Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and Bali

Sri Lanka, May 1st-8th (by Adrian)

The visit to Sri Lanka was not one we had in mind for the trip, but when booking the ticket it turned out that we could go there anyway, so we did. We usually think that one week is not really enough to see a place, but as it turned out, a week was probably a bit long!


Vegtables on the street in Colombo


The sea front of Colombo

Sri Lanka, like Nepal, has a serious civil war going on. The feeling on the streets of the capital was not totally pleasant, as there were road blocks, streets closed, soldiers walking about and troops driving along the roads. Also the infrastructure of the country is in a very poor state, and many of the roads, trains and railways looked as though they had not been replaced since the British left over 50 years ago.

Interesting fact about Sri Lanka:the word 'serendipity' comes from the old arab word for Sri Lanka 'serendib' - actually two words meaning "Gem Island".

We wandered around Colombo, the capital, for a couple of days, but other than a pleasant seafront promenade, really found very little of interest. We took a train out of the city, and after a long ride we went to see the "elephant orphanage" which is supposed to care for elephants in need. There were certainly many elephants in residence, though none especially small. We were able to see them being fed milk and swimming in the river. Quite a sight it was to see their trunks doing all sorts of things.

Then we headed 'upcountry' to Kandy, where coincidentally, there was a big festival for the May full moon, during which time the Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, and died (Carrie's dad commented: "a busy day!"). In Kandy is a very sacred temple containing the Buddha's "left tooth". Allegedly anyway. This relic is venerated beyond belief, and many stories have developed around it. We queued for about an hour to see it, passing through 3 different levels of security and finally shuffling around a corridor to arrive at the tooth room. Inside was mayhem, so we just looked at it from the outside past the thronging masses. The tooth itself is (allegedly) contained within many caskets, in a Russian Doll fashion, so you can't see the tooth. In fact, rumour has it that the "real" tooth is somewhere else for safe keeping. It was stolen many years ago, and on an attempt to crush it, it shot up into the air and glowed (there is a picture of this alleged event). The tooth building is very fancy, and has a museum, a display area of gifts given by tooth pilgrims over the years, groups of musicians and a special elephant who parades the tooth about the town once a year - as well as performing other ceremonial duties. Oh, and the elephant has a museum also.

During the festival, many especially elaborately created paper lanterns were illuminated around the temple and lights were put on every available surface. It made the place look quite nice.


A Buddha, one of the largest in the world, apparently.


Elephants at the elephant orphanage.

We also wanted to visit the ancient fortress of Sigiriya, but it was closed due to a recent attack by hornet on a group of Philipinos, so we went to another, smaller, temple nearby, carved into the rocks. There were hundreds of buddhas (buddhae?) that were carved in caves there, but the millions of people crowding around them made it hot and a cramped push to see them.

Bali (Indonesia) May 9th-16th (by Adrian)

Like Sri Lanka, Bali was another country we had as a bonus. It's in Indonesia, but is a predominately Hindu island. We decided here that we were to have a holiday, before our entry back to the first world, so set ourselves up in one of the many excellent, well appointed bungalows upcountry for the week. It really was a good idea too. The climate is good, and the way of life seems largely untroubled away from the large tourist towns of the coast. The music and dance traditions of Bali and Java were well known to me, and we attended 3 different performances. The music is performed by the gamelan - an ensemble of 24 musicians playing percussions instruments such as gong, drums and xylophones - which can be very loud and is very expressive. The music is very different to western ears, but I loved it. The dance also was spectacular, being very colourful, energetic and frightening at times! It must be great growing up in a place that has so much music around all the time.


Two+2 of the very large numbers of monkeys we encountered.


A complex of buildings that used to be a palace, but now a hotel.


Pesky monkeys again.


A gamelan performance


Cycling through the rice paddies

Other than these excursions, we limited activities to reading by the pool, swimming and sleeping.

Layovers in Hong Kong airport, May 8th and 16th (by Adrian)

Unforunately, it turned out that we were to have rather a long time in Hong Kong on 2 occasions. We laid aside plenty to read and do for these days, but it turned out that they let us out of the airport to look about if we wanted. The airport is on a relatively unpopulated island some distance from the tower blocks, and on the first layover we walked into the forest only a few miles from the runways. And it was very nice, not at all the urban environment that I'd expected to see. In fact we saw very few people, and at times could not even see any buildings either, but just a view of the bay. On our second visit we went to Hong Kong island itself and visited the very interesting 'Museum of Tea Ware', which was indeed a museum of tea pots and stuff associated with teamaking in China. It was a surprise to visit a museum that has descriptions of items and information (something which was not present in any museum we'd been to for many months). Still, I would not recommend spending 20hours in any airport, but HKG might be one of the better ones.


The interior of Hong Kong international, our home for 2 nights


A foggy trip out