Sri Lanka Day 4

August 8th, 2006

since my last post, i have fled the busy Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, and headed for the hills (literally) of Kandy! it’s a more rural area, and since it’s in the hills the temperature here is slightly cooler. the hotel here, Earl’s Regency, is gorgeous - even more so than the previous. it’s a totally romantic place.

i just got here yesterday evening, and today i was supposed to join the parentals and their friends on this trip to some temple whose deity is so superior you gotta climb up some 1000+ stone steps to meet the dude. unfortunately, Deity and i did not get to meet because the parentals and i had a bit of a tiff in the morning, which resulted in me refusing to go with them and them storming out on me. brilliant lah. what family holiday is complete without an argument?

mildly irritated, i took to the streets of Kandy town by myself. when i got there, there were all these policemen stationed around, closing off roads and actually frisking people before they could enter the town. for a while i wondered if i was supposed to find this normal, you know, due to the whole civil unrest situation in Sri Lanka - but then i learnt that all this security is in preparation for a buddhist festival that’s going on today, and at 7pm there will be a parade in the streets of Kandy.

WONDERFUL! i love this sort of stuff. but when 7pm rolled around i found that i didnt have enough space in my cf card for more pics. and since this is a weeklong festival with the parade happening every day, i decided that i’d come back tomorrow with an empty cf card. no problemo, i’m here in Kandy for 3 more days.

but - bombshell! when i get back to the hotel, dad tells me that i have NOT been pulled off the waiting list for this thursday’s flight back to KL. meaning i have to fly back .. tomorrow. yeah. aaaaaaaaargh. but i’ve barely SEEN Sri Lanka!!! i am very distraught now.

anyways. some cool encounters today while wandering Kandytown for a couple of hours -

1. there were a bunch of men sitting by the side of the street in anticipation of the parade. they looked very happy so i asked if i could take a picture of them, and they were more than happy to comply! i had only made it as far as down the street after that, when one of the guys chased me down and anxiously asked if i could mail him the picture. it was hard to understand him, and when i finally got what he was trying to say, i said - sure! give me your email address! he then nodded yes yes and pressed a typewritten snailmail address into my hand. i laughed and promised i would mail him the picture.

2. i was taking more pics of sidewalk-sitting people when this cute chubby kid peered over my shoulder to see what i was doing. he was very cute and was extremely fascinated with my camera. so i taught him how to use it. his mother didnt look pleased. whatevar, woman! havent you heard; thou shalt convert more people into the love of phototaking whenever you can??

3. i was on a quest to find this Sri Lankan food called Kottu Roti, and a nice man kindly showed me a restaurant that has it. omg lemme just say that Kottu Roti is by far the best Sri Lankan food ever - even the hopper cannot top it. it’s basically a dish of chopped up roti canai that’s about as thick as murtabak, that is stir fried with chicken, curry, eggs, onions, vegetables, and then served. it’s soooooo good, but Kottu Roti is not the point of this encounter. the point is that in this Kottu Roti place, the owner of the shop asked me where i was from. in no mood to bluff this time around (this is a habit, i bluff about my country of origin all the time whenever presented with the opportunity to, heehee) i said Malaysia. his face instantly glowed and he was like are you chinese??? i said yes, and then he said -

‘ni hui jiang hua yu ma??’ (can you speak mandarin?)

i was so damn taken aback, man. hahahaha. i mean, usually all they say is a lame nihao. so i laughed and said yes i could, and thus a 5 minute conversation in Mandarin ensued. turns out this dude worked in KL and Malacca and Muar for a year and that’s how he picked up mandarin. and to all my lousy friends laughing and going - su ann speaking mandarin???, YES LA I DID LA and it was an actual full-blown conversation ok! haha dont know why but it’s just so much easier to speak a language when you’re conversing with someone who has no idea that you cannot really speak it.

4. this ice cream vendor cycled past me on the streets, did a double take, turned around and parked his bicycle next to me. this is what he said to me -

“madam, you are the most beautiful girl i ever see. your skin is so white, so white! here, i give you ice cream for no charge! no charge!”

he then gave me an ice cream and cycled away. i was so fucking bewildered, but very pleased nonetheless that i got free ice cream. hehehe. and it was very nice ice cream too! a milk flavour, with consistency of sherbert. very yummy. enclosed is a pic of fairskinned me and my free ice cream.

5. i was camwhoring with a banana, when this man came up to me and asked, very puzzled, if i had never seen a banana before. i blinked at him, and then i started laughing and laughing and laughing until i dropped my banana on the pavement and could no longer camwhore with it. when i was done laughing, the man had gone away and people were looking at me like i was weird.

6. the three-wheeler driver who sent me back to the hotel from Kandytown was very interested in getting to know me better. i was like, man, this isnt going to work, you’re too far away .. but he pushed a pen and paper in my hands and sheepishly asked for my address anyway. i thought i could worm out of this by saying oh no no i dont know my hotel address, but he said oh no no i want your malaysia address! so in a flicker of inspiration, i wrote down my high school’s address. hahahaha. i told him, “okay, this is my address, Sri is my first name and Garden is my last name. so you write many many letters and address it to Sri Garden, ok? i will wait for your letters! you MUST send me letters!”

Entry Filed under: Travel

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