Off To See The World

Well, our last day in Sri Lanka was pretty good. We went to a big temple which is like a tooth relic or something like that… were 3 levels to the temple… a silver level, a gold level, and a sandal wood level. Some tour guide dude invited himself to give us a tour even though we told him no thank-you a few times. He kept trying to make us take pictures but it just feels really awkward taking pictures in a religious place. There were many monks there and many people praying there. Many people also bring flowers (mostly lotuses) to offer. It’s quite a beautiful setting with the peaceful monks, amazing craftsmanship of the temple, and fresh flowers everywhere. We spent a good chunk of the morning there.. and on our way out, the guy that was “giving us a tour” (it was more like following us), asked for a tip… grrrr… so, because he did tell us a few things, John and I gave him a hundred rupees… which he threw back in our faces… and threatened to call the police. Considering we told him we didn’t need a tour guide from the start, we told him to call the police… he didn’t, and we walked away with the tip he didn’t even want. Our driver was cool about it though, apparently he had told the guy that we didn’t need anyone either so he was happy that the guy didn’t get anything.

Anyway, we drove back to Colombo, stopping at a few shops along the way. We always get channeled into these places where we don’t really want to buy anything but they do some big demonstration and expect money. This time, it was a herbalist place (much like the one in Morocco). We sat through the demonstration where we got a massage with oils and John got a chunk of his leg hair removed with some kind of cream… very impressive actually. Regardless, we didn’t buy anything and people were pissed… life goes on.

We watched the sunset from the resort in Colombo before retiring for the night… we had to get up at 4:30am to go to the airport….wooo!

We made it to the airport with time to spare, said goodbye to our driver, and got ready to catch our flight. The flight itself was fine, aside from John laughing realllllly loud and shaking the seats.. not only annoying the heck out of me but also annoying the heck out of the lady in front of him because he kept pushing the volume button really hard on the back of the seat in front of him, shaking her seat. She kept looking back but John was too busy laughing his ass off to notice… he didn’t notice the guy right next to him giving him the evil eye for like a minute.. haha. It was quite entertaining…. and annoying… haha. I don’t think I could ever go to a comedy with John cause I’d just get really annoyed and what started as a comedy would end up with a homocide. Other than that, the flight was good (I moved to another seat halfway through…haha)…. unfortunately, John broke our streak of luck… yeah, he has poo problems… haha… and when he was on the can in the plane, we started to land, and one of the flight attendants opened the door while he was squatting there….haha… man, that would have been embarrassing for the both of them.

The Hong Kong airport was really nice, we ate at McDonalds while waiting for my mom to arrive from Canada. Mmmmm, McDonalds… When my mom finally arrived, I had a tough time finding her… all us asians look the same! I didn’t even realize I was standing behind my aunt for the longest time… haha. I actually didn’t realize it until my mom waved and the lady in front of me waved back… haha.

We drove into Honk Kong Island and went for dinner… it’s New Year’s Eve so everything is very festive around here. After we dropped off our luggage, we went to a small fair where they sell flowers for the New Year. They sell orchids VERY cheap here… the flowers smell really nice too. We stayed out until almost 2am crammed in a venue pretty much shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of asians. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable of times but it was neat to see. I have no idea why, but the Hong Kong people buy balloons and inflatables as part of their celebration so lots of people were carrying around balloons or plastic inflatables in all shapes… everything from giant lollipops to exacto knives… it was quite strange.

Well, I hope everyone had a fantastic Valentine’s day. No, John and I didn’t do anything special for the day… we aren’t tight like that.

We are in Sri Lanka now. Getting here was pretty uneventful… our flights were actually on time and we arrived late at night on the 13th.

Sri Lanka has been a pleasant surprise… it is MUCH nicer than the places we went in India. The beaches are beautiful, the people are very friendly (and not in a “trying-to-sell-you-something” kind of way), the streets are much cleaner, people don’t pee in public… etc. It’s exactly what I needed to pick up the spirits. A good friend of mine has family out here and they helped set us up at a beautiful beach resort with tours.

So, we spent Valentine’s Day touring Colombo… we went to a few Buddist Temples (one of which was on a magnificent lake), then we went to a huge museum, and then to the zoo. It’s kind of funny seeing animals that we saw in the wild in Africa, behind bars in a zoo in Sri Lanka. It’s just not the same… but the zoo was actually really fun… I can’t remember the last time I was at a zoo.

Then today, we woke up early to make the drive to Pinnawala. This is where there is a huge elephant orphanage. There are about 80 elephants at the orphanage and we got to watch them all go down to the river to bath and play…it was wicked. We spent quite a bit of time at the orphanage watching these incredible animals. Then, we even got to ride bareback on one in the jungle… that was sweeeeet. She was really big… and we got to bath her. Man, I can’t wait to post pictures. After the elephant ride and bath, we went to a HUGE botanical garden place in Kandy. Wow, the plants here are so lush, colorful, and beautiful. If it wasn’t like 30-some degrees out, I could have spent all day there… but it’s hot here… and us Canadians melt here.

Now we are at a CRAZY nice hotel in Kandy… it’s up on a mountain kind of and we can see a HUGE Buddha statue a little ways away… like, the statue is bigger than this hotel. I think we are going to go see that tomorrow… at least, I hope we are.

Anyway, I’m glad to report that our spirits are rejuvenated… and we look forward to our last couple days here before going to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year!