..:: 724. Sri Lanka & 24th Birthday ::..

been a month since i last blogged. that is the result of travelling, work gets piled up. feb is such a breeze.

ten days in sri lanka were great and despite a lot (i mean really a lot) of waiting, it was a worthwhile trip. shall trace my itinerary...

prior to SL, spent a day in KL which was a different escapade :P

5 things in Sri Lanka that are similar in India.
1. nice people
2. same touts
3. same stares from people
4. the steep turning curves on the roads
5. handy lonely planet, rough guide

5 things in Sri Lanka that are different from India.
1. curry and chai
2. less aggressive touts
3. no (prolonged, customized) honking from vehicles
4. no sleeper class
5. no rides longer than 8 hours


touched down colombo and headed straight to kandy by train. tried our hardest to get observation deck but to no avail. saw coffins being couriered by train. bathed at the train station for about a dollar. tasted a few tea but nowhere near the amazing chai in india.

stayed at the highest view and realised that you cant trust superlative guesthouse names cos they might be refering to other things. quite sad that i didnt try the sri lankan breakfast. maybe it's the stringhoppers (read: thick bee-hoon in laksa lookalike) that made me steer away from the SL breakfast. not a fan of noodles.

been busy playing with yash's gadget. nothing kinky. just a new panasonic camera with newer functions like pinhole, film strip, etc (which i think newer canon cameras also have). the fight between whose camera is better goes on.

went to the spice garden and some ad-hoc massage which was quite good. watched kandy dancers which had like close to 10 segments with no hot bods. almost dozed off but the show was saved by some walking on fire and fire-eating finale. the tour of the tooth relic temple was a rip-off and we decided not to go for it. yash was surprisingly nice to a guy who couldnt get where we wanted to go. she had the never-before-seen patience, trying to explain to the guy where we wanted to go and bargaining for the price. the guy was only quite cute but our standards of cute are clearly very different.

next up was to climb the adam's peak at delhousie. had to take a bus to hatton and change to go delhousie. found a guesthouse for 2000rs but the food was kinda expensive. tea tasted horrible as usual but the ice cream (ended up looking like cream) was the ultimatum. my ginger tea tasted like normal tea.

explored further to find white house which offered better food. met up with a few backpackers, from US, UK and France. Of course, craziest thing for us was to choose to climb Sri Pada (Adam's Peak) on 14 Feb with 75000 other people. the 30 minute-move-1-step climb was agonising. i could rip my hair off while standing and waiting to take minute steps. in the end, i chose to bash through the jungle cos i could not stand waiting. took me 9 hours to reach the top (5500 steps) and 1 hr 40 mins to come down.

the consolation was that we managed to hitch a ride from a couple who are doctors. They were heading to colombo and passing hatton where we have decided to catch a bus to nuwara eliya.

so cold its not funny. i had to wear 2 layers, jacket and wrapped myself with towels. but the huge room with 2 king sized beds was gorgeous. the best things there were the hot chocolate and chocolate milkshake (i had the last and only choco milkshake). taxi to hortons plain (or as yash calls it plainly lovely) costs 3000rs after the rough negotiation and the constant harassment of "madam, you want to try herbal massage, very good for you madam."


walking through hortons was plainly easy. no insane crowd nor people chanting. no couples holding hands. just great view at world's end, baker's falls and the green pasture.

i love this pic. taken with a few backpackers we saw along the way. love my canon. point proven.



then we headed to the beaches like in marissa and unawatuna. but the highlight would still be staying at the US$160 per night tamarind hill at galle. gorgeous and ultimate indulgence, especially the chocolate tarts and the swimming pool. got my even tan for just a couple of hours.

..:: 24th @ Harry's ::..

Thanks for all who came. Missed out quite a lot of frenz cos there were too many to invite. overall had great fun moving around seeing my friends knowing other friends.

thanks for all the great gifts.