Its been awhile since my last update, but frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to pay 200 Rupees every 15 minutes to update the blog while at our hotel in Kandy. Regardless, the trip to Kandy was excellent! We spent 2 nights and 3 days in the city of Kandy, and had many adventures along the way.
Basically everything in the city looked like this..
The streets were busy and full of life, sounds and far too many smells. (We found ‘Dry Fish Avenue’, and needless to say, we only went it down once.) There was plenty of shopping and plenty of people that wanted us to follow them to their shop. (I never realized that I had so many ‘friends’, which is how they all referred to me)
Many peoples.. Many deals..
You could find just about anything you wanted, although we had to deal with the ‘skin tax’. As soon as we walked onto the block, prices went up 3000%. Despite this I managed to find a few goodies, at what I thought were reasonable prices. There were also a few humorous finds along the way too.
The dvd, illegal. The grammar, incorrect.
We also walked by the Temple of the Tooth, which is basically the most holy place on the globe for Buddhists. It houses the suppose upper left K9 tooth of Buddha himself. I thought about going in and checking it out, just as a cultural experience, but it was 500 Rupees, and I’ve seen fake teeth before, so I passed.
I love ironic photos.
The last day (Sunday) we went to Sigiriya. It is known as the rock of 1000 steps (and 100 stubbed toes along the way.) Basically it is a huge rock that had an entirely self sufficient fortress on top of it with a convenient 1800 stair staircase leading up to it. This was a really cool experience since it was first constructed in the 1st century A.D. Unfortunately they must not have had building codes (apparently neither do the current Sri Lankan construction groups as we came to find out), so most of the steps were about 6 inches deep and a foot to a foot and a half high. (Flip Flops were a bad choice.)
Thats a big rock. And this is the first of many pictures with my hand on my hip.
I’m not sure if some parts got ruined or what, but there wasn’t a complete original staircase all the way up, so at some points we had to follow pathways created more recently. (But not recently enough seeing as they were all rusted through. It collapsed a few years ago, I’m really surprised it hasn’t done it again seeing its current condition.This would NEVER fly in the U.S.)
I wasn't sure if I should run across, or go very slowly.
There were a few scary parts. I fondly referred to these bad boys as the ‘Death Cages’. I actually started getting nervous while in them since I was halfway up, the line stopped, and it was jammed full of people. (And it shook under all of the weight. NOT COOL.)
They also turned out to be a great source of Tetanus.
Against all odds, we made it to the top. Quite the view once we arrived. This is our group that made the hike. (The rest were lost on the way.)
A decent view once you get past the white folks.
Much to my surprise and boyish glee, there was a bunch of monkeys hanging out up top. My biggest goal of the trip was to take a picture with a monkey, So this made my day.
We were both unsure at first..
Really happy about the current monkey situation..
Unfortunately my curiosity got the best of me, and I had to touch the monkey. I just had to experience it.
And so I did.
The monkey wasn’t on board with this idea. First it took about 5 quick steps away, and then it took 5 quick steps back and started screaming at me. Then the whole pack perked up and let me know I had broken a key rule. So we backed off a bit and let the situation cool down. Jeremy had the bright idea of giving a peace offering and pulled out a CLIF bar. He then proceeded to feed the main monkey the CLIF bar, and that seemed to smooth things over. I broke off a peace and gave it to the monkey as well. I have this on video, but not a picture of it, so I’ll have to show you later.
We moved on, and found the King’s ancient throne, which was very big, and very cool. Carved out of the rock, It was one of the few complete pieces of the ruins left. It had a sign saying not to sit on it, but I pushed that aside and had a quick photo op. (I was already on a roll with making the monkeys angry, so why not break a few more rules?)
King me.
Once we got down (Luckily the stairs held once again.) we headed to the bus and took the 4 hour drive home. 4 Hours on Sri Lankan roads are the equivalent of a weeklong road trip, but we made it back to Samudra Sri and bed was looking pretty good.
Today I worked on the deck and had a meeting to get more wood for the boat. (Adam sent me alone, which was intimidating when the business owner speaks broken English, and I’m trying to get 15 Rupees a foot off of the price. I did it though.) Tomorrow hopefully we will have all of the wood and I can really jump on the boat project. So I’m going to bed and get some rest before a busy day.
Hope all is well
-Brad
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