Sri Lanka

8th May - Colombo, Sri Lanka

WOW. What an amazing day. We travelled from Colombo down to Galle (as in ball) and saw so much.

Colombo is a city of 5 million people. It's amazing. Modern and ancient. Portugese, Dutch, English and Sri Lankan. Clean and messy. So much of a mix. The driving was pretty funny. Wild but funny.

There were Tuk Tuks, private cars, scooters, taxi vans, buses and trucks. Bikes, hand carts and so much more. As a vehicle came up behind another, it beeped the horn to tell it they were passing. Didn't matter if there was oncoming traffic, it was already being overtaken, on a bend or on a hill. None of those silly conventions mattered. The biggest vehicle had right of way - if we (in our van) were passing a scooter, he pulled left. If a tuk tuk was coming towards us, he pulled left and we squeezed between. If a bus decided to pass us at that moment, the scooter went further left, we went a bit left, the bus squashed between us and the on coming tuk tuk. Yes, it is hard to understand and it was mental. No crashes though!

90 minutes through this traffic, then suddenly we were on a modern express way with dual carriage and toll booths. Tea plantations, rice paddy's, water buffalo.......

The Galle Stilt Fishermen

It was so good watching them work with their nets - rolling them up and packing the boat for tomorrow and repairing them. 

Right next to the main road.  

Galle Fort, built by the Portuguese in 1588 and fortified by the Dutch around 1650. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It survived the Boxing Day Tsunami but did need a bit of restoration.

THE BEST CURRY LUNCH EVER. It was sensational. We had a fish curry, a seafood curry, a mutton curry and a cashew curry with rice. And of course a nice cup of Sri Lankan tea. A few bottles of local beer also. It was so hot. We sweated like piggys. You couldn't put your arm on the chair as they were so wet they just slipped off. And as for pulling pants back up…….

Next we drove through the area hit by the 'Boxing Day Tsunami'. When the wave came ashore it was 25 feet high. 50,000 people (across Sri Lanka) were killed including 1257 people on the "Queen of the Sea" train that runs up the coast to Columbo about 20 meters back from the shore line. 

The place is full of besser brick building shells that are now uninhabitable. A new law says no new buildings within 100 metres of the shore line. The art work at the memorial was so very sad.

We visited a Buddhist Temple - not nearly as nice as the one in Thailand! And saw heaps of Buddhist graves. They are decorated with coloured ribbons. 

We saw fruit bats.

Heaps of people were driving hand tractors / excavator things on the road pulling big trailers.

This guy was in the back with three really large pigs.

More craziness on the roads.

And lovely stuff as well.

We got back to the ship 10 hours later - just in time for a few very quick drinks at the Lounge. 

Brilliant day!!!!


At Sea  9th May

Today was a lovely relaxed Sea Day.  Didn't do much at all.  

Had a swim adn a sleep, formal night and thats all.

India tomorrow.

Time to go to the INDIA TAB.

x