Off to Ceylon

Whenever we meet fellow travellers, especially those who are travelling as long as we are, we naturally compare notes. One of the biggest topics is of course where we have been and where we are going. One of the countries that came up often enough was Sri Lanka and it always received rave reviews. We heard such great things, so many times, that our conversation skipped "Do you think we should go to Sri Lanka?" directly to "when we are in Sri Lanka..." - it was really a no brainer!

We arrived in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, on a beautiful sunny afternoon. The guesthouse we were staying at was actually just south of downtown Colombo in an old beach town called Mount Lavinia. The first thing we did after being settled in was run down to the beach to put our toes in the Indian Ocean for the first time!

We spent two days in the city and visited some of the small Hindu and Buddhist temples that are sprinkled everywhere.

The biggest and most unique one is Sri Ponnambalam Vanesar Kovil. It's a hindu temple completely made of stone.

The Dutch and British presence is noticeable throughout the city (the Portuguese were actually the first to arrive but it was in 1505-1658 so not much left around from that period).

Old city hall during British rule.

British built lighthouse.

National museum. Very colonial looking building.

Surrounding these colonial legacies is the colourful Sri Lankan culture.

We spent Sunday night at Galle Face Park where thousands of families come out to fly kites.

This kite was especially big; there were 8 people holding the robe!

The more we explored and the more people watching we did, we could definitely highlight some of the British influence in the Sri Lankan culture: everyone says "please", "thank you" and "you're welcome", Tom is reffered to as "Sir" and I as "Madam" and tea is served English style (pot of tea, milk, sugar, tea cups with saucer). It just has this air of British properness mixed with the colourful Sri Lankan culture!

Our next stop was to Galle about two hours south of Colombo. We took the train which turned out to be an incredible adventure! We bought second class tickets but thanks to a "friend" (read con artist) we ended up in third class standing.

Marie was not happy. Tom was loving it.

Yes. Tom was standing out the door as the train was going.

Evidence of Canadian foreign aid through the Colombo Plan!

Looks a bit old...

Ok about the con artist. We met this local man at the station in Colombo while waiting for the train. He sat down, talked to us about how he had lived in Germany, visited Switzerland and Austria, and then gave us a great tip on a place to go. He explained that we should get off the train at the stop before Galle to visit some government run gem mine where you can see the mine in action and then buy gems for cheap. He then started adding on other stops in the area: go on a boat tour around some lagoon with 68 islands, go to a turtle hatchery and then finish at a temple with a large Buddha. He suggested hiring a tuk-tuk from the train station for the day and we can leave our big bags with him while we go to each of these sites. At first we though, ok that sounds interesting and he kept saying that no other foreigners go there so it's very quiet and reasonably priced, which appealed to us. For the whole train ride, he kept talking about it and how great it is, how much each stop should cost, how much the tuk-tuk should cost...To the point where we were almost convinced that we were getting off at that stop with him. Finally, we were able to have a quiet conversation together and agreed that something felt off and that we didn't want trust some random tuk-tuk driver to watch our bags for us. When we told this guy that we decided to continue on to Galle, he started insisting that we had to go today! Tomorrow it will be so busy! There is no time to go to Galle, drop off your bags and then come back, it had to be now! When he realized he was not going to convince us he left with a "ok safe travels" and got off at the stop before the one he said he was going too. Weirdo. Either he was getting a cut from all the fees we were going to be paying or he and the tuk-tuk driver were going to steal our bags...Part of getting an authentic experience when travelling is speaking with the locals. Unfortunately some people are more intersted in your money then you, like this con artist, but we have also met many genuinely friendly and helpful people. Like the two men in the train who made sure we got off at the right stop and helped me find a spot for my big bag so people wouldn't trip on it.

We safely made it to Galle and visited the Fort: First a Portuguese fort, turned Dutch fort, turned British fort, turned historical tourist stop. Since it's low season it turned out to be a pretty cool to just walk through the old city visiting some old buildings.

Dutch Reformed Church

Working clock tower thanks to some good British mechanisms from 1882.

Justice buildings.

Coat of Arms from 1668 (Dutch era).

Anglican Church.

Evening cricket game.

Walking on top of the old fort walls was also an experience. The views were beautiful and its always fun to walk along the top of a fort wall imagining what it was like back in 1800's!

View of the city from the fort walls.

I admit I went through a bit of a culture shock in these first few days. I'm not sure if I adapted to the South East Asian culture so quickly or if it's because we had been there before that I didn't feel like I had a culture shock then. Or maybe it's because I have never been to this part of the world that it hit me and took me by surprise! The people here are friendly and the food is delicious but it's just the little culture nuances that really threw me off. The big one being the head waggle! Just like in India, everyone does the little side to side waggle for everything, it can mean "no problem", "thank you", "yes", "I'm listening" and apparently countless more. What throws me off is when I ask a question and I get a waggle as a response. My immediate thought is that they didn't understand my question or no I can't have X. It hit me when I was choosing items from a buffet: I would point at a dish and the server would waggle his head but not put it in my plate. So I would nod my head and say "yes", he would then waggle his head and not put it in my plate. So I thought ok maybe the combo we bought does not include this dish so I would point at the next thing and then the same point-waggle and not put in dish-yes and nod-waggle and not put in dish scenario would happen again. This is when I realized he can't hear me say "yes" through the glass and he doesn't understand what I mean when I nod. His waggle was a question: do you want this? I was supposed to waggle back, I think. Because I'm incapable of doing the head waggle, the thumbs up was a good alternative and I ended up with a tasty lunch!

That's the other great thing about Sri Lanka: all different foods! No more noodles, soy sauces, stir fries or dumplings. We're in the land of spicy rice and curry :)

A little history on the name: The country was always refered to as Lanka by the Sinhalese and Serendip by the Arab traders (the origin of the word Serendipity!). But the Portuguese named the island Ceilao meaning "the island of Sinhalese", which the Dutch then changed to Ceylan and the British finally to Ceylon. In 1972 the name "Lanka" was restored with the addition of "Sri" as a title of respect: Sri Lanka.

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Cats, Bats, Monkeys and a Cooking Class

Our last stop in Borneo was to the city of Kuching; the capital of Sarawak. With it's beautiful old white colonial buildings, small side streets and waterfront it made for a great place to wander and spend some time planning the next chapter of our adventure. We learned that Kucing (the city name is KucHing) means cat in Malay. The city has definitely taken advantage of the Asian cat love to boost its tourism appeal by having some interesting monuments!

The cat fountain.

The cat statue.

And of course there are many stray cats.

Wandering Chinatown.

The village across the river called Boyan was also worth a trip. We paid the boatman RM1 ($0.33CDN) for the one minute ride across.

We wandered the village, had some lunch and visited the small Marguerita fort.

Throughout our weeks in Sabah, we kept looking for Laksa with no luck. We then realized that it's a Sarawak dish and especially popular in Kuching. So we took advantage of this and had it for breakfast everyday.

Laksa (spicy coconut & lemongrass broth with noodles, chicken and shrimp) and Kopi Susu (Coffee with condensed milk).

A typical Hawker centre.

Our Laksa guy.

We also tried the famous Kek Lapis: a 12-20 layer cake made of milk, eggs, flour and copious amounts of butter.

Each layer is then dyed a different colour and "glued" together with some jam. It basically tasted like a generic jelly roll cake and not worth all the excitment in my opinion. Plus, we were both mysteriously sick the next day...

Around the corner of our hostel we found the Bumbu Cooking School where they have classes twice a day and include a trip to the market - perfect!

The trip to the market was so interesting! As we walked down the aisles equipped with our traditional rattan shopping baskets, we learned how to pick the best grade of jungle fern, that there are many different types of bananas and to select our produce economically (just the right size for our meal and minimum waste).

Traditional rattan shopping basket

Grade 1 jungle fern: not slimy or fuzzy.

Pandan leaves.

Wild ginger flowers.

Curry leaves.

Cassava root - starch extracted from this is known as tapioca!

Turmeric.

Small sweet bananas. Our instructor informed us that eating the large bananas is weird...!

Known as smelly beans - can you guess why?

Our instructors tip: Always buy small pineapples and cut efficiently to be economical.

So many spices!

Ground fresh coconut. We made coconut milk for our dessert by adding water to this and then putting through a sieve.

Once back in the kitchen we were reminded that our teachers were home cooks taught by their parents and not trained chefs, which is exactly what we were looking for: Authentic. The class was sprinkled with some interesting tips such as "when foraging the jungle for fruit or mushrooms, always make sure there are signs of fruit flies. If they are not there then it means it is poisonous, so don't eat it." Will do!

We made: Chicken curry with potatoes and jungle fern with sambal sauce for lunch, then a coconut and corn pudding in pandan leaf for dessert. We also learned how to properly cut a whole pineapple (for minimal waste).

Cooking time!

Making the fishy Malay sambal sauce.

Our instructor explained that they always cook with bone in because in the old days they did not have thermometers; when the meat pulls away from the bone - it's cooked!

Making the pandan cups.

Yummy coconut pudding with corn kernels hidden inside.

The right way to cut a pineapple.

Now the fun part: eating! (We had leftovers for 2 more meals!)

An hour outside of Kuching we found two more caves: the Fairy and Wind caves. These were much smaller and a lot less visited then the ones in Mulu National Park. It was a bit of a mission to get here though. WWe had to first take a bus for an hour to a city called Bau to then find a taxi that would agree to take us to the caves and wait for us. Accompanied by John, a fellow Canadian from Abbotsford (the first Canadian we met on our trip!), we successfully made it to the caves where we donned our headlamps and went in...

It was fun to be able to wander through the caves on our own, unlike Mulu where it is mandatory to have a guide. It was also an incredible experience to be so close to so many bats! Imagine the cave was about 3m high and the ceiling was covered in bats all chirping away. When I realized it was about 4:30pm I started to get worried that we'd be inside the cave when all of these bats made their exodus for the evening hunt! I had this imagine of bats flying at my face while dropping guano all over me... Click here for a video I took - you can't see much but you can hear the squeaking of the bats.

Finally, for our last day in Borneo, we went to Bako National Park to see if we can get one last glimpse at some wildlife and a Proboscis monkey. After we signed in at headquarters and picked up our trail map we set off for a full day of hiking through the jungle. After 5 minutes we bumped into a group of male Proboscis making their way around the mangrove trees along the boardwalk, right in our path!

We couldn't believe our luck. An entire group of just male Proboscis, which one of our past guides had refered to as "The Bachelor Group". This is different than the other groups we had seen in the Kinabatangan River where we only saw Harems: one male who...uhm...satisfies a group of females.

The rest of the day was more of a nice walk through the jungle where we got a nice view of the ocean and were able to admire all the wonderfully lush and large vegetation in quiet (no guide and very little co-tourists).

Interesting rock features.

The beach.

Typical...

Tom is always excited to see the BIG plants.

Right at the end of our day we bumped into a group of Silver leaf monkeys (the ones that have the David Beckhem hairstyle) and some Long tail Macaques. They don't call these guys "cheeky macaques" for nothing. As we were enjoying a little snack and drink at the park cafeteria, two macaques jumped on to the verandah and went on a mad food scrap hunt. We watched them lick the inside of a snickers bar wrapper and a couple of ice cream packages including the popsickle sticks. Then while one had overturned an ashtray and was busy being stopped by someone from eating the cigarette butts (ew!!!), the other jumped on to our table and starred at us. We both stood up and all three of us froze, staring at each other. The cheeky macaque with incredible speed and without even breaking his gaze, grabbed the plastic bag, which held our snacks, that was sitting on the table right in between Tom and I!!! Luckily I have cat-like reflexes and also grabbed the plastic bag. He immeditaly tugged his way, then I tugged my way, then him again and then finally me: I won - In your face little monkey! Although I did take a step back because he gave me quite the scowl.

Cheeky macaque.

Our next stop is Indonesia, Malaysia's neighbour. We both really enjoyed our time on Borneo, it is a beautiful island filled with so much wildlife, lush jungles, cool caves and tropical beaches I only thought existed on screen savers.

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