(* but not on any moving vehicle where I doze off immediately**)
(** with the exception of the rattling Trincomalee Mail train sleeping berth where the general din and squall and rumble and rattling and bouncing and lurching and roar and creaking fan precluded any real sleep until arrival at Colombo Fort station at the terribly convenient hour of 4.20am).
(Sydney – Colombo – Galle – Trincomallee – Haputale – Kandy – Katunayake)
Leaving the country on my 60th birthday (and official membership of Old Fartdom) seemed like SUCH a good idea several months ago when I threw this trip together, not anticipating some compelling "family circumstances" which were heading into interesting times in the week that I was booked to leave, and which excellent friends and "the aunts" were good enough to manage… and saying thanks will never be enough.
Getting to KL Airport was a bit of a saga. The online Sri Lankan Airlines ticket was a good deal, connecting flights with Malaysian Airlines, reliable... or so it seems. They offer bids for on-line upgrades to Business class and I scored one from KL to Colombo. It then corrupted my whole ticket because it would not release payment to Malaysian to get me on to my first flight... It took one hour at three counters in Sydney until Sri Lankan Airlines passed the fare dollars to Malaysian Airlines. My bag had been booked through: no problems; it was just the passenger who couldn't get on board.
Nice flight. Slept well through squalling baby that even the hostie gave up on after 45 minutes of pulling faces and offering "fun" packs... She then sighed, shrugged and stomped to the back of the plane to dole out post-midnight suppers.
3.30am at KL Airport: the transfer desk couldn't allocate a seat to Colombo. They said come back at 6am... I slept well in the Classic Lounge while a doting parent played loud videos to amuse their gorgeous child at the cost of the peace of 30+ adults... After a passable noodle breakfast and extra-strong flat white and shower, it was back to Airline Bureaucracy. Well...Transit-Desk-sent-me-to-the-Malaysian-Business-Lounge-who-said-we-don't-do-Sri-Lankan-Airlines-any-more-they-are-in-the-Classic-Lounge-now-but-Classic-Lounge-didn't-know-anything-about-this-and-they-sent-me-to-the-gate-lounge-where-the-cleaners-knew-nothing-in-mime-Bahasa-and-they-gestured-me-back-to-the-Transfer-Desk-who-intimated-that-I-could-go-out-through-Customs-and-Immigration-which-are-a-between-terminal-train-ride-and-more-than-a-kilometer-away-and-then-check-in-with-Sri-Lankan-Airlines-if-they-are-still-checking-in-then-come-back-in-through-security-and-immigration-but-there-was-no-time-for-that-so-they-sent-me-back-to-the-deserted-Gate-Lounge-to-bloody-well-wait-and-hope-they-could-check-me-“maybe”. This all filled in an hour of "down time" nicely with measured exercise around an extensive two level terminal where escalators were “not working" but a very good book shop was. The Gate Lounge eventually opened (Sri Lankan Time) and I was denied entry as I could not produce a boarding pass (sigh…) then: "It might be ok," if they insisted on a further full security check where I was questioned again during a bag search about my lack of a boarding pass...
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Why all Caucasian Males Look the Same #1:
At KL Airport I was approached by a security guy who held up a lost photo identity card of a young red-headed, clean shaven man and asked if it was me.
Some of us are just built for economy class; Apart from table cloths and the pretence of a large(ly) set menu to order from... and a bit of stretch room... Business Class was ok for a 4 hour flight. Both self and bag arrived at the rather dozy Colombo Airport more or less intact and self then booked the taxi into town in a slightly bemused state. Lovely friendly driver... did not know the way. Older drivers in the car park gave several verbal directions, to no avail. In the end they borrowed a sheet of paper from me, drew a rough map in Singhalese, and let him loose on the permanent traffic jam on the main drag into town.
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Colombo: The somewhat confused driver tried to make me feel welcome between (his) mobile phone calls. The air-con wasn't going to happen, so he tried local FM radio. 10.30: first news story was New Australian Prime Minister and his Tough Line on Asylum Seekers... (sigh...) Second story was New Australian Prime Minister the Hon Tony Abbott being one of the Welcome Eminent Persons at CHOGM in Colombo in about a month... I celebrated by taking some highly illegal photos of the passing Naval Hospital with its stark memorial to the dead... This didn't last much longer as the radio was turned off for further extended driver-mobile conversations and occasional swivel-rounds-with-glare to check I was still there as he balanced his rough map on the steering wheel with one hand (mobile phone in the other hand/ear. The frequent sideways wiggle of his head (even on the phone while driving), meant Yes.
Earlier, while wandering in through the airport terminal, we had walked through a diverting array of Duty Free: to the left were the usual invitations to smokers, drunkards and the ill smelling; to the right were a series of electrical whitegoods stores. I quite liked the idea of the awful new Australian PM, on his way into CHOGM, picking up a duty free front loader or fridge for Margie before they moved in to sully The Lodge or, worse still, Kirribilli House.
And on the road into town past the numerous dusty down-at-heel shopping malls were many wondrous posters of the Sri Lankan President who was smilinglyandopenarmingly welcoming CHOGM delegates to a city of heat, dust and gridlocked traffic around road works, and encouraging pairs of armed soldiers just keeping an eye each major bridge or intersection. A sudden swerve to the right, past the Leprosy Hospital, and we were on the coast road heading towards the usual colonially pompous buildings left over from the southern bit of the Raj, facing the port. And the most fadingly pompous of them all, was the Grand Oriental Hotel (or GOH), where I had a budget deal for 3 nights. I checked in under the watchful gaze of former guest: Anton Chekov, under the large sign that intimated that, fresh from the steamer, one could "put up" at the Grand Oriental Hotel from where one could avail oneself of tramcars to the native quarters of the city. Good plan.
The GOH is described as having "frumpy charm" by Lonely Planet. Not much has changed in a century and a half except electric fans, mini bars and inner spring mattresses. The top floor with its dramatic view of the harbour (No Photos For Security Reasons) has a menu which does feature "old favourites" such as "Chicken Maryland" but the cutlery looks like the original, as do some of the staff. Imagine, if you will, elderly waiters managing flambes and silver service, dressed in somewhat silly sailor suits. Food is mostly Anglo-Indian stodge: Curd and treacle is still a breakfast offer (with brilliant marmalade), but they DO know how to make tea. This seemed critical in helping the jetlagged to acclimatise while dozing in their 4 poster bed, situated adjacent to what was the smoking room and library, with gentle wafts of pungent fresh lacquer from the corridor woodwork to further promote sleep.
After wandering the downtown Pettah markets and the old town, a jetlagged few minutes in the congested and confused sweatbox they call the Booking Office at Colombo Fort station convinced me that finding a good travel agent would be wise. It (he) was, although it was all nod-and-wink-and-handshake-deals-and "Don’t-worry it will-be-satisfactory-Sr!" until the tickets arrived. HSBC Credit Cards decided that if I couldn't access a mobile phone code, then online bookings for pubs were impossible. They then suspended my credit card, claiming my own fraudulent transaction against myself. Go figure (and go to another bank...).
Lunch at the Pagoda Tea Room (which has been in operation since the late 19th century): Chicken Gizzard Pie, Chicken Lamp Pie, and excellent Mix Tea.
The rest of the time wandering colonial Colombo (Dutch and British) was a sweaty, relaxed delight. Photography is problematic if the military are in the picture, and they so regularly are because of the recent war, and the approaching CHOGM.
Cargills used to be the “Harrods” of Sri Lanka, and still inhabits a running-to-seed crumbling red and white colonial building next to the Grand Oriental Hotel. It now houses a rather sad looking KFC... in amongst the original Department Store Art Deco liftwells and light fittings. Cargills has now morphed into the local supermarket chain: “Cargills: On Your Way Home” and seems to be responsible for half the manufactured foods in the country. The other half seem to all be branded “Elephant House”: mainly ice cream, soft drinks and other cold sugary stuff.
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Why all Caucasian Males Look the Same #2:
Sri Lankans are friendly. They ask where you are from. Or they guess where you might be from. I am repeatedly asked if I am German. The default printout on hotel check-in forms identifies me as German. When I say I am Australian, the conversation inevitably ended with: "Australian cricket team: such a shame...so sad...”
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Galle is a three hour train ride (rough, carriages built in Romania in the 1980s to somewhat basic technology, open windows looking out at Indian Ocean and tsunami damage; some recent looking graves for a lot of the way as the sea breeze and diesel exhaust waft through the train). My cap blew off in the breeze and is now somewhere along that coastline, so I explored retail therapy in Galle, briefly, followed by a Non-Lonely-Planet-recommended tea room. In this land of tea growing and excellence, Nestea out of a plastic dispenser was slopped up in a plastic cup. The pastries from the counter were all placed on the table and I was closely stalked so that the (previously handled?) pastry count would land on my bill.
The Galle Fort is a wild seafront microcosm of 400 years of colonial architecture and an active army post (so be careful where you aim that camera). It was a brilliant day of lazy strolling along the ramparts and streets, ending in the quite moving Dutch Reform Church. The peaceful lunch at a rather better caff (recommended by Lonely Planet so two thirds full of European travellers clutching LP books in 3 languages and using the nice toilets and the wireless for their iPads) was destroyed by the flooding 1.30 exodus of school kids (in perfect white uniforms) who crowded out to local tea shops and tuk tuks and vans and minibuses and 4WDs (because they are lovely private schools in the Fort: each displaying large banners of surly looking kids and staff advertising scholarship winners). The only escape was to dawdle within the jammed traffic, at the stop-start rate of the vehicles gradually crawling back through the historic archway and into town.
The railway porters checking the tickets (cardboard, printed with the destination, stamped for the day and clipped several times during the trip, just like real train tickets used to be: fare, less than 50 cents each way to Colombo) are, like the grubby red trains themselves, a throwback to country Australia of the 1950s. The bloke at the barrier pointed to the swarm of uniformed schoolies who were adolescing all over the platform and carefully warned: "Take second train, not THAT one", as the arriving train dumped more kids out of crowded open doors onto crowded platforms. I heeded the advice....
Even in somewhere as touristed as Galle, the locals stare at visitors through open train windows. When you smile they say: “Hello, from where is you country?” and “So sad about the Australian cricket team... They will get better…”
The Railway Protection Officers in military khakis seemed to spend most of their time on the train protecting we more-or-less seated second class travellers from the worst excesses of begging and hawking which they gently steered back into the third class strap-hanging crowds. The blind were particularly creative, clambering into the train and bashing tambourines and "singing" relentlessly until income matched expectations... Prefects from a local school announced their arrival and addressed our carriage about their fundraising for charity and sent raffle tickets around for donations - eagerly given - then moved further into 2nd class (avoiding the sweaty crowds in 3rd). Meanwhile a young monk got in at one of the (many) stops and claimed the "Seats for Clergy" under the sign, “encouraging” a young father to stand for the remaining hours of the journey while the monk made quiet pleasantries to his wife and young child... Your correspondent slept through most of this....
Health Tip: Sri Lankans chill their soft drinks, avoiding that bane of travellers; local ice made out of dodgy local water. Nice!
Trincomallee is on the north east coast, in the area that was the war zone between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. The "fast" express climbed from coastal jungle to higher, drier plains slowing for regular trackwork (passing derailed goods trains which seem to have been there for some time, of work gangs near signs warning: "DANGER. Elephants Cross Here"). You are told to change trains with a 3 hour wait at Galoya Junction - surely the only reason to ever go to Galoya - to a slow 3rd class mixed train to Trincom, or so it seemed. I took my time crossing the platform. A voice yelled: "You going Trincom? Yes? Get on NOW)”. I did. It did. Under a thick layer of dust in the darkened carriage (as the locomotive ran around the train) was a quite comfy 3rd class seat with wooden slatted backrest. "But I have no ticket.." I said to the Khaki uniformed guard. 'No problem. You are from where? So sad about the Australian cricket team..." and we trundled past small farming villages clustered around their mosque or Hindu gopuram or slightly English looking church, past the former RAF Base at China Bay and into Trincom.
Beyond a dusty collection of business streets is an ithsmus leading to spectacular seafront temples inside the still active Fort Frederick where you are greeted with: "WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH THE INFANTRYMAN HAS PRIDE AND HONOUR". The soldiers on the parade ground had recently won their local war and are maintaining a “presence”, so cameras are kept well out of sight until shedding your shoes for the spectacular clifftop temple, overlooking the fishing fleets, beaches and seafront town.
Further wandering southwards, and away from the fort, found a luminous blue "Anglican" cathedral, not very touristed suburban streets and several signs pointing which way to run from a tsunami.
Trincomallee Post Office motto: "Customers are our masters. We are at your door step".
I stayed at a Japanese art deco pile, overlooking the inner harbour where the British naval fleet was formerly stationed (and bombed by the Japanese). Rumours are that the hotel site was a former torture centre, which would explain the intimidating dark green concrete pill-boxes overlooking the hotel pool. The LOUD temple music, amplified from behind the hotel was less than easy to doze through...
Trincomallee Mail: Getting a sleeping berth out of Trincom (why bother, you now might ask after reading the introduction??) was a marvel of traditional bureaucracy. The window is only open from 8am til 12 noon. One queues. One reaches the dingy window. One asks politely. Long pause. Porter reaches for a beaten up bound book where every booking is noted in extensive longhand. After extensive page riffling and scribbling, he flick-passes a hand written ticket in exchange for less than $12. That sorted, one could get on with a day of doing the sites and managing an extended vegetarian lunch across from the bus station, watching the local cricket comp (very serious: including full pyjama uniforms and crash helmets and officious black and white umpires in silly hats).
After travelling here, you can see why Sri Lankans are such good bowlers. Railway booking clerks don't pass your tickets and change through the window. They do a kind of limited overarm flick so that tickets and cash tumble at you (and beyond) with great haste.
Haputale: Having rolled around in a roaring sleepless daze for eight interminable hours in the "sleeper", I slept most of the way in the connecting morning train up into the hills towards Kandy and onwards the twisting circuitous railway to Badulla, rolling through miles and miles of spectacular mountain tea plantations and travelling through forests of pine and other trees not-unlike gums. I was booked in the midst of a large tour group of Indian retirees and grandchildren who provided lots of music, entertainment and suspect rice curries served in newspaper and eaten by hand. It was a great way to spend a dozy day with fine scenery climbing to the hill town of Haputale.
Here was the online booking for which HSBC Bank Bastardry "declined" my use of a credit card: The Awinco Guest House. This is a very cute family homestay about 10 minutes from town overlooking a vast valley of tea plantations and elevated storm clouds clinging to distant mountains. After the welcome pot of tea, and the tour of the rooms, I was asked to select one and given a helpful booklet of local mountain walks. Would Sir like to sample a Sri Lankan rice curry on return from his walk. Sir would.
Laid out around a bowl of rice were 7 plates of dark curried vegetables and devilled salted dried fish, tepid beer and an amazing sunset. And so to bed, disturbed semi regularly through the night by beeping truck horns and the grind and roar of passing mail trains....
Breakfast was late (at the family's request, so they could get Junior onto the Badulla school bus) and looked – at first - like toast, mixed tea, omelette and delicious bitter papaya... then the breakfast rice curry arrived with stewed salted jackfruit, bowls of pickled vegetables, papadams and chutney. The sinuses are now very clear, and thanks for asking... This was followed by another day of rolling down the hills by train towards Kandy, through English-looking stations with names like “Rozelle”, each with its own red British phone box and large mirrors sponsored by a local spectacle manufacturer. This time in second class where the windows aren't nailed shut, I was well away from American video cartoons which a compulsory "joy" in the air conditioned car and took some spectacular (window-glass free) photos on the slow, sinuous, rich tea-green journey around the mountains and past waterfalls, along with the odd doze....
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Kandy: The Queens Hotel has kept its colonial era long wooden corridors and rooms, with tasteful glass case displays of old Kandy and hotel chamber pots adjacent to the brass-caged and leisurely, dawdling lift.
In the hotel foyer, an elegantly sari-clad grey headed woman tinkled the keys of the grand piano during daylight hours. From late afternoon she was replaced by a woman in full black purdah intently reading from her iPad. This happened every day.
Across the road, past the mounted police, and glinting sunset reflections across the placid downtown lake, was intense security at the previously-bombed Temple of the Tooth (allegedly Buddha’s: the tooth, not the explosion).
Slow train to Matale: For all of 25 Rupees (about 20cents) you can while away half a day on the third class train up the series of ridges and valleys for 27km to the sleepy and dusty regional town of Matale. It was a pleasant ramble through jungle remnants and villages and I was sharing a compartment with a local accountant who wanted to chat, especially about his brother who drives trams in Melbourne. (I guess this was just a matter of time…)
Lunch in a “short eats” bakery on Dole Road: samosas, sweet rolls, banana, washed down by urine coloured Fanta and Cargills Chox for less than $2, was punctuated by a series of secretive “under the counter transactions” of single cigarettes to furtive local men who would then sneak out to a back room to smoke them, away from prying eyes… Many were tuk tuk or truck drivers from the Petco service station across the road where gas jockeys climbed onto lorries to fill 8 gallon drums with fuel.
A lethargic train ride into the hills also gave me time to get into the local papers which, in amongst stories of excited anticipation of the forthcoming CHOGM and attacks on Moslems for animal sacrifices, and Tea Picker Attacked and Killed by Leopard was a breathtaking double page attack on the Canadian Prime Minister for his refusal to attend CHOGM because of alleged human rights abuses which the Sri Lankan government is doing its best to ignore, or to sideline, or to minimize…
Although the British PM was also attacking the human rights violations in Sri Lanka, (and eventually did far more damage to the Sri Lankan government by actually attending CHOGM and very publicly visiting areas affected by the civil war) it was only the Canadian PM who got the full-on media attack in advance.
“OPPORTUNISM: THY NAME IS STEPHEN HARPER” screamed the double page headline over a pic of the man himself, right arm raised, Nazi-style, and Hitler-moustached, followed by a diatribe about how he was financed by rich Canadian Tamils who also funded the Tamil side in the civil war and was responsible for “fascist” human rights abuses of indigenous peoples of Canada. And in amongst the back-page legal notices, after the coverage of “refugees drowning on small boats” (from North Africa to Italy), were helpful ads from local agents wishing “to assist potential immigrants in amassing the required points to enter Australia”….
The unlovely Australian PM would later, at CHOGM, donate second-hand naval ships to the even more lovely Sri Lankan President.
I should have known better: the 1.55 train back from Matale to Kandy was the school train, swarming with white uniformed high school students in woolly white cricket vests (in 35 degree heat) and some in black or blue English-style piped school blazers. Buying a ticket at the somnolent Matale ticket window was like a bad school canteen line: late arrivers handed money to their friends in the shuffling queue to buy tickets. It was neither a quiet nor speedy trip back down through the valleys to Kandy as the train stopped at every wayside halt (usually just a signpost on a grassy knoll) to export and import uniformed kids, some market sellers with their goods, and better-dressed families, connecting t the Colombo express train in Kandy.
KANDY real estate is sold in “perches” (if you are under 50 years of age, ask a passing elder-person what this may mean)…
The Kandy City Coat of Arms proclaims “Loyalty and Freedom" over a deer and elephant crest.
Around the corner from the pub, the local dental technician also sells Buddhas under a large sign: BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus and you shall be Saved.
Kandy Pizza Hut’s latest local taste sensation: BIRIZZA! The graphic picture looks like a Chico Roll vomiting yellow rice with meaty lumps from its end: YUM!
On SPECIAL at the local supermarket: Dutch Lady Chocolate, Delmaj Fish Curry or Bega Cheddar (buy one, get one free); mayonnaise and Kinder Joy: half price.
The British Garrison Cemetery in Colombo (well hidden behind the Department of Health Services - Central Province - with the cheesy grin of President Mahinda Rajapaksaon on a banner to welcome you to whatever happens inside…) is Colonial Epitaph history:
Sacred to the memory of GEORGE BAXTER WILSON,
a native of Aberdeenshire, superintendent Gallaha,
who died at Kitoolamoola from remittent fever
in the 15th March, 1865, in the 21st year of his age.
This monument is erected by his sorrowing parents
TO THE MEMORY OF John Spottiswoode Robertstone SQR
of Hillside, Dolosbagie.
Born in Edinburgh 13th October 1823.
Killed by an elephant 12th June 1856.
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Departing Colombo:
A last visit to Cargills “On Your way Home” to stock up on water was through a crowd of eager young Sri Lankans waving their CVs at a serious looking panel, seated and suited at trestle tables, who called them in turns to be fitted with their new KFC uniforms.
Colombo City Inn hadn’t quite got around to remembering to book at cab for the traffic clogged 30km trip up the Canada-Sri Lanka Friendship Road (because the new freeway wouldn’t open until CHOGM) to a pub near the airport, but they did find a knocked-about tuk tuk at short notice.
Imagine, if you will, sitting on top of a three wheeled combination lawnmower/mixmaster under a small roof and behind a corpulent driver who is crouched behind a small Perspex windscreen in 35 degree tropical heat, grimly hanging on to a bar, with your feet holding your bag to the metal floor along rutted roads, breathing two-stroke exhaust, weaselling and juddering around gridlocked traffic to Katunayake. A near smash with a scrap metal truck, several near misses with buses and even crazier tuk tuk drivers and a petrol bowser, pausing several times to ask directions: twice at the airport tuk tuk stand as the first directions seemed directionless… The sweating driver did not ask for a tip. The Full Moon(!!) Hotel pool was good preparation for the-sleepless-night-before-the-5am-airport-checkin-where-Sri-Lankan-Airlines-questioned the-veracity of their own ticket….
At KL, Malaysian Airlines checked the ticket, said: “When does Sir want to fly?’ When “Sir” asked how quickly he could get home, Sir was informed that there was a flight in 2 hours and would that do.
It did.
Overnight. In the middle of the very back row. Sleepless.
Next to a snoring elderly woman in full black purdah: not a lot of conversation (or sleep) to be had…
I plan to return to Sri Lanka to finish the planned travels and “do” more of the northern heritage and temples and jungles and elephants in a conflicted country where Sri Lanka Telecom’s slogan remains: One Country, One Voice
Until then: Auf Wiedersehen!