Hello again! Another week, another country, and another note – this one coming from Bentota in southern Sri Lanka. It hasn’t been quite as eventful or dirty of a week as the last one, but that’s fine with us. No complaints about a little more lux and a little less sweat =).

World’s largest reclining Buddha

Last I left off, we were just about to start our first full day in Bangkok. It started off with a nice spread at the hotel breakfast – a great mismatched breakfast of custom omelets and Thai curries – followed by a little nap in the room. Afterward we took a tuk tuk out to Wat Pho, one of Bangkok’s largest and most impressive temples, and home to the world’s largest reclining Buddha. After lunch and a long walk around the temple grounds, Abdulla and I treated ourselves to traditional Thai massages at the Wat Pho massage pavilions. Abdulla got a foot massage, while I opted for the full-body treatment. Both of us had a nice, relaxing time. I didn’t really feel that much better or worse afterward, but the massage itself was great – they cracked everything from my fingers to my toes, and twisted/cracked my back in all kinds of amazing ways.

We were so exhausted after our massages that we came back to our hotel and rested, again =P. This would end up being a common theme during our time in Bangkok – after the hilltribe trek, the two of us were more than happy to do a bit of nothing. Abdulla has also been struggling with jet-lag, and until recently has been sleeping at every opportunity. After a nap and a so-so dinner near the hotel, we went back to our favorite internet hotspot: The Fabulous Bar and Dessert Café – the ultimate place to hang out for unique people. I’m not kidding, that’s the name of the place (talk about a name with an attitude). Anyway, they have good drinks and free internet, so we ended up being regular visitors.

The next day, after another smorgasbord at the hotel breakfast, Abdulla and I went for a “Fish Massage”: you dip your feet in a pool full of little fish that love to eat dead skin. For $5 you get 15 minutes of fish nibbling away at you. It sounds gross, and it tickled at first, but ultimately it was actually quite nice. My feet were apparently quite tasty – poor Abdulla didn’t get nearly as much loving from the fish. Later that day we took a walk down toward the river for lunch at a Thai-Muslim restaurant, and then checked out an old park and fort nearby.

Khao San Road

Before I continue, I have to first talk about Khao San Road. Khao San Road is the tourist hot-spot of Bangkok, a single little street that’s packed solid with markets, salesmen, and smells of all kinds. Our hotel was just one street over from Khao San Road, and the Fabulous Bar was directly on it, so it became an inescapable part of our three days in Bangkok. The first thing that comes to mind about Khao San Road is the smell. First, for about a half second, you smell sweet meats – like a teriyaki sauce with too much sugar. Then it hits you – the smell of that mixed with poo. I think it must be the combination of spoiled meats and strong sauces, all lying around on the endless food stands sitting in the middle of the road. Blech.

The other equally-unappealing part of Khao San Road is the constant badgering from persistent salesmen/scammers. Most of them are Indian men trying to sell you custom suits; it’s all part of the classic Bangkok Suit Scam. The idea is to sell custom-made suits to foreigners for a fraction of what they’d pay at home (though its still a lot of money); the catch is that they purposefully delay delivery until right before you leave the country, so when the shoddily-made suit falls apart two days later, it’s too late for you to do anything about it. Others are just random people who really want to get to know you; they’re likely trying to con you in some other way, perhaps with the Card Scam (where they befriend you, take you to their house to play a gambling game, and then you “accidentally” gamble away someone’s “valuable” family heirloom, forcing you to cough up gobs of cash). Every person on Khao San Road who isn’t a shopkeeper or a tourist, is a con artist. Shoppers beware.

Aside from the smells and the scams, Khao San Road is a vast, one-stop shop for souvenirs and trinkets of all kinds. And that really isn’t so bad. As long as you can work through the “interesting” environment, it’s actually pretty convenient.

Now, you’d think that after all this talk about Khao San Road, Abdulla and I would be pretty scam-proof. We thought so too. But after lunch we made the mistake of falling for a Free Petrol Trick (it really isn’t so much a scam as a trick, so never fear, we lost no money). Supposedly, on certain days there is some government-sponsored export shop that gives free petrol coupons to tuk tuk drivers that bring tourists into the shop. I’m still not sure if this is true or not, but I suspect it isn’t. Either way, at the time we though it was legitimate. So when a tuk tuk driver offered to take us to a handful of temples, then the export shop, then to our hotel, all for 10 baht (35 cents), we weren’t too surprised – sure, we’ll do it.

As promised, the tuk tuk driver first took us to two temples: the Standing Buddha and the Happy Buddha. Both were borderline thrills. Next, it was time for the export shop. But we were pretty surprised when we walked into the supposed export shop and found that it was actually an Indian-run suit store! Uh oh, something was wrong. Abdulla and I knew about the suit scam, so after a few minutes of feigning interest we walked out.

Ditched and tricked

I asked the tuk tuk driver if the next stop was the export shop. Yes, we were promised, the next stop would be the export shop. But no surprise, the next stop was none other than: another Indian-run suit store! We ended up getting roped into a long conversation with some really pushy salesmen. We even got their card (they were pretty surprised when we asked for a card… sign #483 that it was a scam) so we could remember the place and the experience: James Fashion. Once we finally got out of there, the tuk tuk driver took us to the “export shop”, again – this time it was a jewelry store. At this point I got pretty mad with him, and told him he better take us to a few extra temples to make up for all these shops. We should have just refused to get out of the tuk tuk. Instead, we reluctantly went into the store, got shepherded through the showrooms full of $20000 rings, and walked right out. The tuk tuk driver asked us if we’d bought anything; when we said no (duh), I could tell he wasn’t happy. Next, he promised, he’d take us to another temple. Then back to the hotel.

This time he actually told the truth. He dropped us in front of some random not-so-exciting temple and went off to park. When we went to look for him afterward, though, he was nowhere to be found. Gone. Abdulla and I were a bit peeved, but I guess we got our money’s worth: nothing for nothing. Good thing we hadn’t given him the 10 baht up front. In the end we caught a different tuk tuk back to our hotel, and walked away with an interesting bit of first-hand experience in Bangkok trickery.

The rest of our time in Bangkok paled in comparison. That night we walked to a different part of town for dinner, and ate at a restaurant where I’m pretty sure the English menu had higher prices than the Thai menu… The next morning, after breakfast and lunch, Abdulla and I spent a few hours looking for a way for me to send a box full of souvenirs back to the USA. Ultimately I shipped it off with the Thai postal service, which was a third the cost of FedEx. Here’s hoping it actually makes it home. Later that afternoon we grabbed our bags, hopped in a taxi, and headed for the airport. That evening we flew to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and started off a whole new chapter of the trip.

Inside Sri Dalada Maligawa

Abdulla was born in Sri Lanka, and spent his first three years in Colombo before moving to Australia. He also has a lot of family that still lives here, and his uncle Hisham has been incredibly helpful in arranging our drivers and accommodation for the past few days. I first got to meet Hisham when he picked us up from the airport that night – he took us to Lake Lodge, a super-lux hotel in Colombo, where we each had our own private rooms. The next morning he’d arranged for a driver, Brian, to take us out to Kandy for the day. Kandy is a city in central Sri Lanka, about 120km east of Colombo. You wouldn’t think it’d take that long to drive that distance, but in Sri Lanka, that’s easily a three hour journey. The traffic here is horrendous, and the drivers are worse. The highways are really just two-lane roads, packed with giant trucks, cars, tuk tuks, and motorcycles, each one trying desperately to pass the other and narrowly avoiding accidents at every step. I’d be surprised if we went more than five seconds without hearing someone honk their horn. At times it got to be too much for me to watch, and I just sunk into the back seat and closed my eyes.

We didn’t have nearly enough time in Kandy, partially because Brian took us to an Ayurvedic garden and a tea factory on the way there (both of which were not-so-exciting tourist traps). But I am still happy we got a chance to visit. Once we actually reached Kandy, we had just enough time to eat lunch and visit Sri Dalada Maligawa (The Temple of the Tooth Relic), which supposedly housed one of the Buddha’s teeth. The temple itself was beautiful, and had a much more wooden and homey feel to it than the Thai temples we’d visited. After an hour or two there, it was time to make the long return journey to Colombo. Brian dropped us off at Hisham’s house, where we had dinner, met his family, and spent the night. Abdulla was really happy to see his grandparents, whom he hadn’t seen since his last trip to Sri Lanka in 2007.

View from our room in Bentota

The next morning, Brian drove us down to Bentota, a small touristy town on the southwest coast. Since then we’ve been staying at Shangri Lanka Villa, a really nice, quiet bed and breakfast just a short walk from the beach. From our third floor room we have a gorgeous view of a field of palm trees. Aside from going out for lunch and dinner, we spent our first day there lazing about and swimming in the pool. Earlier today, after breakfast on our patio, we went out to a beach-side restaurant for lunch and stayed on the beach afterward for some gorgeous swimming and sun on the Indian Ocean. The water was perfect, warm enough to be comfortable but cool enough to balance the 90-degree heat. I alternated between resting on a beach lounger and swimming around in the sea – it was a perfect afternoon. Earlier tonight we had a room service dinner out on our patio, and afterward I wrote up this note.

All in all it’s been a great, luxurious, relaxing few days here in Sri Lanka. But tomorrow things will change all over again; 24 hours from now we’ll be in Delhi, getting ready to start our two-week tour to Kathmandu. India promises to be anything but relaxing, and the touts will undoubtedly be far worse than anything in Bangkok. It’s going to be an experience, and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about it in my next post.

As usual, a few closing tidbits:

• Sri Lanka has two languages: Sinhalese, and Tamil. Sinhalese is the primary language in the south and west (where we’ve been), and I have to say, I think the letters look like pumpkins. Take a look for yourself, somehow they just look like little pumpkins to me.
• Sri Lankans seem to love moody western 70’s music – that’s all we’ve heard on the radio. In particular they really like Leo Sayer, who gave a live performance in Colombo a few days ago.
• Sri Lanka has a few touts, but they’re not nearly as bad as the ones in Thailand. In Thailand, if you tell someone you’re not interested, they’ll hassle you more. In Sri Lanka, they usually take the hint and walk away. Much appreciated.

I can’t make any guarantee about when I’ll upload my next post, since I’m not really sure what to expect with regards to internet in India. Also, the GPS hasn’t been working at all in Sri Lanka, which means it certainly won’t work in India or Nepal. So I may be out of touch for a while… we’ll see what happens.

Nawatha hamu wemu! (“Catch you later”, in Sinhalese)
-Izaak