After a jet lagged 3 hours sleep, followed by a 3+ hour taxi journey from Negombo to Kandy with the nice Saudi couple and their daughter, we arrived hot & more than a little dazed at the Sharon Inn in Kandy around 2pm. We took a room on the top floor with lovely views of the lake and decided to keep going and wander round the town rather than crash out.
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View from our balcony at the Sharon Inn Kandy. When it rains here, it RAINS! |
The evening curry buffet at the guest house was apparently renowned (well according to the Rough Guide, and we all know how wrong they can be!) so we decided to give it a go, even tho it was expensive by Sri Lankan standards (900R = £5). What a great choice that was, 10 different Sri Lankan veggie dishes all of them delicious, and there was me thinking I'm gonna be hard pressed to find any veggie options anywhere apart from the ubiquitous noodle/rice with vegetables combo. Two platefuls and a large bottle of the old Lion beer and we were ready for bed around 9pm. Got bitten a couple of times by a lone mozzie earlier, which I located and dispatched with a half snarl, half smile, watching my own blood spat over the coat hanger that it had decided was a good place to have a post Whitey-meal snooze. Insects 0 - Simians 1.
The family who run the Sharon Inn (neither whom was called by that moniker strangely enough) have been really helpful. They even borrowed a large wooden cot for Curtis to sleep in from the local orphanage. We did have visions of some war-ravaged child being unceremoniously hefted out of his slumber onto a cold stone floor to provide Curtis with his bed, but being tourists, that soon passed, and we decided our needs where greater than his, and besides, it's character building.
I don't know if you're like me, but I never get a good nights sleep for that first night under a mosquito net, I spend all night imagining that one or two of the little b*ggers has managed to clamber into the bed Green Beret style just to spend the night chomping away at leisure on the Brit buffet. I'm constantly waking thinking I can feel them landing, or walking on me looking for a decent stabbing point. Hence, we both had another restless night, and it didn't help that my feet stuck out 6" from the end of the bed either. We didn't get bitten tho, and hopefully tonight I'll adopt more of a 'C'est la vie' attitude to sleep.
The next afternoon we walked round the lake in Kandy, saw some lovely wildlife (some of which alarmingly, were eating the other lot)
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Definitely not a veggie... The hair, yeah just had it done, It's the Billy Idol look. |
then went to the Temple of the Tooth. Stupidly, I forgot to wear long trousers, and being the holiest shrine in Sri Lanka I decided exposing my knees to the attendant worshippers was probably a little rude, so Susan went into the temple while I looked after Curtis outside. Well, we must have met every female worshipper over the age of 30 in the whole place in the 45 mins we were there. Curtis had his face rubbed, cheek squeezed, head patted, foot tugged and toes tickled by what seemed like every single one of them, and we answered many questions and posed for photos with their children. For that short time I think we (well he) was more popular than Buddha himself. Although last time someone said something similar, there were fervent record burnings, so maybe I should tread a little carefully! Susan thought the temple was very nice, although at £6 to get in I guess even Buddhism has been hit by the recession. All that to see a fat bald blokes discarded molar that isn't even there apparently. So much for the treading carefully....
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Curtis rockin' his Rod Stewart 'Do ya think I'm sexy' number. The Elephant Man. No, not that one...... |
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