Sri Lanka - Curry, Beaches, Culture and Getting Hell Tubby!

Way way back in late October we made our way to Sri Lanka for a quick 2 week jaunt! This was a bit more of a fast pace trip from us so I apologise in advance for the length of this post - we crammed a heap of stuff in to a pretty short trip!

The trip kicked off on Katherine's 27th birthday and we made our way from Melbourne to Colombo, arriving at the ultra sexy time of 11:30pm but after dreading the customs process at Colombo International we were delighted find that it was basically non-existent! The next step was to organise a taxi from the airport to our hotel in Colombo - the process started off quite well with us getting allocated a cab at the price we wanted but it quickly unraveled from there. After being strongly reassured by our driver that he knew where he was going - about 90 minutes later, including our driver pulling over 5 times to ask people on the side of the road whether our hotel actually existed or not - we finally made it and after a massive day proceeded to go straight to bed!

We woke up the next day to hit the streets of Colombo still feeling a touch weary from the day of travel the day before and our weariness was compounded greatly when we strolled outside at 10am and the temperature was already around 36 degrees with the humidity through the roof - as it happened, we had booked our trip smack bang in the middle of monsoon season. Probs should have researched that a bit better.

To be brutally honest, there was not a whole heap going on in Colombo - we spent 2 days walking around checking out the sites, the majority of which were pretty underwhelming - in amongst the busy streets, endless amounts of tuk tuk drivers bowling over each other to get to you and stifling heat. We sought comfort through long lunches in thoroughly air conditioned restaurants and really settled in to "holiday mode" with a daily nap, usually occuring between 2pm and 4pm before hitting the streets again.

Our trip coincided with the Rugby World Cup Final which we decided to check out at a local rugby club which just so happened to have a sportsbar attached to it. The sportsbar was completely booked out but luckily the rugby club next door just so happened to have a massive big screen and marquee set up - the result was not we were hoping for but pleased the massive crowd of bandwagonning Sri Lankans at the venue.

After 3 days in Colombo we were more than ready to head south to Unawatuna via Galle and hit the beach for a few days - unfortunately we also decided to save some money by taking the train instead of hiring a driver. The ticket purchasing process at the Colombo train station was rather straight forward considering the general amount of chaos surrounding us. While we managed to grab our ticket without hassle, the train trip itself was a completely separate issue. We were seated in a 2nd class cabin (there wasn't a 1st class on this particular train) and proceeded to sweat our pills off and dry reach at the odour of the shrimp concoctions that were being taken up and down the aisle by the locals selling food. The padding on the seats were thinner than a boarding house spread of butter, the fans in the cabin were out of operation and to top it off the train came to a halt at one point due to issues unknown - we were advised by a local that Unawatuna was probably another 30 minute train ride away so getting off to getting a tuk tuk was a no-go - this proved to be completely incorrect as when then train fired up again it ran for about 4 minutes until we reached our destination!

Not made for humidity...

That look says it all!

With the train journey behind us and optimism in the air, we jumped aboard a tuk tuk and headed to our resort and finally arrived in Unawatuna! The beaches were stunning, the people were amazing and it was the furthest thing from Colombo we could have imagined. We spent 4 days waking up at 9am, sourcing some breakfast, sitting on the beach, finding lunch and then napping just in time to wake up for dinner - it was amazing!

Unawatuna Beach - a small perk to traveling in monsoon season is that you don't have to share the beach.

Because lazing around on the beach doing nothing is a tough gig, we decided to do something a touch touristy and head to the fortified town of Galle. Our usual mode of transport, the tuk tuk, came in handy again and we spent the day walking around the walls of Galle (still sweating like nobody's business) before settling down for one of Sri Lanka's most famous curries. Galle was a great day out and well worth the trip, it was then back to the beach for our final day before making our way up to the "Cultural Triangle" of Sri Lanka, starting with the much hyped Kandy.

KG on the fort walls in Galle... with her eyes closed...

Sri Lankan curry - this is all one serving - you get a normal curry and then customise accordingly

Now, if the above description of the 4 hours train trip from Colombo to Galle gave you an accurate insight in to the train experience in Sri Lanka, we then proceeded to spend double that when making our way up to Kandy. Why? I'm not horribly sure, but let me tell you that the small dinner plate sized fans in the cabins would have to be the most valuable piece of equipment in Sri Lanka's rail service!

We arrived in Kandy quite late at night once again, checked-in to our sensational home-stay just outside town and hit the hay! We headed out the following day visiting the Bahiravokanda Buddha Statue and the Royal Botanical Gardens followed by a bit of culture, visiting the small but impressive Embekke Devale, Lankathilaka and Gadaladeniya Temples. It was clear we had committed to way too much activity for one day - nowhere near enough scheduled nap time.

Bahiravokanda Buddha in Kandy

Some pleb taking a terrible selfie in the Royal Botanical Gardens - his camera wasn't even pointed at the tree behind him

The following day we headed up to a local "national park" for a quick stroll and the hope of seeing some monkeys. It should have been clear that this wasn't the greatest idea when the owners of our home-stay handed us a small bag of salt and told us to,"watch out for the leeches!" However, we pressed on anyway and it wasn't long before our adventure was almost derailed when Tom managed to spot a rather large snake on the path we were walking on. After cleaning out her underpants and taking a moment to consider the options Katherine decided she was ready to press on, until the leeches begun their assault. Upon reflection, shorts and thongs were definitely not appropriate attire for this type of walk and we spent much of the next half an hour walking short distances before needing to pour some salt on the leeches hanging off our feet. The final straw was Katherine dropping our bag of salt on the ground, leaving us totally defenseless - we made a very quick exit, it was after our exit we finally managed to see a massive pack of monkeys kicking around at an empty school! The walk was ruled a complete disaster and we headed in to town.

KG overlooking the Kandy Lake moments before the "snake incident"

Some of the monkeys we saw after leaving the national park in Kandy

We decided it was time to visit Kandy's main attractions - the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and the massive man made lake right next to it. We sarong'ed up and headed in to the massive temple complex that supposedly houses a tooth from the Buddha himself - it was a serene experience seeing such a crowd of people being so quiet and peaceful! After polishing off some more amazing Sri Lankan cuisine for lunch we decided to pop out to the local cricket as the West Indies were in town playing a one-dayer against Sri Lanka. After a lengthy tuk tuk ride and a shambolic ticket purchasing experience we made it in to the ground. We bought the 2nd most expensive ticket available, which came in at a staggering $10 per person, and made our way up to our 10-seater air conditioned box in the best spot of the stadium, Preferring to mix it up with the locals we decided sitting out the front of out box with a few beers was a better option instead. We managed to see a few wickets before the inevitable afternoon rain came rolling in so home time it was!

KG "Sarong-ing" it up at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic

I personally think that I wore it better

How is this not a thing in Australia?! People bring you KFC in your seat while you watch the cricket - genius!

Once again, in the interest of saving money, we decided that public transport was the way to go to get ourselves from Kandy to Sigiriya - this time is was a easy to plan but horribly uncomfortable bus. We had already discovered that Sri Lanka is a country designed for small people and this bus trip really hammered that point home!

We made our way to Sigiriya and via yet another tuk tuk worked out way to our hotel for a hard earned nap! After restoring some energy we hit up the first site on the list of things to do in Sigiriya and checked out the massively impressive Lion Rock which doubled as a palace and citadel back in the day. As we had became accustomed to, we sweated our way up the top, wedging past the ever irritating horde of people who think it's OK to stop in the middle of a stairway and were rewarded up the top with an amazing view of people taking selfies and the vast jungle that surrounded the rock!

At the base of Lion Rock - Sigiriya

KG on the top of Lion Rock with some awesome photobombing tourists in the background

The next day we were back in action, heading out to the huge Polonnaruwa ruins. The ruins were absolutely massive and incredibly maintained. The day hit a slight hiccup when Katherine encountered not one, but two snakes, the second of which fell from a tree on to the ground next to her, it was nearly cause for us to fly home to Melbourne but KG pushed on! After the ruins we headed to Pidurangala Rock, the smaller, less crowded and drastically cheaper little sister of the Lion Rock we climbed the day before. Once again, our penchant for thongs and shorts was our undoing here as the steps from the previous rock had been replaced by absolutely nothing resembling a step for 3 quarters of the trek up the hill. Oh and the signage had been reduced to spray painted arrows on the rock itself.  We overcome our own terrible preparation and made it to the top and we both in agreement that it was worth the effort.

Selfie from the top of Pidurangala Rock - Lion Rock is in the background

Our final day in Sigiriya saw us head out to Kaudulla National Park in the hope of spotting some wild Asian elephants. Our driver came and grabbed us in our jeep and we headed off to the park where we were greeted with yet another shambolic ticketing system which saw Tom standing in line with a group of locals who set about mocking his height. Back in the jeep it wasn't long before we saw our first elephants. We saw huge packs of elephants traipsing around the park along with peacocks, deer and any number of birds. This was hands down the highlight of our time in Sri Lanka and was worth the effort to avoid the parks or 'orphanages' that keep the elephants chained up at the entrance or enclose them in smaller areas to make them easier to see for tourists!

One of the many packs of elephants we saw at Kaudulla National Park

They see me rollin' - Tom looking real rugged in the back of a jeep!

Coming to the end of our trip we decided we could loosen the purse strings a bit and forked out the cash to get a private driver take us from our hotel in Sigiriya to our hotel in Negombo - we traded cramped and stinking hot train carriages for an air conditioned Toyota Prius, the 5 hour drive cost us a $100 and it was easily worth every cent, especially when Katherine discovered that the driver possessed the quality she ranks the highest in drivers - zero small talk. Along the way we found the time to stop by the cliff side temples of Dambulla which were well worth the stop and we were incredibly glad our hotel talked us in to it.

A sleeping Buddha carved from stone in the templs at Dambulla

The last few nights of our trip we spent doing as little as possible in a small beach-side town called Negombo, the beach itself was nothing to write home about but it was a laid-back town with some fantastic restaurants so was perfect to wind down before heading back to Australia.

Sri Lanka was the perfect country to spend a few weeks in - it's cheap, the people are fantastic, the food is amazing and there is a huge amount to do. We will definitely be heading back when we get the chance!