I am writing today's entry lying on the bed in room 402 of the Earl's Regency hotel, Kandy. The time is 8.02 pm. Don't worry, this blog hasn't turned to smut. The title refers to something funny that happened earlier in the day...
We left the Jetwing Vil Uyuna with heavy hearts at 9:30 am. Such a magical place. As usual we were met by Stan the man, who was sporting a bright green polo shirt and seemed in good spirits.
Our first port of call was the uber-kitsch Golden Temple in Dambulla, which has been recently revamped using money donated by Japan. On Stanley's recommendation, we didn't bother going inside the temple, just took a few photos and walked up and down the steps to the parapet. The two major features are the enormous gold Buddha sitting happily atop the temple and a long train of orange robed plaster monks lined up in pilgrimage to the top. Colourful, yes, but slightly unnerving. Up on the parapet we found a new bird to add to the list. Sadly, this one was deceased; an endemic Ceylon small barbet that had apparently flown into the glass windows of a small office stationed up there and died. Shame, it was a pretty little thing. Found a small dying frog up there too. No idea how the hell that came to be there.
Back down the steps we were met by the sight of half eaten mangos raining out of a tree. More toque macaques. As I was snapping away, a large male walked past my left leg and started to eat one of the fallen fruit. He wasn't keen on having me there as an audience, so he turned to face me and gave me a very menacing grunt. I walked away hastily. No one wants to get bitten by an angry macaque.
We drove on for a bit, only stopping briefly to mark the central point of the country, a place called Naula (or at least Stanley said something that sounded like 'nah-ooh-la'!). Nothing of much not here other than that there was a road bridge crossing a large river, from which I saw our first stork-billed kingfisher, the largest kingfisher in Sri Lanka.
Next stop was the New 9 Paradise spice garden. We would never have known about this place, but thankfully Stanley was all over it and had planned it in as part of our itinerary for the day. When we arrived I wasn't sure what to make of it. Our guide introduced himself as Chamindra and led us on a highly informative tour around the spice garden, which began by him showing us the plants they use in Sri Lanka for natural Ayurvedic remedies, several of which had no common name as they are found only in Sri Lanka. Next we sat down in a little hut while Chamindra gave us a hands on demo of all the hand made products produced at the gardens. It turns out he is an Ayurvedic doctor, a claim which was certainly supported by his impressive knowledge of all the herbs and spices and their effects on the human body. We were shown a huge assortment of lotions and potions including organic equivalents to oil of olay, tiger balm, Veet hair removal cream (for which I was the guinea pig - only on my shin, before you get any ideas!) and even Viagra! I was fooled into eating half a teaspoon of the latter before Chimandra revealed to me what it was, hence the title of today's post. Amber was most amused.
After the demonstration session, we were offered some pressure point massage, which seemed foolish refuse. Not the best massage I've had this trip, as the masseur was a trainee, but as it was free, so I can't really complain. Massages complete, we headed to the shop to peruse the goods. Everything was pretty pricy, but at least here there was a chance of the produce being genuine. We bought several items including the herbal balm and oil of ulay. Chimandra gave us a 15% discount and a free bottle of pure vanilla essence, which probably means that we paid over the odds for what we bought, but we'd had a good time, so didn't mind.
The remainder of our journey to Kandy passed pretty quickly, helped by the fact that both Amber and I slept for most of it. We were shattered.
The Earl's Regency is a huge hotel built into a hillside 4 km from Kandy, with incredible views. It's theoretically the number one hotel in the area, used by dignitaries and the well-to-do, but on first impression it seemed to be just like any other big corporate hotel. The enormous kitsch blue-striped Christmas tree in the foyer, complete with Disney-esque polystyrene angels, did nothing to allay my fears. It appears that playing the honeymoon card gets you very little in this type of establishment. No room upgrade, no champagne, just a free drink in the bar and a few fruits and chocolates. That's corporate hospitality for you.
We arrived at 2.15 pm, dumped our bags and headed into the hotel restaurant to grab a bite to eat. I got really excited to see that they had Hokkien Mee on the menu, one of my all time favourite Asian dishes. We ordered a plate each. When they arrived I was horrified to see that the drab plate of noodles bore absolutely no relation to real Hokkien Mee. Gutted. Still, we were hungry, so ate them anyway.
Stanley picked us up at 4 pm and we drove to the viewpoint overlooking Kandy town, which is named Arthur's Seat after Arthur C. Clarke, author of '2001: A Space Odyssey', who emigrated to Sri Lanka from England in 1956 to pursue his interest in scuba diving...apparently. Anyway, the view was excellent and Stanley had an opportunity to share some of his knowledge of the town.
The viewpoint is right next to a gem mining museum, which Stanley recommended we visit next. We weren't sure what we'd make of it, but it was actually really interesting, particularly the short video showing how the miners hand build the mine and sieve the gravel for gem stones. After the video, our guide talked us through the gems of Sri Lanka (in both their natural and polished forms), showed us some guys making jewellery and then took us to see the finished product in the showroom, whereupon he stuck his salesman hat on and proceeded to try and sell us most of the store! Most of it was rather ugly, but there was one stunning blue sapphire ring, which looked great on Amber's finger. We gave it some serious consideration, but in the end decided it was too much to pay for another ring so soon after buying engagement and wedding rings. You should have seen the look of thunder the guide gave us when he realised we weren't going to buy that ring! He made it very easy to leave.
After the gem museum we went to the Arts and Culture Centre to see some traditional Kandyan dances, some of which were good (back flips) and some of which weren't so good (two blokes in huge wooden masks stumbling and spinning blindly around the stage). The dances were all performed to the sound of traditional drums. After the dancing they upped the ante with a fire eating and fire walking show, which made for a good finale. Interestingly there is a colony of swifts breeding inside the Centre and every so often one of them would fly out in front of the stage, screeching loudly, as if in protest to the noise of the drums.
Back at the hotel we cashed in our free drinks voucher and had a couple of cocktails looking out over the valley before heading back to the room to unpack.
The hotel had a Friday night Indian buffet, which we took full advantage of. I ate so much I could barely move. Absolutely stuffed!
A few more species for the list:
- Indian jungle crow
- lesser whistling duck
- Ceylon small barbet
- stork-billed kingfisher
- Indian shag(!), Lake Kandy
- black-crowned night-heron, Lake Kandy
No comments:
Post a Comment