About being kicked out, disappointing sight-seeing

Thursday 5th August 2010

About being kicked out, disappointing sight-seeing, early check-outs, Pizza Hut and returning home....

Today is Thursday. The dinner at the Hill Club didn’t quite work out. We did wear our skirts and shawls, and Tom was given a jacket and tie, but after pre-dinner drinks we make our way to the formal dining room and the manager kindly informs us we are not dressed appropriately. Sara and I are wearing flip-flops (either that or sneakers) so we are escorted to the common dining room. Of course we don’t want to spend 17$ on a 5 course meal without the silver spoon treatment, so we leave. Quite rude, but then again, when we made the reservation in the afternoon we were told our attire would be suitable, which in the end it wasn’t. The English couple in the dining room look quite jealous, as they did get the 5 course meal and tell us it’s not worth the 17 bucks. We cross the street and eat at the Grand Indian (part of the Grand Hotel) and have amazing Indian curries. Two bottles of wine and an enormous bill later we head back to King Fern. The owner and his friends are jamming with a guitar and drums and we have Bob Marley and Bob Dillan sing-alongs. In the morning we leave Nuwera Eliya and Tom (who we love for having a shave at a local hair dresser and entertaining us this way) behind to make our way to Kandy. The train ride is more amazing than the one from Ella to Nuwera Eliya. It’s long, about 5 hours, to cover no more than 70km. It’s raining heavily, but we are in our comfortable 1st class seats with our i-pods and goodies from the restaurant car. In the late afternoon we get to Kandy and we hook up with an Aussie couple who travelled with us on the train. We have, for the first time, an extremely clean room, excellent service and amazing forrest views from our balcony. We are quite beat, buy the expensive bottle of red from the hotel and retire to our room. Wednesday we decide to see the Elephant Orphanage and another tea factory. All this done by tuk. The Elephant Orphanage is a bit of a disappointment. Highly overpriced for a 30 min elephant ride and bathing them. I cry a solid 5 min over the story of one of the elephants there and the guide has to pad my back and assure me that in 2 years she’ll be fine. She was rescued from a safari park where she had to carry an iron cage carrying 6 tourists at the time. Both her thighs had severe wounds. The vet could stick her whole arm inside the wound to get the infection out. She’s just starting to heal (after two years!) and getting better. The vet thinks she needs at least another 2 years to fully recover. She looked sad in her face and she was really thin. My heart goes out to her and I really cannot handle animal mistreatment (again I tear up over this writing about it). After our ride (okay, overpriced, but I did get to ride an elephant!) we bathe them which is really fun. On our way back to Kandy we stop at another tea factory and do a tour which actually makes sense. The girl in Nuwara Eliya didn’t speak any English, so any question outside her routine talk couldn’t be answered. This one actually makes sense and is fun. The tuk driver tricks us into visiting “a very special village” which turns out to be a workshop for gem stones and we are expected to buy jewelry. Which we don’t and we’re treated as out-laws the minute we say ‘no’. Once back in the city we run into the Aussies and we have dinner at an amazing Indian restaurant. Today (Thursday) we decide (with Nicola and Liam) to do a temple loop covering 3 temples. But after 2 temples we are quite disappointed and very bored so we want to visit the big Buddha statue which looks out over the city. Admission is ridiculously high, so we decide to visit the Temple of the Tooth. Apparently it has a tooth of the Buddha in there, but then again, admission is too high and the actual tooth is somewhere else (secret, shhhhh) so we decide to not do it. Sara and I are quite disappointed by Kandy. Everyone says it is fantastic here, we think it’s one big polluted tourist trap where literally EVERYONE wants your money. We have not encountered anything like this so far in Sri Lanka. We decide against going to Dambulla and Sigiriya which are both part of the ancient cities, because a) they are so far away we’d either have to take an expensive private car or sit on a local bus for 3,5 hours back and forth, b) it’s probably just as boring as the temples we saw today and we are not into the spiritual side of things here, and c) we are so fed up with people wanting money all the time and giving you dirty looks when you don’t give it. Instead we decide to check out one day early tomorrow and head on to Colombo and spend our last two days in a nice hotel with a swimming pool. I think we’re both ‘travel-sick’ and just want to go home. I miss Leeson a lot, Sara misses home as well and has had a funny stomach for days now, and I think it’s just time to go.
Kandy has one cool feature though, which is Pizza Hut, so we ordered two huge pizzas, bought a bottle of red and I am currently waiting for the pizza delivery guy to drive up in his tuk, delivering us our pizzas at the hotel. We have 2nd class ticket booked (1st class was fully booked already) on the 3pm train to Colombo tomorrow, which should get us in around 6pm. Hopefully we’re not going to be too ripped of getting a taxi to our hotel, of which we have no clue where it is in relation to the railway station. We’ll see.

Saturday 7th August
Colombo SUCKS. The train journey was great though. Beautiful landscape (again) and just very relaxing to sit with your I-pod and look out the window which functions as a picture frame of a beautiful moving colorful picture.
We have a taxi waiting for us at the train station and we have high hopes about our acco. But it’s horrible. It’s on the beach but the train tracks are also on the beach, so every so many minutes a train rushes by and blows it’s horn. Dinner is okay (on the beach) but we are constantly spoken to. “Hi, how are you”. Then we tell them to go away. “Why you no interest in me?”… Er, let me think, do you really want to know? Jeez…..
As it is Friday night big crowds of men (no where a woman to be seen) gather on the beach to drink Arrack and play drums (which they did until 3.30am, I know because that’s when I fall asleep). The hotel pool doesn’t look refreshing, the room is musky (and very overpriced) and Colombo is busy, smoggy and extremely hot. I hope I can talk Sara into moving to Negombo today, 40KM North of Colombo and 5KM away from the airport. We have a 4.30AM flight, so we might as well move towards the airport anyway. I don’t want to sound too negative, but these last 2 days (and the one to come) have been a bit depressing. I think it’s time to go home….
Hopefully I can upload this in the hotel lobby today, yesterday I had a WIFI 54KB connection, so I gave up.
Till soon.
XM

Saturday Aug 8th 2010
And we’re in Negombo. Have been since yesterday. Sara agrees with me that we are very unhappy in Colombo so we make our way to the bus station and book two seats on an air-con bus (actually 3, we pay for our bags which need a seat, because there’s no storage space). We are amazed how many people fit in a normal 8 persons van…. We count 27 and keep counting. Most uncomfortable, especially when a local fisherman boards and stinks up the place so bad, we both get extremely nauseous. Only 1,5 hrs to go……When in Negombo we go to The Ice Bear Hotel. Weird name, but the Swiss owner looks like an ice bear, hence the name (or at least it’s our explanation). Negombo is nothing special, a rundown beach town where we cannot go on the beach because it’s too filthy and not too safe. BUT, the hotel is to die for. The lush gardens, the food, the relaxing atmosphere, we’re extremely grateful we found a room here for our last two nights. We are quite fed up with travelling, the constant attention in the streets and the heat, so we spend our day(s) eating, drinking and watching movies on HBO in our hotel room. Today we visit the town, but the heat and again the constant attention (really extremely annoying) drives us back to our room. It’s 5pm and we have to get up at 2am to go to the airport. Our flight is at 4.30am.
But first one last Gin&Tonic at 6.30pm, one final rice&curry and one last sun set above the Indian Ocean…..
This will be my second last up-date, there will be one more with the link to the photos.
So, we’ll catch up when in Amsterdam.
Love, M>