A week in Sri Lanka

Galle

I arrived in Sri Lanka on a hot and muggy day, lucky to miss the cyclone by just one day. I had no plans in particular, so I went to the Fort train station and got on the train to Galle. The train track runs through lush green country, right along the ocean with waves washing up practically right next to the train.

It started to rain as I walked into Galle Fort, a Disneyland of epic proportions - every building was a hotel, restaurant or shop. The rain made me feel sluggish and bored, especially after haggling with a shop keeper who wanted to sell me a second hand umbrella for $10.

The next day, the rain completely cleared and I was treated to a wonderful sunny day. Galle Fort is an old Portugese fort right on the ocean, which survived the 2004 Boxing day tsunami - an incredible testament to the building integrity as much of new Galle had suffered. It was quite fun walking along the fort wall and seeing where one ended up.

There were lots of beautiful old buildings in the area and it was easy to see why so many tourists came here.

Some of the fort wall was built with pieces of coral - gorgeous nuggets set in stone.

It was a lovely day and many couples were out canoodling in corners.

I sat on the fort wall and watched local boys play cricket, whilst the professionals played in the proper cricket ground behind them.

The beach was narrow and not so nice at Galle, but I really loved these rocky steps descending from the wall.


Mirissa

After lunch I took the bus to Mirissa, a beautiful seaside ride. As the clouds cleared the sea seemed to brighten as well.

Mirissa beach is a gorgeous arc of golden sand and the waves are perfect for surfing. It's so easy to see the appeal and much of the beach has been overtaken by restaurants and hotels. The building is so pervasive that sand erosion is occurring right in front of your eyes.

This is the type of development occurring in Mirissa - guesthouses being built everywhere. This sign is from just one street in Mirissa.

Even though the beach was 80% occupied, it was still possible to find a quiet spot to read and contemplate life. I read the paper and laughed at the matrimonial ads, the best thing about subcontinental newspapers.

After a while I was adopted by this doggy that wanted to hang out with me and chew on the newspapers.

A nice sunset in Mirissa. The noise from all the restaurants wasn't so nice. I had planned to stay in Mirissa longer but the Disneyland feel had followed me from Galle, so I knew it was time to move.


Tangalle 

Sri Lankan buses are much like the buses I rode on in Central America. Refurbished from an unknown source, always brightly coloured, windows mostly broken, loud music blaring, snacks being sold at every turn, the occasional blind preacher... they were fun to ride on and I always met locals keen for a chat on every bus.

After a couple of hours I got to Tangalle which was much quieter than Mirissa. I found a guesthouse away from the main strip facing the sea and relished the quiet. A short walk along the beach brought me to the local fishermen distributing today's catch.

These fishing boats were incredibly narrow and I wondered how they balanced!

I spent the night in Tangalle, a blissfully quiet night with no noise at all. In the morning I woke to this beautiful sunrise from my window.


Ella 

The next day I woke up early and took the bus which incredibly delivered me from Tangalle to Ella without any change required. I absolutely loved Ella, easily my favourite place in Lanka this time. I went for a walk up to Little Adam's peak where there were so much green everywhere I looked. There were a fair few tourists on top of the peak but it was easy enough to find a peaceful spot to read and write.

Of course I got adopted by another doggie.

On the way down I saw this incredible sunset over the hills.

The next day I walked down the road to Ravana falls. It was a bit of a hairy walk at times as the tuktuks and buses sped around the corners and I had to duck out of the way quickly. But the scenery is amongst some of the most breathtaking I've ever seen in my life.

I saw lots of monkeys along the way, including these ones with the very long tails and black faces.

Ravana falls was gushing after wet season and there was nowhere to even dip one's feet. I sat here and finished my book, the mountain story by Lori Lansens - a gripping adventure thriller.

I walked along the train track to the nine arch bridge, a stunning piece of engineering built during the British era. 

I was a bit scared of being stuck in the tunnel when the train came! But there were so many tourists there was actually a policeman allocated to looking after us.

And of course, I got adopted by another doggie, this one followed me all the way back to Ella.


Nuwara Eliya

I had planned to go to Kandy but the train workers went on strike, so instead I took the next bus that came along and ended up in Nuwara Eliya.

This was also a British colonial hilltown. I really enjoyed wandering around here - it felt much more real as there were hardly any tourists and it was just locals doing their own thing.

I sat on the golf course to read and eat a soursop. Another curious doggie came to visit.

Sadly I had an awful evening of nausea after eating some dodgy food. I still got back on the bus though as I wanted to meet my friend in Colombo. Here is just a random hillside town we stopped at along the motion sickness road down to Colombo.

Colombo 

I was so happy to finally be off the bus after 6 hours. I didn't even mind the walk from Pettah to Fort in the afternoon heat. This random sculpture is just on the side of the street, near the entrance to the Fort area.

In the evening I went to Galle Face Green for sunset and saw these school kids doing yoga. It was horribly polluted though - traffic exhaust fumes, air pollution, plus the seaside "reclaiming the sea" building project made everything grey and dusty. 

Sunset at Galle Face Green wasn't much of a sunset...

Sunrise at Galle Face Green wasn't much of a sunrise. It was incredibly smoggy as I walked to Galle Face hotel to meet Vhari for breakfast.

Later that day I wandered along the sea and saw those train tracks I had ridden on, on my very first day in Lanka.

I stopped off in a local hipster cafe and had a cold brew whilst I did some more writing. I really had a wonderful week in Sri Lanka, where I reached many personal epiphanies. I enjoyed reading, writing and composing in all these strange beautiful places. I had planned to stay put in one place but ended up visiting quite a lot of places (especially for my usual snail-speed travel!). But it felt just right for the frame of mind I was in - I felt free, as if I had discovered my youth again... Freedom is in the mind.

Dream: a balloon competition and black face painting

In this dream I’m getting ready for the trip to Timor. We are in the departure hall but it looks more like a large Asian train station than Darwin airport. There are lots of food stalls and I line up at one with a very long queue. It’s so long that I can’t see what is actually for sale.

As I get closer I see that it is a bakery with all sorts of bread. The loaves come in lots of different shapes but nothing is sliced. There are also no small things – no rolls, no pastries or pies… nothing that would be easy to take away. I ask the lady if she can slice a loaf and she solemnly shakes her head.

I take the large loaf of bread in a plastic bag and head to the departure gate. It looks like some sort of fun run – everyone is getting dressed up in vests with numbers and being organised into teams. I’m not sure where I belong but get swallowed up by a big group of people. Once I’ve put on my vest, they strap a harness on, which is then attached to a number of very long strings like a parachute. Someone brings over a giant balloon and it is attached meticulously to the strings.

I look around and it’s hard to discern who is doing all this intricate work, but in the blink of an eye, the balloon is inflated and I am floating high above the ground. It is only then I realise that the departure hall leads straight into a tunnel with a very high ceiling. I float into the tunnel, tugging on the strings to control my direction.

Soon I come to some paper flags which represent obstacles in the tunnel. I’m still trying to understand exactly what is happening – I’m partaking in a helium balloon race through a tunnel where I have to avoid paper flags? I feel confused but I duck under one set of paper flags and float above another set. A little further on, there is a more complex obstacle involving three sets of flags very close together. I manage to pass it without knocking the flags down, but my leg brushes against one of the flags.

There are a bunch of people ahead welcoming me to the ground. My leg tingles where it brushed against the flag and I struggle to get down. A crowd of people detach me from all the parachute/balloon stuff and I am guided against a wall. They congratulate me on being the winner, and I tell them I couldn’t have won since I touched one of the flags.

They ignore me and start mixing up paint in a palette. That’s it, the second phase is a face painting competition. I think to myself. A lady comes up to me and she has only black on her palette. She raises her brush and touches it to my ear. A cold wet slimy feeling enters my ear canal and I flinch away from her.

You must do this to complete the competition. She says to me.

I walk away from her and into the darkness of the tunnel. Not too far away from all the face painting, there is a table with a pile of LPs. I see my colleague from work there and greet him, but he doesn’t seem to remember me. I’m digging through the LPs, trying to calm myself down still from the insanity of the balloon race and someone trying to paint my ear black. I see an LP titled “Conservative violin music” and my father’s picture is on the front of the LP. I’m so astonished to see this that I want to take a photo to show my dad.

At that moment I turn around and see the lady with the black paint who has followed me.

You need your certificate of completion. She says sternly. And then I wake up.

Sydney ADO

The 25th anniversary concert of the Australian Doctors Orchestra, at the Chatswood concourse over 3 - 5 November 2017.
Shostakovich - Symphony 10 
Rodrigo - Guitar concerto 
Ravel - Bolero 

Sri Lanka: Food and supermarkets

I always wanted to visit Sri Lanka - the civil war made it unsuitable to visit in 2008, and since then it has just been lurking at the back of my mind. All the Lankan food I've eaten, whether home made or in a restaurant, has always been delicious. So I was glad to finally have the opportunity to visit for a week.

Tourism in Sri Lanka is absolutely exploding at breakneck speed. Every place I went to was building guesthouses like crazy. Along with tourists is the development of the idea that tourists will pay anything even if it is absurd compared to local prices. There are plenty of hole-in-the-wall places to eat in Sri Lanka (except in Galle Fort, that is just Disneyland), but most tourists do not venture into them. Tourists prefer cleanliness, menus and cutlery - hence the tourist restaurants are all very overpriced.


Rice and Curry 

The mainstay of Lankan food is "rice and curry", which really doesn't describe anything. A mound of rice comes with any number of curries (usually 3 or 4) that reflect what is fresh and in season. There is always dal, often coconut sambol, and then vegetables.

The very first rice & curry outside Fort railway station. Delicious okra and eggplant. This delicious lunch set the bar incredibly high as I had no idea none of my future meals would be so cheap (120R = $1)!

One of the best - at Matey Hut in Ella. Top left is a whole cooked mango! At this restaurant the levels of spicy are - not spicy, Western spicy, Asian spicy, Lankan spicy. 

Another fine example from Ella - sweet eggplant, beetroot and jackfruit seeds 

A tourist restaurant standard "banquet' with lots of little curries - this one is from Mama's restaurant in Galle Fort. 

Kottu Roti

Another popular food / snack is the kottu roti. Here the roti - thin doughy pancakes - are added to a sizzling hotplate along with chopped veggies (usually onions, leeks, cabbage and carrot) and an egg. I often saw cheese on tourist menus but I wonder how authentic that must be.

As the whole lot is frying, the kottu man uses two giant choppers to slice everything up very finely - like a fried rice but fried roti. The rhythmic clatter of the choppers on the hotplate is what alerts you to a kottu place - there is no sound like it in the world!

My first kottu roti from a roadside restaurant in Mirissa

String hoppers

I actually didn't see string hoppers all that much, the only time I had it in Lanka was this lunch in Nuwara Eliya, ladled over with a glug of yellow curry sauce and a plop of the ubiquitous coconut sambol. The jackfruit cutlet in the corner is one of the tastiest things I ate in Lanka.

So spicy, so tender, so delicious. Immediately ate another two. 

Breakfast

I'm not really sure what Lankans eat for breakfast, but there were plenty of bakeries where people bought (mostly very white) bread and sweets. I found most sweet things way too sweet for my liking - obviously the locals have a way sweeter tooth!

Here is a typical breakfast - all fried, delicious and unhealthy. A fish roll and a cutlet of egg and mystery bits. 

Egg roti from Dewmini roti shop in Mirissa - super famous but somewhat bland.

Thosa - spelt like dosa, but nothing like dosa. It is also a fermented rice crepe but it is made more like an uttapam. Served with the very Lankan coconut sambol and very "Indian" sambhar, almost like a subcontinental fusion food!

Another dosa. Pretty, but it made me sick... Gotta love the help yourself buckets though

Other miscellaneous eats

Whole grilled fish rubbed in delicious spices, at Mango shade in Tangalle - one of the tastiest meals I had in lanka. 

 Snackies on the bus

 Strange looking sweets 

Random Supermarket photos

 

 Cos we all need a knife with our lentils

 Essential purchase for the hot weather!

 Instant noodles, Lanka style

Who doesn't love a prawn-flavoured non-prawn? 

Sri Lankan vegemite? 

 I eventually figured out devilled = spicy 

Four Sri Lanka dreams

Kung Fu Panda and the egg emoji

In this dream I'm using the maps app on my phone, and when I pressed the "localise" button it zoomed into Taiwan. I thought that was a little odd since I'm pretty far from Taiwan.. The little blue dot turned into a panda icon, and zoomed in until I could see it was actually Kung Fu panda. It started kicking something around, and it quickly went from country to country between cartoon characters.

There is a pause in the dream, and I find myself on a bus. It looks like a typical Sydney bus with the mosaic blue fabric covered seats. I'm on the bus with Tracey Ying who I haven't seen for so many years now. She's telling me about a trip she just did to Peru where they went around and ate all this amazing food. As I'm listening to her describe the food I felt this major sense of FOMO -  how wonderful would it be to go to Peru to eat! 

I ask her what her favourite place in Peru was, and she says, actually it was a Japanese Peruvian fusion place called Mabuki. The name sounds familiar but I struggle to remember the context. She starts to tell me about all the amazing fresh fish she ate at Mabuki, and my mind wanders. She says that it was great I could understand the love of fresh fish, as everyone other person she had told, had simply sent her an egg emoji.

I couldn't understand the link between Japanese food, Mabuki and the egg emoji. And anyway, in the dream I had reached my stop to get off the bus. The bus made a left turn and pulled up at the Rexalls on the corner of Queen & University - the Rexalls I used to go to all the time in Toronto. Tracey stood up with me and gave me a hug in the doorway of the bus. It was quite awkward, especially since after we let go we were both stuck in the doorway, unable to move.

Then I wake up.


Heartbroken stranger and the subway to the city

In this dream I am standing at an intersection. It looks quite busy with lots of cars coming and going, so probably in the middle of the city though I'm not sure which. A tall dark handsome stranger comes up to me and greets me in a friendly way to make me think that he knows me somehow. He doesn't introduce himself and I don't know who he is.

To be polite I ask him how he is after he asks me how I am. He bursts into tears and says that he just broke up with his partner two days prior and was in extreme pain. He is sobbing uncontrollably and I instinctively reach out to comfort him, though I do not even know who he is. He says he is working on some sort of app to numb the pain of breakups and I wonder - is that even possible? or advisable?

The awkward moment is broken by a small Japanese girl carrying a large backpack, who comes up to us to ask for instructions. She is looking for the train station to go to the city "to see things". I wonder what things she means. I look down the street and I see there are two entrances. I tell her that the one closer to us is the long distance train station, and that she wants the one further from us leading to the subway. She thanks us and walks towards the subway.

I look at the stranger again and wonder if he is one of the European critical care fellows, but then I know that he does not exist.

Then I wake up.


Maggots on the desk

Rarely do I have a dream that is so definitely localised in place. I am in the room I stayed in at the Rock view guesthouse in Ella, and the desk is exactly the one I had in the dream.

In the dream I am frantically clearing the desk of the things on it. Everything is crawling with maggots in various stages of development. The stench is awful and they seem to be reproducing in front of my eyes. MP the research nurse is helping me, mostly by encouraging me "don't look, just sweep it into the bin", "come on! you can do it!" 

There are lots of paper bags on the table and they are all crawling with maggots. I push them into the large plastic rubbish bag, holding my breath in the process. There is a piece of matcha cheesecake as well, which I also shove in.

Finally finished, MP staples the bag to a large cardboard box (like the ones used for moving) and I take it outside. As I'm walking away she calls out after me don't forget to bring the box back! We need it for more cleaning.

I walk to the bins along a muddy path dotted with stepping stones. I am pretty much covered in mud by the time I get there and dad is there - he says, be calm, grandma isn't with us anymore. 

Then I wake up.


Tree missing limbs and a wrongly authored book

In this dream I am so excited to see my friend B has published a book along with 3 other co-authors. It seems to be a book about current disasters in the world, each written as a short story of 3-4 pages. The book is printed in blue & white and I wonder why the colour scheme is that way.

I look up at that moment and see the most peculiar tree. It is huge with a thick trunk suggesting it is quite an old tree. The top of the tree seems to be normal with a dense canopy of leaves, but the bottom half of the branches is completely missing. It looks like someone has chopped off the limbs at the point where they join the trunk. The sight is most strange, and when I look closer I can see white flowers at the top of the tree.

What resilience. I think to myself.

At that moment Joz comes along with a bag of spicy nuts and offers me a hazelnut and a brazil nut - I take the brazil nut and she says Good choice! and walks away.

I get out my phone to take a photo of the weird tree, and I cannot make it focus. I look at the book again and now it seems as if the authors have completely changed - B is no longer one of them.

Then I wake up.

Dream: escape from boxes

This dream occurred in Sydney, during this strange blurry week after Thailand.

It starts in a house that I do not recognise. I am there with M and soon we see that the house will be open for inspection soon. He says we should go somewhere so as not to be in the way, so we go into the garage.

Inside there are many boxes stacked almost to the ceiling. We climb onto some boxes and sit there chatting. An older couple comes in with a tape measure to measure the dimensions of the garage. They ask if we will buy the house and we say no.

After they leave, I decide I want to get down from the boxes. I get to the edge and look over - the ground looks like it's suddenly very far away - 2 or 3 storeys? M is saying something which I don't catch - is he telling me to jump or not jump?

I feel afraid and my heart pounds like crazy. I psyche myself up to jump and close my eyes. All I feel is a musty stillness. Then I jump and wake up with a start. 

Dream: lost in the tunnel

The dream starts with the utterly heavy knowledge that Emily is dead. I don't know how I know this, or how it came about, but I know it is true. It is the only thing on my mind for most of the dream.

I am in an underground tunnel. Isn't it funny how tunnels remove all evidence of the outside - one has no idea what season it is, the time of day, the weather, or even where one is. I am walking around in this tunnel without any direction, but with this vague sense that I need to be somewhere.

I am carrying a cello which I don't recognise. It has no case and no bow, I'm just holding it by its neck. In fact, I don't even know if it is a real cello, or maybe it's just something that looks like a cello. I am wearing my dark red coat, and I become aware of the fact that I am wearing nothing underneath.

I feel momentarily confused - am I on my way to the funeral? or to rehearsal? either occasion would feel awkward for me showing up like that.

I walk around several corners and am unable to find any clue to the direction I'm going in. I see some type of poster in the distance, which turns out to be a 3D map. It is no help though, as I don't know the name of what I am looking for. An exit, I think to myself, there must be an exit somewhere.

The signs are sometimes in English, and sometimes in Chinese. Other languages feature too, and it's not clear exactly which country I might be in. I see a L'Occitane store and go inside to ask the staff where the exit might be, but I can not understand whatever language they may be speaking in.

In one of the side branches of the tunnels, I find a stairwell. I go up the stairs and try the doors at each level, but they are all locked and I cannot get out. After a few flights up, I start to worry that I won't be able to get out where I came into the tunnel. At that moment, the door opens and I am in a hospital meeting room.

Gareth is standing at the head of the table, and some type of meeting is in progress. He is talking about capturing certain people as they come into the hospital. I start to sweat and feel like he might be talking about me. Still holding the cello, I back away slowly. I bump into the door, or where the door was, except now it has completely smoothed over and I cannot see where the exit is.

Right, I need to get to this funeral. I think to myself. Then I wake up.