Sri Lanka Wrap Up

 I'm falling behind in my posting!  We're now in Thailand, but we won't soon forget Sri Lanka.  Mike has a friend who lives in Colombo and kept encouraging us to visit for its beautiful beaches.  We were certainly not disappointed--in the beaches or in the rest of this beautiful country.

My one disappointment is that I couldn't find my Sri Lanka Starbucks mug here!

Sri Lanka is usually romantically referred to as the teardrop of India, but I'm proud of my Dutch ancestors who replaced that silly nickname with a much more practical one:




This was kind of a soft exit from India.  Many things in the country are similar to India, but with a Sri Lankan flair.  As the Asians would say "Same same, but different".

In my last post, I mentioned our time first in the hill country of Kandy and then in the east coast beach town of Passekudah.  From there we traveled further down the east coast to one of the top surf spots in the world--Arugam Bay.

The view of our cabanas from the beach.

A nice shady spot in the daytime--with its porch and hammock...

And cozy at night too--if we could just get those pesky mosquitoes to stay away.

Yet another beautiful beach discovery

Rihan ran the cabanas where we stayed.  For some strange reason, the girls were immediately excited about the place Mike had chosen for us :).  The place was very low key in the off season and he was also the chef for most of our meals, so we had lots of time to talk with him about Sri Lankan life.

This little bread truck comes by each day and Rihan would just buy what he needed.

Our 2+ weeks went by so quickly and it was time to travel back to Colombo.  Even though it's a much bigger city, we enjoyed it more than we thought we would.  We had dinner at a Sri Lankan restaurant with an uncle of an acquaintance--he spends 6 months in Toronto and 6 months in Sri Lanka.  And then we connected with Mike's friend and his family for lunch the following day.

Galle Face Green is a well known beachfront walkway in Colombo.

On a Sunday evening, nearly all of Colombo was here!

Mike's friend Suranga, his wife Lakshika and family.  Very fun to be able to meet his family.

And I try my best to ignore these, but it's SO HARD:**

Sri Lanka, you're killin' me!!

**Disclaimer:  Let me be very clear that if I were trying to write anything in Sinhala it would be so much worse, so please know I do this in fun!

On a more serious note, whenever we travel to a less familiar place I'm struck by the hardships that have happened that we haven't a clue about.  Two life-changing events for any Sri Lankan, which we heard about frequently, were the tsunami in 2004 and the civil war which lasted for 30 years and just ended about 5 years ago.

Three quarters of the island coastline was significantly damaged by the 2004 tsunami.  A train traveling to Colombo was hit by the wave and 1000 people died.  Island-wide, there were 31,000 fatalities.  Many people on the east coast told us very matter-of-factly about the people in their families who had died in the tsunami.  One man was 11 at the time and lost 18 of his classmates.

The civil war was fought between the Sri Lankan army and a rebel group, the Tamil Tigers.  There are basically two groups of people in Sri Lanka--the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Muslim/Hindu Tamils (with some overlaps).  Sounds like the war was more cultural than religious, but the Tamils were feeling discriminated against and were fighting for a northern independent territory.  Passekudah, the more NE beach we stayed at, was being newly developed after being devastated by the tsunami and also much fighting that took place there.  There were some resorts previously but most were destroyed by the Tigers so the Sri Lankan army couldn't use them.

OK, already probably too much info, but this is just a nutshell of what we learned.

Next Up:  Northern Thailand