mango on Single Tree Hill)

Hikkaduwa, Galle, Unawatuna, Matara, continued...

So after our last post, we felt somehow unsatisfied, as if we'd missed something. We sat down, pen and paper in hand, and brainstormed about all the funny things that had happened that we forgot to blog about...

One of the funny things about traveling is the differing levels of modesty from place to place. Some beaches you will see local men and women wearing Western, if not something close to Western, style bathing attire. On the very same beach you may see other locals covered from the neck down. While sitting on the beach at Unawatuna Alice and I had a good laugh at a group of men enjoying the waves wearing full business attire - collared dress shirts, buttoned to the top, and dress pants (we could not tell if they were wearing socks and shoes as they were up to their chests in water). Alice and I quipped about their possible topics of conversation as they were amassed in a circle, much like office workers would gather around the water cooler in any Canadian office building. "So how was your weekend?" one might ask. Another would reply, "good weekend, yup, took the wife and the kids out to the country. You know Timmy just loves it out there. He sure is growing up fast."

Also at Unawatuna, we had two hilarious temple experiences. Over looking the sea, at the top of a decent length of stairs, sits a Buddhist temple. It was a peaceful place with beautiful views and surrounded by greenery. It was the kind of place where you might sit and think about life. However, the peace was disturbed by an older (possibly Dutch) woman who decided that it was the kind of place where one ought to set your cell phone to stereo and blast dance hall club music as perfected by the immortal Sean Paul. "HEY SEXY LADY WANNA BALL WITH US? IN A NIGHT CLUB, GET NEXT TO US." While this was going on, Alice was being led around the temple site by a little old man who was apparently mute. He said nothing, but motioned with his arms where Alice ought to stand to have the best views of the ocean and took several photos of her with her camera. Dinesh and I were watching this little show, when he informed me that "I know that man, he can speak. His son has a restaurant on the beach." Dinesh and I had a good laugh while Alice went from one corner of the temple to the other and then was asked to shell out some rupees for this poor, mute man.

The next day, Alice and I went to Matara (the site where Alice's legs got us in so much trouble) by bus with Dinesh. Bus rides in Sri Lanka so far have been consitently hot, crowded and noisy. Usually there is Sinhalese music blasting, some sort of flashing neon Buddha sign at the front, and dozens more people than there are seats or than would be legally allowed in Canada. This particular ride was especially loud as we were seated directly behind the driver who lay on his horn for most of the ride, and we were directly below the large speaker which was pumping local remixes of disco hits (funky town was among the fine selection of classics updated with a modern Sri Lankan touch). The point of all of this is... Alice who can't sleep in a hotel room if there are roosters near by, if there are cars, if she is not warm enough or cool enough, can't stay awake on a bus for 5 minutes to save her life. No matter how noisy. No matter how hot. No matter how CROWDED. She bobs her head around, more often then not cracking her head on the glass of the window or some nearby metal bar or poll. I on the other hand, no matter how tired or sleep deprived, can't fall asleep. WTF!?

Another comical thing which has been a reoccurring theme of Sri Lankan adventure is that no matter what you order in a restaurant, and no matter how many options there are on a menu, you only ever end up getting what the waiter wants to give you. We have decided whenever going into a restaurant that it is best not to have your heart set on eating certain things. Even local dishes that should be relatively easy to prepare, given their abundance (i.e. rice) are sometimes somehow in scarce supply. Here is an example: "We would like to have rice and curry please." (Pretty easy right? A main staple dish. "Sorry sir, rice not available at lunch." Alright, we think we've learned something, and at a different place for dinner we order a meal with rice. "Sorry sir, rice only available at lunch." WTF!?! There have been numerous examples of this. We are now hardened and hardly surprised when we get something completely different from the thing ordered. Regardless, the food is always delicious.

A funny thing about restaurants in Sri Lanka is that you only usually see men dining. I don't know where the women eat, but it doesn't seem to be in the same places we do. The extreme example of this was in one restaurant in Galle, possibly the busiest we have been to so far, where Alice was the only woman. There were about 50 men, all watching cricket, and drinking local whiskey. I didn't notice, but Alice claims that they were all peering at her like they'd never seen a girl eat before. Alice regularly ventures out on her own in the early morning to go for runs and god knows what else...but she has had several interesting encounters with local gentlemen. Several times she has had men open their mouths to reveal their tongues to her, while making a sort of hissing sound. The women all smile at her, sometimes stopping her to shake her hand, but the men - only tongues.

Bloggers out. Still appreciate your comments.
Dallas

Hikkaduwa (diarrhea), Galle (Fort), Unawatuna (splish splash), Matara (Alice's dangerous legs)

August 13, 2010

It is 4am, August 9th. Alice is sound asleep. I am not. I lightly shake her arm. "Alice, I need medicine." Little does she know I have been up all night pooping. She instructs me to grab her the bag of pills. I pass it to her, she rummages around, and says take this. In the morning she confesses that she wasn't even sure what pill she was giving me.

In Hikkaduwa, a beautiful little beach resort community between Colombo and Galle in the southern part of Sri Lanka, I got the hurt real bad. It wasn't some local adaptation of the feared "Delhi Belly". It was a bug. I wasn't able to eat for three days and was pooping every 30 minutes. Fortunately, Alice compensates for her occasional tardy packing and grump attacks by being a traveling dispensary and nurse. In my days of sickness Alice was a gem. She loaded me up full of antibiotics and then would disappear on a bicycle for 6 hours. When she would return she would have crackers, ginger ale, and most importantly a sweet sweet dose of human compassion - usually in short supply in our room.

I didn't see much of Hikkaduwa, but Alice adopted the persona of Lance Armstrong and cycled her way around most of the southern province. She took photos so I feel like I was there - as I know I was in her heart.


(something Alice saw on her tour de France)
When we first arrived at the bus station in Hikkaduwa we met a guy named Dinesh who offered us a place to stay when we eventually made it to Galle - the next big city over from Hikkaduwa. Alice who can smell a scam a mile away sniffed out the situation and came out smiling, so with our newly activated cell phone we called Dinesh from the Galle bus station. Dinesh met us at the bus station, and payed for a tuktuk to his uncle's place which turned out to be a beautiful large house right off the main road. We have the entire ground floor of the house to ourselves, separate bedrooms (to Alice's relief), and there is even a kitchen with fridge and microwave. We have stayed two nights so far and will be staying a third tonight.


(Dutch Fort in Galle)

Dinesh is a super human. I have a man crush on his gigantic heart. He has shown us all around Galle (which has a beautiful 16th century Dutch fortress, cool museums, and old churches), Unawatuna (a local beach community with great temples and seafood), and Matara (more temples, a star-shaped Dutch fort, a cricket match, and giant light house on Sri Lanka's southern most point). Tomorrow he is taking us to his village where we will stay at his place and visit his school.


(view from the lighthouse)
Dinesh is a teacher. After saving up some money and taking a loan from his brother he quit his job to found a school where he teaches English to poor children in his village. He is extremely kind, very generous, and so welcoming. He describes himself as poor, but often won't let us pay for things. He has no source of income, but gives to every beggar he sees. He is the best and we were really lucky to meet him.



Oh yeah, the part about Alice's legs. So we go to a lot of temples, right. Most of the time it isn't a problem that Alice prances around in shorts and a tank-top, but today the monks weren't having it. We were kicked out of 2 of the 3 temples we went to today because Alice can't dress in a decent manner. A 6 year old monk in-the-making hissed at Alice and kept hitting me with a metal gate door, not so subtly hinting that he wanted us gone - but we stood our ground as Dinesh pleaded our case to the little tyrant.

Sri Lanka is really beautiful. We have only explored the southern coast so far, and it is the end of monsoon season so the skies have been a little gray and the wind blows pretty hard, but it is very nice. The country's civil war only ended about a year ago and people seem very pleased to have peace, and are optimistic that it will last. The coastal section that we are currently in was the hardest hit part of the country by the 2004 tsunami which killed 30,000. A lot of buildings are still in shambles but things look pretty good. Locals have said a good amount of the aid money given by foreign governments never made it past the politicians which is sucky to say the least.




Soon we will be heading towards the central, hilly, part of the country which is known for its tea plantations (the British portion of Alice's DNA is ecstatic).

Colombo

Dave has very kindly allowed me access to "our" blog and is allowing me to write this post.

We arrived (with no problems at all, despite Dave's claims to the contrary) in Colombo the morning of August 5. Dave has to renew his passport because it will expire less than six months after we get back to Canada, so after filling ourselves with curry, finding internet and a printer to get the appropriate forms and having passport photos taken, we went to the Canadian consulate in Colombo (a trip that should have taken 10 minutes but turned into a 40 minute tour of the world's embassies because the driver couldn't find Canada) only to be told that Dave could only apply between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm- we were two hours too late.

We staggered back to the hotel, exhausted from sleeping on the airport floor in KL and the heat/ humidity of Colombo- unfortunately our hotel was just as hot and humid- and napped for a few hours before filling ourselves with more curry.
Galle Face Green

The next morning we went back to the consulate office and I sat there all morning reading about the history of Sri Lanka while Dave re-filled out the form he had carefully printed and filled out the night before, ran back and forth to the hotel for ID and money and tried to figure out who he had addresses for to use as references. When he was finally finished we ate more curry and set out for the day's planned activities.

Despite Dave's claims that I am the worst, that I'm always slow and late and stressing him out, he does seem to appreciate the fact that I am able to read the guide book, understand maps and plan activities- if it wasn't for me I don't think he would have left Jakarta- so I do all the planning and he trails along, hurling insults at me. In addition to his complete lack of direction, Dave is quite gullible- while I am much more likely to assume we are being ripped off, lead astray or lied to. For example, after our morning at the consulate we walked to the national museum, located in Colombo's largest park. At one end of the park in the Town Hall, an impressive white house- style building, with the park stretching out in front. We paused for a second to take a picture, and next thing I knew we were on a tour of the garden with the "master gardener", who claimed the museum was not open and we were better off following him around. Granted, he did show us some cool things- a cinnamon tree, a rubber tree that oozed rubber when he broke the bark, a tree full of flying foxes (which he terrified into the air for our benefit), a few nice flowers (a swan orchid), and a few different hardwood trees- then he said "good tour hey? I like dollars, American dollars, or Canadian dollars, you have Canadian dollars?" Dave didn't. He offered the equivalent of $4 dollars, but this was not sufficient for the "master gardener"- he graciously agreed to accept Rp1000 (about $10) as payment for our 10 minute "tour". The whole time I had a suspicion he had been lying about the museum (the guide book had told me otherwise- and it never lies!) so despite Dave's protests we marched to the museum- which, naturally, was open. We spent two hours there learning all about Sri Lanka before staggering home, exhausted again.

Flying Foxes

National Museum

Dave with a cinnamon tree leaf

That night, we watched possibly the worst movie ever. If it wasn't for the fact that it cost Rp215 ($2), there was air conditioning and chocolate, I would say it was the worst- M. Night Shamalan should not make any more movies, Dave and I have decided.

The next day we visited a Buddhist temple, a Dutch Reform church and a mosque. I left Dave alone to meditate and came back to find him meaner than ever- I was covered in bug bites or hives which made me so itchy I couldn't breathe, but all he did was tell me to shut up and quit complaining.

Today we took a bus from Colombo to Hikkaduwa, a small town on the south coast of Sri Lanka.

only 22 minutes before the internet cafe closes

So Alice and I are, by some miracle, now in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We almost didn't make it - and that is no exaggeration. Our flight out of Jakarta was scheduled to leave at 7pm. We didn't make it to the airport until 6:55. Thankfully, every Air Asia flight we have ever taken (4 now) has been delayed by at least 30 minutes. If we had missed our flight, we wouldn't have made our connector in Kuala Lumpur, and wouldn't have made it to Sri Lanka and each would have been out by about 300 bucks.
How did this happen, you may ask? Muirhead.
It was 2pm. I say to Alice: "Alice, we're going to have to leave by 4:30 if we're going to beat rush hour". Muirhead: "Yeah, yeah, okay." It is 3:30, Dave: "You need some help?" Alice: "No, I got it." It is 4:00, Dave: "I'm actually impressed you're not packed yet, I can't even be mad, it is just so amazing." Alice: "Yeah, yeah, okay." It is 4:50 by the time we get to the lobby of Adrian's place. As it is now rush hour we can't get a cab. By the time a cab shows up it is 5:20. (This is the point where I accept 25% of the total responsibility for making us late as I didn't pre-book a cab - but neither did Muirhead, so that is why she gets 25% + her 50% for making us late getting out of the apartment. Total blame: Dave 25%, Alice 75%!!!)
So rush hour in Jakarta is like an old man who needs a triple bypass. People walking on the street are passing us. We were in the cab for 40 minutes and could still see the hotel behind us. I was So stressed, because I can do math, and it was plain to see that we we're going to make it on time, especially since we didn't have our boarding passes yet, and the ticket counter closes 45 minutes prior to departure. Alice was cool as a cucumber (a skill developed from years of perpetual tardiness - ask her family). Long story short, we made it, and now I am to give Alice 5 hours to pack her one backpack (it takes me fewer than 15 minutes).
We had to over night on the airport floor in Kuala Lumpur. There were cockroaches popping out from under our backpack pillows, but fortunately, not too many.
Colombo is much nicer than Jakarta...
We've just been kicked off of the computer. More to come. Stay tuned. If you want postcards send us your mailing addresses. We've got stamps.
Hugs and kisses,
Dallas