If it ain't broke

break it.

Last night someone threw a cement block through our back windshield. This happened on the same day that one of our home air-conditioners was finally fixed. It makes me wonder if there's some sort of law of physics around here that something, must, at all times be broken. Would physics even be to blame? I'll defer to the three immediate members of my family on this one. All scientists, I'm sure they can explain.

I am kind of tickled about the timing. We accidentally let our car insurance lapse for three days, so our insurance policy at the time of window-smashing was just one day old.

I say I think this is kind of funny, but it won't be if the insurance doesn't pay. It's impossible to know if they will. You might be like, yeah, of course they will! That's what insurance companies are for! But then you forget who I'm dealing with over here. Last night we had to pay a cop 20 bucks just so he'd write an incident report.

HOTtown

It's about 110 degrees in Chennai and that means power outages. Over the weekend I had a nice meal on the stove when the lights went out. Since the gas was still on I tried my best to take things in stride and kept on cooking.

It worked out. Things always do. Which brings me to the point of this post:

I was feeling really sad because there was a store here that used to be called FARTS. That was its real name. They had a big sign and everything. I kept meaning to take a picture of it, but suddenly, the name changed. To Jesus Christ Fine Arts. Which, is still kind of funny, but not half as funny as FARTS. But miraculously, thank you Jesus! they now have both names on the sign: Farts and an abbreviated Jesus Fine Arts. Pictures coming soon....

what have I become?

Over the weekend I did something I never thought I'd do. I sat...with a group of women...and we all complained about our maids.

Yesterday I reached into the fridge and ate a handful of grapes. Moments later I realized that I'd never washed them. I went into a literal panic.

Last week I rode through town in a rickshaw with 900 dollars worth of rupees in my bag to pay for airline tickets to Bangkok.

Life here is just plain weird.

Colombo

We call these our too much vacation faces:




The half-open eyes, the total lack of ambition...when we see these faces staring back at us in the mirror, we know it's time to go home. It's tempting to stay on the beach, but you have to be careful not to get to the point of no return. The owner of the guesthouse told us that he once had a guy stay three years.

So we packed our things and had what we call "fancy time."

You may not think of Colombo, Sri Lanka as a fancy place, but it sure felt that way to us. We spent three days there, shopping, eating out, and most luxuriously, sleeping in an air-conditioned room with nice, starchy white sheets. It doesn't take much to make us feel fancy.

The best part was a restaurant we found, The Gallery Cafe. Someone turned the old office of Geoffary Bawa, a famous Sri Lankan architect, into a bar and restaurant. It was a great space with an even better menu. We ate there four times in three days.




We also went for some sunset drinks at the Galle Face Hotel, a beautiful, old hotel set right on the water.


The only other thing we did was shop. Colombo is a huge garment district, you can get Calvin Klein castaways and other brands made in Sri Lanka for great prices. I went nuts in Odel, a Colombo department store. Brad was able to find some things too. I don't know if I've told you how infrequently we get to replenish our wardrobes here. Normally, I just stock up while I'm in Iowa for the summer, but this summer we're going to be backpacking the whole 51 days of vacation, so Sri Lanka will have to tide us over for a while. I think it will.

Tangalla

After the long hike we were ready for the beach. We cut out plans for a safari and went straight for the sand instead. We lucked out with our beach spot, we were at the quiet end of an out of the way spot, so we rarely saw anyone but the owners of our guesthouse, which was just $25 a night. It didn't take long to settle into a routine: wake up, coffee, pineapple and coconut, walk, swim, books, beer, nap, calamari, swim, books, shower, dinner, gin rummy, sleep. Repeat. Besides the fruit for breakfast we didn't eat anything other than seafood, which paired nicely with arrack, the locally fermented beverage of choice.










Oh...and here's the bat that got into our room. When Brad saw it he screamed and covered his head with a pair of underwear he'd been holding. Then he ran out of the room.

Adam's Peak

From Kandy we went to Delhousie, the town closest to Adam's Peak. To explain that, I'll just give you more from Wikipedia:

Adam's Peak is a 2,243 metres (7,359 ft) tall conical mountain located in central Sri Lanka. It is well-known for the Sri Pada "sacred footprint", a 1.8 m rock formation near the summit, in Buddhist tradition held to be the footprint of the Buddha, in Hindu tradition that of Shiva and in Muslim tradition that of Adam.

Adam's Peak the pointy one, off to the right

Most people who climb Adam's Peak do so as a pilgrimage. We saw so many people hiking barefoot, people lugging babies, ancient men and women slowly picking their way up the steps. Whole families hike together, everyone taking turns hauling Grandma up the hill. We hiked most of the way with a woman from Colombo, who was making the climb for a third time. We didn't know her, but met her right at the beginning of the trail. She asked if she could hike with us so she didn't have to hike alone. It ended up working out for everyone, since she was an informative guide. She told me that in the "olden days" people used to give away all their property before climbing Adam's Peak, knowing it'd be the last thing they'd do. That was kind of a scary thing to hear at the beginning of the hike, but it turns out it wasn't so bad. The ascent, anyway, the way down was tortuous, more on that later....

This is our hiking pal. Brad is getting a blessing from the monk on the right.

We started climbing at 2 am in order to catch the sunrise at the top. It didn't matter that it was dark, the whole trail was lit and there were plenty of little shops selling tea, water and snacks along the way. There were also lots of statues and shrines, and chants piped through speakers. We had four hours to make it to the top, so we weren't in much of a hurry. We stopped a couple of times to have some tea and chat with people. About halfway up, around 4 am, I met an old man who'd been climbing since 9 the night before!


For almost the whole hike, we could see the top, lit up with a misty, orange glow. So I guess I thought it'd be sort of magical up there, but I should have known that it would be absolutely packed with people, some of them sleeping, some meditating, some huddled around a fire, and then since it was morning, quite a few people were waking up and brushing their teeth.

We went to the little platform that surrounds the footprint, but no one is allowed to see the actual footprint, there's just a cloth. From there we went to watch the sunrise, but it was a cloudy morning so all we really saw was a gradual lightning of the sky. Not to say it wasn't really pretty, just different from what we were expecting.




So, like any hike, you get to the top, hang around a while and then think, I guess it's time to head back down. But unlike other hikes, the way down Adam's Peak was the worst part. I would have known this if I had read Lonely Planet before the hike, but I didn't. They say, "Most people find the way down the most difficult. All those steps (5,200) can be very hard on the knees." They WERE hard on the knees, and I was tired and my blood sugar was low, so I got pretty cranky. I kept myself going by singing a song to the tune of Help me Rhonda by the Beach Boys...help me Buddha, help, help me Buddha... It helped. Near the end it was hard just to put one foot in front of the other, but we made it.

Lonely Planet also says, "Make sure you stretch afterward or you'll be walking funny for days," but I didn't find a Lonely Planet until we got to the beach, so after the hike I just ate a bag of Cheeze-Its and fell asleep. I walked funny for days.

It was worth it.









We have lots of videos of the hike, but I can't get them uploaded from home. For one thing the electricity keeps going out (horrible, it's 100 degrees) and we're down to my old PC because the Mac crapped out. So, I'll try to get them up from school. They're good. Stay tuned.

Kandy, Sri Lanka

Kandy
We headed straight for Kandy after arriving in Colombo. The guesthouse I'd booked arranged transport for us, so I should have known right away the the guesthouse was going to be crappy. The seats of the van were full of cigarette holes and there was no air conditioning. The only place to put our feet was a hot piece of metal, also full of holes, which provided a nice view of the road. But, we made it safely to Kandy Cottage, where we were greeted by monkeys and not much else. Eventually someone came out and showed us to our room where there were tons of ants and no running water. By this point I'd kind of had it, so, we took a rickshaw to a hotel I'd seen online, but dismissed because of the price tag. Fortunately, we were some of the only people there, so I was able to bargain. We got a great room with a view, goldfish in the windowsill, clean sheets and a comfy bed, plus limitless amounts of running water for almost half the asking price.





After a great dinner, we had a good night's rest and were ready to see the sights of Kandy the next day. The hotel provided us with a tricked out rickshaw and a driver.



Sri Lanka is the birthplace of Buddhism, so along the streets there are all sorts of little shrines. Also, even though it's close in proximity to India, Sri Lanka is worlds away in many respects. The streets are clean and the air quality is good too. I have to think this is mostly due to population. There are just over 20 million people in Sri Lanka, which, I guess is a lot for an island, but not much considering the almost 10 million people crammed into the city of Chennai.






Vertical Gardens
We didn't know what the vertical gardens were, but the driver took us there first, so we just went on in. Turns out, it was a great, big botanical center, where we were impressed by many things, two in paticular: orchids and giant bats.

Orchids are so pretty.





So, after the orchids we wandered around a little aimlessly until we saw a big group of people crossing a wide lawn. There was nothing else to do but follow them...right into a trap! In the trees across the lawn were hundreds of the biggest bats I've ever seen. AAAHH!! It was horrifying. Little did we know then that one of them would follow us all the way to the beach.






After that frightening experience, we went to find some serenity at the Temple of the Tooth, home of Buddha's tooth. Here's a brief, edited history on the tooth of the Buddha from Wikipedia:

According to Sri Lankan legends, when the Buddha died, his body was cremated in a sandalwood pyre at Kusinara in India and his left canine tooth was retrieved from the funeral pyre. A belief grew that whoever possessed the Sacred Tooth Relic had a divine right to rule that land. Wars were fought to take possession of the relic. Later the tooth was brought to Sri Lanka. The Sacred Tooth Relic came to be regarded as a symbolic representation of the living Buddha and it is on this basis that there grew up a series of offerings, rituals, and ceremonies.

Since The Temple of the Tooth is a holy place we had to cover up. I brought along a little hoodie, so I was OK, but Brad had to buy a skirt to cover his legs. He was worried that he looked dorky, but I seriously thought he looked awesome. And that's why I took his picture with this seriously awesome commemorative plaque at the entrance to the temple. I'm not trying to make a joke of it, I just love the wording..."Lion-hearted child hero..."




Things got even better from there. There was a good audio tour of the temple, so we both got to see and learn a lot. I'm pretty sure this was my first time in a Buddhist temple, unless my parents took me to one on a family vacation and I don't remember because I was too little or too busy fighting with my brother. Anyway, no fighting in this place, just lots of meditating and chanting and then of course, if you're a tourist, photographing and gawking.












Turns out, there's not much to do in Kandy. We didn't mind since we had a great pool, lots of books and DVDs and delicious food right in the hotel, so we did some serious relaxing before our big trip up Adam's Peak.