My super fantastic Israeli-Arugam Bay Birthday

This morning we are in Kandy again, waiting, again, for our Indian visas to be processed. It's cloudy and raining on and off here today, so we're going to overwhelm you with two posts (which I'm sure you're super excited to read).

Dave's post finished with our new friends leaving the Sea Rider, headed back to their real lives and grown up jobs. It was lonely without them for a few hours, but luckily that afternoon at yoga I met Hannah, aka "billy no mates" who became my beach best friend for the week. We spent everyday drinking coffee and eating sandwiches, laying on the beach baking ourselves, going to yoga and gossiping about boys. It's just like having Kris or Korey around-heaven.

Hannah and I celebrating my birthday

We went back to Arugam Bay because it was my birthday on the 17th, and, sitting around eating biscuits and playing cards a few weeks ago, Dave asked where I wanted to spend my birthday. The beach of course, I replied, so back we went.

The night of the 16th we celebrated my birthday with Hannah and our Israeli friends- apparently in Israel you wish someone happy birthday at midnight the night before, the day after isn't as important. Surrounded by people from Israel, England, Australia and Scotland I felt like the whole world was wishing me happy birthday. The next day was very quiet in Arugam Bay, since it was Yom Kippur, and many of the surfers are Jewish. In Israel, according to our friends, everyone gets Yom Kippur off and spends the day walking, talking, thinking and walking more. Some of our new friends were fasting, others just took the day off from surfing. I spent the day irritating Dave by bouncing around like a six year old yelling "it's my birthday, it's my birthday, I'm at the beach and it's my birthday"- he was very hungover from the night before so I think my spinning around was particularily overwhelming. I didn't have cake, but I did have a particularily good banana pancake with chocolate, coconut and honey.

Dave, Ori, Me and Lee

Many people visit Arugam Bay for weeks or months at a time to surf, watch other people surf, eat, drink and sit in the sun. About 70% of the people are Israeli, and about 60% of that 70% are male. The local population is also primarily male. Last time we were in Arugam Bay we spent almost all our time with Janine, Eddie and Roded, and were therefore somewhat oblivious to the tension and conflicts between locals and Israelis and the Israelis themselves. This time however, we became very aware of the situation- probably made worse by the fact that the season was coming to an end and everyone was tired, sick of each other and ready to leave. The tensions are mainly over waves and girls- the locals feel a sense of entitlement to both, while the Israelis feel both should be shared. Several times during the week the tensions erupted, particularily between the Israelis- at one point, playing pool, a firecracker was set off by a group of guys walking by, causing the girls I was with to jump up and scream in Hebrew, while the boys hurled beer bottles in the direction of the road. Later we heard that karma had taken care of the instigator, he had been cut by the fin of his board quite badly and couldn't surf. Apparently this guy really had it coming, since the week beofre he had lit a pair of underwear of fire and thrown it into the shower his friend was using- resulting in a massive burn on the other guy's shoulder which got bigger and uglier the more time he spent in the ocean.

The week in Arugam Bay was incredible, and I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else on my birthday- even with the tension. However, there was one dark spot to the week, the morning we left for Kandy. I woke up to the sound of Ralph sweeping- not unusual, since he has the annoying habit of sweeping the whole place, very loudly, between about 5:30 and 7:30 am. I checked my watch and realised my alarm hadn't gone off 15 minutes before. I jumped out of bed, cursing Dave for moving my phone in the night to somewhere I couldn't hear it, panicing a little about having my stuff packed in time for our 7:45am bus. I started shoving things in my bag, again silently blaming Dave for moving around and messing up my things on a table below the window. I noticed the door was cracked open as well, and really started to wonder what he had being doing in the night. When he finally woke up, I asked irritably where he had moved my phone too, to which he replied he hadn't touched it for days- then it all started to make sense. The missing phone, open door, things all moved around... somehow in the night, while we were inside sleeping, someone had come through the window, stolen our things and gone out the door. I was upset, but not eccessively so, since it was just a phone and a little money that had been lying around. Then I realised my camera was gone and I fell to pieces- I don't think I stopped crying until the end of our first bus ride that day. Of course, I can see that we were lucky, our passports, the majority of our money, credit and debit cards, my ipod (which was safely under my pillow), and Dave's camera weren't taken, nor were we hurt- but I felt stupid for not being more careful and not saving my pictures more often. Lesson learned I guess. The pictures aren't really replaceable, but between Dave's pictures and the pillaging I'm going to do of friend's albums on facebook, I will be able to piece together the last few weeks. Unfortunatley however, the video Dave took of me dancing like a nut on my birthday is gone forever. According to Dave, the video was so hilariously ridiculous it would have made people say "wow, I used to like her and think she was cool- until this came along." Maybe it's better that it's gone.

Bye for now, comment would ya?
xoxo Dallas