Quik Thinking

Last weekend Anita and I decided to spend a few days this week visiting the Eastern Townships as a break from city life. With a bit of effort, we found somebody in Magog with whom to couch-surf for 3 days mid-week. Our intention had been to take our bikes on the bus and use them to get around once we were there. Unfortunately, Anita forgot to lock hers up for a few hours the night before we were supposed to leave and it was only while packing that she realized she still had the lock with her. By then, of course, it had already been stolen. Faced with this last-minute hiccup, we figured we could just hitch-hike our way around instead.

Much to my surprise, the bus was packed. I had no idea so many people would be going to the Eastern Townships on a Tuesday morning. Upon arrival in Magog, we ate lunch at a little place called Chich Taouk, which our hostess, Marthe, had recommended. Anita even had some meat! After lunch we hitched a ride to Marthe's house, where she told us a few things about the town and then sent us on our way to the lake. Walking down the street, I was puzzled to notice that the traffic lanes had been created using wet toilet paper!

The lake was cold. Not so cold that we didn't immerse ourselves in it but cold enough that we had to keep moving around in it to generate heat. After we'd had our fill of swimming around, we lay around on the grass to dry off before playing frisbee and then returning to Marthe's for dinner. We helped Marthe make a casserole type dish. It was fun cooking with her because she had so many culinary gadgets. Marthe regaled us with fascinating stories until it was time for bed.

I joined Marthe for brekki around 8:30am. Although she doesn't eat fruits because the citric acid makes her fingers hurt, she had bought some just for us. I cut them into little pieces and proceeded to eat them very slowly until Anita eventually joined us and took over that task. Energized for the day, we were driven by Marthe to Mont Orford so we could hike up it. 

Despite stopping a few times for some impromptu bouldering, we made it to the summit, where we enjoyed a view that extended as far as Vermont. There were several yurts around, which are probably used by skiers during the Winter. I'd never been inside a yurt before so was quite enthralled by them. We took a gentler route down but, even so, I had to walk backwards to relieve the strain on my toes. It took a few tries this time but we were again able to hitch a ride back to Marthe's for dinner.

This time we followed dinner with some Coaticook ice-cream, which is made in a little town near Magog using the traditional method. It started raining while we ate but we decided to go out anyway because Marthe had told us about a free concert going on nearby. She drove us there and we enjoyed performances by 4 different string quartets playing pieces by Hadyn, Shostakovich and Beethoven. There was also some lovely vocal music by an opera singer but by the time she went on all the carbon dioxide in the church hosting the concert was making me sleepy. But not so sleepy that I didn't eat a bowl of porridge when we got back.

I ate porridge again in the morning and then Marthe drove us downtown so we could stroll through the marshlands. There were a few informative signs about the local fauna but of course none of them were in English so we made hazardous guesses at translation. Once we strayed far enough from the edges of suburbia, the marshes made for some gorgeous views. But the best part was when we discovered wild blueberries growing in them. We tried to offer some to passers-by but only one family accepted them.

By the time we got to the end of the marsh trail, my feet were pretty sore and I wanted to take the shortest route back to the city so we could grab lunch and rest. Sadly, we got lost trying to find the lake. After buying snacks from a dep, we managed to hitch a ride back into town, only to discover that Chich Taouk was closed for an hour between lunch and dinner and we'd just missed the lunch shift. We spent the better part of an hour looking for another place that offered reasonably priced vegetarian fare but in the end we just came back when it reopened for dinner. After we hitched yet another ride and packed up our stuff, Marthe kindly dropped us off at the bus station.

Interestingly, the bus we took back to Montreal was nearly empty.

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In Bangkok, for the first time, we stayed in a hotel with a swimming pool. The pool was necessary because Katherine had been so badly bitten by mosquitoes that she was in dire need of chlorinated water in which to soak. After checking in, we ate dinner at a nearby restaurant that had an awesome tuk-tuk sign posted outside and then went right to bed, exhausted after a long day of travelling.

In the morning I awoke early (as usual) and set off on my own to find some street food for brekki. Before eating I stopped by a park to enjoy the fascinating sculptures on display there. While doing that I discovered a swimming pool that was open to anybody who wished to purchase a very cheap annual membership. And, of course, there were a bunch of people practicing Tai Chi. As I was about to leave the park, I heard music start playing all around me and everybody suddenly stopped and stood very still. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on: the daily national anthem!

When Tony and Katherine had been trying to catch their flight from Tokyo to Bangkok a few days before, they'd missed it because Tony had forgotten his passport at home. They were able to purchase and take a different flight later that day, at which point they thought the incident had been put behind them. Unfortunately, however, Expedia then left them a message informing them that their return flight had been cancelled by China Airlines because they'd missed the original one. Annoyed at this reckless behaviour, we decided to visit the China Airlines office in Bangkok.

Getting there proved to be complicated because Google Maps gave us the wrong location for the office but eventually we found it. The woman at the customer service desk was extremely nice and promised Tony that he could get most of his trip refunded. She explained that, although the original return flight no longer had any seats available, they should be able to take a different flight within a day of it. That seemed reasonable enough so we left. But it then took several additional frustrating phone calls to Expedia before they were actually able to get the refund.

In the afternoon, after returning from China Airlines, it was very hot so we hit the pool. We had the entire thing to ourselves, which was nice. But there's only so long we could handle lounging in the pool and eventually it began to get a little chilly so we left for the Victory Monument, which is where I'd accidentally ended up when I caught the express bus from the airport a few days earlier.

By the time we reached it, we were rather hungry. The monument is littered with snack vendors so Katherine and Tony wanted to just nibble on snacks as we wandered around. Normally that would have been a problem for me because eating is a heavyweight operation for me thanks to Invisalign. However, at that point I had just completed the fortnight-long cycle for that particular pair so I decided to try an experiment. Removing them for the rest of the evening, I snacked with impunity. The freedom of being able to eat at will gave me quite the rush! The experiment was marred only when I managed to cut my thumb while peeling a local fruit.

After snacking, we took the skytrain to Bangkok's largest park and walked around for a while. Katherine bought a can of beer before we learned that drinking alcohol was not permitted in the park. I thought it was odd that beer could be sold in there if nobody was supposed to actually drink it. While Katherine furtively stole sips of her beer, we amused ourselves by watching an enormous crowd participate in an outdoor dancercise session. Although the participants were mostly female, there were plenty of guys too. 

As darkness fell, we left the park for the night market just outside it. There was a wide variety of food available there, although they wouldn't take our money. We had to purchase coupons and then use those to buy food. I was initially skeptical about ending up with extra useless coupons at the end but Tony pointed out that they would happily refund unused coupons. I guess they must have instituted the system to isolate the handling of cash to a small number of people. The food stalls are arranged in two inward-facing rows on either side of a lawn filled with tables and chairs on which to eat. At one end of the lawn is a stage on which various musical numbers are accompanied by dancing. It's a very pleasant experience.

Once we'd eaten it was time to hit the shops. Bargaining was underway everywhere we turned. Tony and I eventually grew tired of walking around and sat down to rest while Katherine continued window-shopping. I noticed several old white men accompanied by cute young Thai women. That didn't surprise me but what did was a young European dude with tattoos all over his arms yelling at an overly made-up Thai woman for trying to steal his medicines. She returned them and slunk off, disappointed. 

On our final day in Bangkok we decided to visit the zoo. I've been to many zoos in my life and this one was by no means among the best. However, I think I saw more interesting things there than I have any any of the others! At one point we were walking around when I spotted a strange lizard on the road being attacked by a crow. Never having seen a crow attack a lizard before, I stopped to watch. The crow seemed to be taking its time, waiting for a few seconds between attacks. The lizard, meanwhile, was desperate to escape and struggled mightily every time the crow grabbed it in its beak. Suddenly a young European woman walked by and, taking pity on the lizard, tried to shoo away the crow!

Some time later, we were looking at the reptiles when I noticed a snake that had just gotten hold of a mouse in its mouth. I think it had killed the mouse already and was about to swallow it. I hung around, curious to see what this swallowing process looks like, having never witnessed it before. The snake appeared to be in no hurry as it just lay there with the mouse in its mouth, tail sticking out, for a couple of minutes before finally getting down to business. Unhinging its jaw, it slowly stretched its mouth open even wider and very slowly used peristalsis to move the mouse into its gullet. Eventually the tail had vanished and there was a bulge in the snake's body that continued to move down. An amazing sight to behold.

At one point we walked into the sea lion show and found a troupe of monks in training. I'd never seen so many young boys in the traditional orange robes with their heads shaved! Despite being well behaved, they were by far the most playful monks I've ever seen. They seemed quite amused when I decided to climb onto a large dinosaur statue. 

By the time we left the zoo, we were quite weary from walking around in the heat for hours and watching a movie in an air-conditioned mall seemed like a welcome change. Alice in Wonderland was playing in IMAX 3D so we saw that before returning to our hotel room. I had an early morning flight to Toronto by way of Tokyo and Washington DC so I asked for a wake-up call. As it happened, I woke up on my own right around when I wanted to, which was good because that call never came! 

I took a cab to the airport, rescued my luggage and caught my flight, making it all the way to DC without incident. In DC, however, I had to go through the US CBP and the line was so long that I missed my flight to Toronto. The CBP officer was amused by the fact that I've had four different kinds of US visas but since I was just in transit he didn't ask me any questions and I was able to get on the next flight to Toronto easily enough.

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Rather than flying back to Kuala Lumpur again before heading to Canada, I decided to simply fly into Toronto directly from Thailand. This meant that, unlike my forays into Cambodia and Sri Lanka, I had to take all my stuff with me when I left KL. That proved to be problematic because I was flying from KL to Bangkok on Air Asia, which has a much lower baggage allowance than my flight from SF to KL did. I ended up discarding a bunch of stuff in KL and still having to pay $40 in excess baggage fees. 

I also needed to exchange hundreds of ringgits for dollars after getting my rental deposit back. I'd hoped to do this at the airport but ended up getting there later than I'd meant to and standing in the wrong line for a while. To make things worse, I almost left my passport at the check-in counter. Fortunately, the flight had been delayed so I had enough time to visit a currency exchange booth. They were able to give me some Thai baht but when I asked for Canadian dollars they did not have any so I ended up settling for greenbacks instead.

When I landed in Bangkok, after leaving my suitcases at the Left Baggage station, I caught a bus into the city. According to Google Transit, I needed to transfer to another bus so I could meet my friends Tony and Katherine, who were visiting from Tokyo, at the Ekkemai transit station. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing when to get off the bus and the conductor gave me the wrong information so I ended up going too far and found myself at the Victory Monument, which is quite far from Ekkemai. I was supposed to meet them at 2pm and it was already 1:40 so I took a cab to Ekkemai and got there with barely a few minutes to spare.

From Ekkemai we caught another bus and then a ferry to the island of Ko Samet. It was already dark when we arrived and we weren't sure exactly where our cabin was but Tony managed to lead us to it. The cabin had a miniscule bathroom and the veranda had a low-hanging beam on which I kept bumping my head but it did offer a nice view of the water. And there were a couple of pigs outside!

In the morning Tony and I set off to explore the island while Katherine slept. I noticed a tamarind tree growing near the cabin. Although most of the fruit had been eaten by ants, I managed to find a couple of god ones. I kept one for myself and fed the other to one of the pigs. As in Sri Lanka, there were no bicycles to be had. Apparently motorcycles are all the rage these days. What we did find was a place that served amazing pancakes and had hammocks to lie in after eating them.

We also found a better place at which to stay. It was run by a guy whose name was also Tony! Although we had to share the bathrooms, they were very pretty. Initially I thought there was no wifi but when I asked about it, they told me they'd just forgotten to turn on the router that morning and then did so. These people take power-conservation seriously! 

After moving our stuff to the new hostel, we headed to the conservation park where, for a few dollars, we gained access to a beach with gorgeous white sand, an incredibly gentle slope, crystal clear water, no current and barely any waves! We played in the water for hours, amazed by how the water seemed more like a giant swimming pool than a seashore. For lunch I ate congee and cheap fruit at a beach-side restaurant. The only problem with the beach was that there didn't appear to be any toilets anywhere on it, which eventually forced us to return to our hostel. 

Katherine and Tony decided to take a nap but I wasn't sleepy so I headed out on my own. Finding a little store that sold fruit, I bought and ate a mango and a coconut. I also picked up a pair of imitation Crocs before deciding to get a massage. Traditional Thai massage turned out to be similar to Khmer massage at the macro level, although the details are different. By the time I got back to the hostel, the mosquitoes were starting to make their appearance for the evening. Tony didn't seem to be bothered by them much but I got several nasty bites and Katherine was practically covered in them.

Once we'd picked up some more insect-repellent, we went out for dinner. I'm pretty sure our waitress was a tranny. I ordered fried noodles and they were really good. During my time in North America, I hadn't been a huge fan of Thai food but those noodles made me realize that I simply hadn't eaten good Thai food before. I washed them down with a pina shake that was gone almost as soon as my lips touched the straw.

Having sated our appetites, we strolled over to see what the beach looked like at night. There were glowing coloured balls hanging everywhere and music playing from various restaurants, all of which were packed with tourists. On the sand there were some fire dancers, a few of whom looked like their daytime activities were confined to a classroom. Also on the sand were some food carts hawking roti pancakes. If it hadn't been for my Invisalign, I would have eaten a pancake.

The next morning a thunderstorm broke over the island and we were stuck inside the hostel waiting for it to end before we could catch the ferry back to the mainland. The staff took advantage of the excess water to clean the floors! We watched the storm for a couple of hours before it finally died down enough that we could make a break for it.

When we got to the mainland, we had plenty of time before the bus was supposed to leave for Bangkok so we killed time at the market across the street for half an hour before returning to board the bus. Unfortunately, when we tried to get on, we were told that what we thought were return tickets were actually vouchers for tickets and we needed to exchange them for tickets to board. Kinda annoying but the ticket booth was right there so it seemed simple enough.

Ten minutes later we finally got to the head of the short but slow-moving queue and were told that all the seats on this bus were already sold and we'd have to take the next one in an hour. We could see quite clearly that there were several empty seats on the bus but pointing that out didn't seem to get us anywhere. So we had to watch in frustration as a bus they claimed was full pulled away with entire rows of empty seats staring tantalizingly at us.

We amused ourselves for an hour with the free wifi and a gigantic cockroach before boarding the next bus. It made good time until we hit traffic in Bangkok, at which point we crawled along beside the Skyrain track as trains whizzed by us. I would have loved to just get off and take the Skytrain but we had luggage that had been stowed so that wasn't an option and we had to wait nearly a hour before we could disembark.

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For our last night in Sri Lanka, Anita and I decided to sleep in Negombo because it's actually closer to the international airport than Colombo is. But I really wanted to stop in Colombo on the way to have one last faluda before we left the country. When we tried to buy tickets for the train from Galle to Colombo, once again they had no first-class seats available. But having seen what second-class was like, we figured that third-class wouldn't be any worse and got tickets for the instead, thereby obtaining the trifecta.

As it turned out, there were a plethora of seats in third-class. Unfortunately, the only others in our car were a group of hooligans who acted like they'd never seen a woman on a train before. Ultimately I swapped seats with Anita so I was between them and her.

The faluda in Colombo was most enjoyable but afterward we had to wait a very long time for the train and it took far longer than we'd expected to reach Negombo. By the time we got there, none of the buses were running and we were forced to resort to a tuk-tuk for the third time so we could get to our hostel. We didn't have enough cash to pay for it and there wasn't really enough time to hit an ATM so I paid in USD and ended up with a lot of effectively useless rupees as change. 

Our flights were scheduled to depart only a couple of hours apart so we accompanied each other to the airport early in the morning. The tuk-tuk driver who was supposed to drop us off at the main bus depot actually dropped us off a block away and told us to wait for the airport shuttle to come by. Ever suspicious of tuk-tuk drivers, we went off in search of the actual bus depot and found the shuttle there. It was good that we did so because it by the time it left the depot, there was no room left on it and it shot right by the place we'd been dropped off without stopping to pick up any of the unfortunate people waiting there.

At the airport we discovered that everything was done backwards. We had to go through security first and then show our boarding passes. I didn't have mine yet but we somehow bamboozled the staff into believing that Anita's itinerary printout covered both of us. Upon reaching the airline counter, I was informed that they didn't use computers and had to look me up by name on a sheet of paper before handing me my boarding pass! Although the departure gates for both of us were right beside each other, they wouldn't let Anita through to wait with me because her flight wasn't for another two hours. So I blew her a kiss through the glass pane before stepping onto the aeroplane.

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After a long bus ride, Anita and I arrived at the port city of Galle, home to an old Dutch fort. We had booked a room at a hostel inside the fort itself so we checked in there before going for a stroll around the fort's ocean-facing walls. Our walk was punctuated by the discovery and dissection of yet another weird fruit, a charlatan who dried piquing our interest in sketchy gems, and an accidental detour into the maritime academy. 

The next day we decided to compose brekki entirely of local fruit. Leaving the fort, we went into town in search of fruits and returned with, among other things, half a jakfruit. Anita had never cut open a jakfruit before and my memory of doing so was rather hazy so we forgot to remove the core and thus ended up with sap all over our hands. Unlike the sap of most plants, jakfruit sap cannot be removed by mere glycerine and water. We had to use coconut oil to dissolve the sap and then use soap to get rid of the oil! At least we did end up with a large mound of delectable jakfruit flesh :-)

Near Galle is a beach town called Unawatuna and we'd been hoping to bike there for a day trip. But the selection of bikes at our hostel was pretty awful and nobody else in the fort seemed to have bikes available for rent. So we ended up taking the bus instead. Unawatuna had gorgeous waves and wasn't crowded at all but the sand had sharp gravel in random places, the slope of quite steep and the height differential between when a wave hit us and the tide pulled back was a mind-blowing three feet. When we'd had our fill of playing on the beach, we ate lunch and then I promptly fell into a food coma for the next two hours. When I woke up, Anita informed me that she'd been trying to wake me up by waving jakfruit in front of my nose, which made me laugh because that's exactly the sort of thing I would do. 

Upon returning to the fort in Galle, we decided to finish our exploration of the walls. This time, however, we were accosted by sketchy people and security guards who didn't speak any English. Apparently we had been loitering near an active military camp the day before the president was supposed to visit the fort and they thought we were up to no good! But when we returned the next morning nobody seemed to mind any more so we had a chance to shoot some excellent photographs on the fortifications by the ocean.

We'd been running low on cash all this time and when we had lunch for the last time in Galle, we calculated how much food we could afford before ordering. Unfortunately, we neglected to account for the taxes and fell short of the amount required to settle our bill. To our great relief, the restaurant didn't make a big deal out of it and let us off with nary a scolding. We ended our stay in Galle with a trip to the marine archaeological museum, where I learned that Ceylon was populated in the stone age and even as far back as a couple of millennia ago it was trading with the Roman empire!

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Anita and I had wanted to ride to Ella from Kandy by train in 1st class but they were sold out by the time we tried to get tickets so we settled for 2nd class instead. Unfortunately, by the time we made it onto the train, there were no seats available in 2nd class so we had to stand. The journey lasted several hours and I quickly decided that I had no desire to stand for that long so I just squatted on the floor instead and Anita soon joined me. We did, however, take periodic breaks from sitting on the floor to hang out the side of the train and enjoy the gorgeous view as it rushed by. Eventually some seats freed up and a Spanish couple we'd befriended nabbed two of them but were kind enough to let us share one of the two seats for the rest of the ride while they shared the other.

Towards the end of the trip, we were approached by a man touting a hostel in Ella. Despite our misgivings about touts and the fact that we had already booked another hostel, his offer sounded tantalizingly good so we agreed to take a gamble and check it out. Incredibly, it proved to be as good as he'd claimed and we decided to stay there. After checking in we wandered around in search of dinner but I was put off by all the flies, although Anita seemed to almost revel having them around. In the end we ate at the hostel and their food turned out to be very good.

After dinner we stopped by a local bar for a bottle of coconut toddy and then went for a walk in the nearby hills. We ended up getting a bit lost as darkness settled, although we eventually found our way back. I was pretty hungry after our walk but discovered to my great dismay that the hostel shut down at 10pm and we were no longer allowed to order food or even to leave! After haranguing the hostel owner for a while, he gave me a complimentary snack so I wouldn't have to go to bed on an empty stomach.

In the morning we treated ourselves to delicious coconut and honey pancakes for brekki and then caught a bus to the nearby waterfall. There was supposed to be a historically interesting cave at the top of the waterfall so we tried to find it. Unfortunately, even my well-honed climbing skills were no match for the smooth rock of the waterfall and after several attempts at scaling it we were forced to give up. 

When we got back, I raised my tolerance for flies in order to inject some diversity into our cuisine and we were able to find a place that served brown rice. I had been craving brown rice for several weeks so was delighted to find some. After lunch we picked up a clay pot of buffalo curd as a snack and went off in search of a hill called Little Adam's Peak. Before we left, however, we stopped by the hostel to borrow spoons and the waiter gave us just one spoon, saying it would be better that way because then we could feed each other!

Along the way there we came across these steps carved into the rock and, being the curious creatures we are, simply had to walk up them. The moment we reached the top we were greeted (in English) by a really sweet Sri Lankan woman named Kanthi who invited us into her home. We accepted her invitation and she told us about the crafts she'd been working on. Anita shard her passion for them so they got along very well and she offered us some tea but we couldn't stay very long because we didn't want to get lost in the dark again. We did, however, promise to drop by again on our way back.

We hadn't gone much further when Anita spotted a little temple by the side of the road so we walked over to take a look and were greeted by the family who owned it. They were just as friendly as Kanthi had been and gave us a tour of their little vegetable plots as well as a brief history of the temple, which had been in their family for 3 generations. After leaving the temple we kept walking towards the peak but eventually realized that there was no way we'd get to it in time to find our way back before nightfall. Settling for a view of the peak from across a valley filled with tea bushes, we sat down and ate our buffalo curds with some honey that Anita had brought with her from India.

As promised, we stopped by Kanthi's home for tea on the way back. Her 2 kids seemed quite excited by our visit and her daughter even gave Anita a dance lesson after performing for us in their living room! Kanthi herself taught Anita how to tie a sari in the Sri Lankan style that had captured her fancy when she saw women sporting it on the buses. We had a lovely time chatting with Kanthi about life in Sri Lanka before heading back to the hostel.

Suresh, the hostel owner had ofered to give us a tour of his organic farm before we left so we took him up on it. In the morning we checked out and got into a tuk tuk that he drove to the farm. Apparently he had teamed up with a Canadian to run the farm and they had been planning to turn it into an eco-resort at prices that blew our minds.

The farm had an impressively diverse mixture of crops. I can't even remember all the stuff they had growing there! It was 30 hectares and bounded by a river on 3 sides with a functioning well on the property. As I asked Suresh about his life story I was amazed by how entrepreneurial he was. After spending a few years working for Toyota in Japan, he had returned to Sri Lanka to open the hostel and then gotten involved with the farm in addition to that! After giving us a thorough tour of the farm, he dropped us off at the nearest bus stop so we could head South to the coast.

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On the day we had planned to leave Colombo for Kandy, we didn't need to catch our train until 3:30 in the afternoon. Wanting to make the most of our morning, we checked out of the hostel, left our luggage at the front desk and hopped on the local train into the city to visit the Natural History Museum. By the time we were crowded out of there by an unending stream of elementary school kids, we were both quite hungry so we had lunch in the city before catching the local train back to Mt. Lavinia to rescue our luggage. Unfortunately, while on the train, we realized that we probably wouldn't have enough time to take the local train back into the city to catch the intercity express to Kandy.

Desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. For the first time, we decided to take a tuk-tuk to the hostel from the Mt. Lavinia station instead of walking. Upon getting there, we sought advice from the proprietress, who advised us to catch a city bus to the main train station, since those run much more frequently than the local train. When we got stuck in traffic on the bus, I wasn't sure if we'd make it after all but Anita remained remarkably optimistic about us catching the bus. Eventually the traffic cleared and we did make it into the city to catch our train. We even had a few minutes to spare!

The first-class seats we'd purchased were quite comfortable for the journey and we enjoyed the scenic beauty along the way, although it was dark by the time we finally arrived in Kandy. This time we hadn't booked a hostel room in advance because none of the cheap ones listed in the guide books or online seemed to have phone numbers! We'd hoped, therefore, to simply find one when we got there. Unfortunately, that proved to be an exercise in frustration. Both the places we had planned to check out were full and getting directions from the locals felt like dental extraction on large striped felines. Burned out from walking around with our backpacks in the dark, we caved in again and let a tuk-tuk driver take us to a random hostel that gave us a rather spartan room at a price that, while higher than we'd been hoping to pay, was not unreasonable.

On the morrow, refreshed from a good night's sleep and aided by daylight, we set off by bus to visit the Botanical Gardens. Like most other big attractions in the country, they had one price for locals and another one, 20 times higher, for tourists. Since I kept being mistaken for a local, we decided to try and sneak in as locals. The guy at the ticket booth didn't flinch when I handed him the amount for 2 locally-priced tickets. Unfortunately, when we tried to actually enter the park, the gatekeeper tried talking to me in Sinhalese and when I failed to reply, he requested to see our ID. We ended up having to pay full price after all but it was worth a shot.

Wandering around the gardens, we came upon a tree with a thick vine that looped down to form a natural swing. Unable to resist, we started hanging from it and Anita even sat in it. We'd been somewhat worried that the nearby gardener might object to us playing on the tree but he turned out to be remarkably cool and we even convinced him to sit in the loop himself! Not all the staff were like him, unfortunately, as I was thoroughly reprimanded for climbing up a giant Java fig tree in a different area of the park. In addition to climbing trees, we also found some odd fruits, one of which we dissected to identify as a type of almond.

After sitting out the afternoon heat in our hostel-room, we went for a walk around the lake. Despite having been warned by legions of tuk-tuk drivers that the perimeter was several kilometers, it turned out to be a fairly short (and very pleasant) walk. About halfway around, we discovered the famous Kandy cultural dance show was about to begin so, on a whim, we bought tickets and went inside. It was amusing to be amongst a scarce handful of brown people for a change as the audience was mostly foreign tourists. When the show was over, we continued our stroll around the lake with a stop in downtown Kandy for sketchy street food.

The next day we caught an intercity bus headed North and eventually ended up in the little town of Sigiriya, where we'd been told there was an ancient city built on a large rock. Finding lodging was much easier this time around but we quickly discovered that it cost $25 to see the ancient city. While that may sound relatively cheap by the standards of industrialized countries, both of us has been traveling around Asia for long enough that it seemed like a complete rip-off. Disgusted, we decided to rent bikes and see the countryside instead. The bikes we rented were in terrible condition but they worked. Eventually we dismounted and went hiking for a while, which was an amazing experience because the scenery was beautiful and there was virtually nobody around. We even found tamarind growing in the wild!

After returning to the hostel for dinner and a nap, we headed back out at dusk to look for wild elephants, taking our flashlights with us. To my dismay and Anita's relief, there were no wild elephants to be found. Instead we came across wild dogs. Well, they weren't actually wild but they sure acted like it. We had to use the beam of our flashlights to keep them at bay while we slowly retreated to the hostel.

We left Sigiriya the next morning and returned to Kandy. The bus ride this time swerved between exhilarating and terrifying as the driver awed us with his finely honed ability to pass in oncoming traffic. Our ride on the death bus ended shortly before it should have when the bus blew a tyre. We were all forced to disembark and board another bus for the last several minutes of the journey. On the bright side, it was early in the day when we returned to Kandy so we were able to scout around for hostels and found one closer to the lake for a slightly lower price. The place was being renovated so our room was surrounded by construction workers. We did our best to entertain them.

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I met Anita at the airport in Colombo. She'd also quit her engineering job in California last year and had been traveling around India for a few months. Like me, she'd been part of the bicycling community in San Francisco and used to get her veggies from a local farm. Unlike me, she'd arrived in Sri Lanka with an enormous backpack containing most of the stuff she'd been lugging around the Himalayas all Winter. Neither of us had a concrete idea of what we wanted to see in Sri Lanka, aside from living in hostels, taking trains/buses and eating cheap local food. We were, it seemed, destined to be travel buddies.

As we left the airport in search of a bus to the city, we were harangued by a plague of tuk-tuk drivers. It was a herald of things to come. The bus ride into the city ended up taking over two hours, long enough for my hunger pangs to kick in. Fortunately Anita had brought with her a ripe guava from India. She gave it to me and it was delicious. I liked her already.

Upon reaching Colombo, we found a tourist information office and inquired about taking trains around the country. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves getting the hard sell for a fancy package tour from this alleged government official. Feeling uneasy about the whole situation, we insisted that we wanted to take buses instead of hiring a private driver and left, although we decided to roughly follow the itinerary he had suggested for us, since it sounded pretty compelling.

We also took his recommendation on a place for lunch. The staff there must have found us most entertaining because they stood by our table and watched us eat with giant grins plastered across their faces. Eventually, however, my slow pace of eating wore them down and they literally pleaded with us to leave so they could seat other customers! Acquiescing, we bought 1st class train tickets to Kandy and then caught a bus to a beach-side hostel in nearby Mt. Lavinia.

After checking into a triple room that we shared with a Japanese girl, we walked to the beach. First we splashed around in the salty waves, then we build castles on the beautiful sand. When the sun grew too hot, we lay down under a parasol and chatted, our conversation punctuated by the local train as it rumbled passed. Soon we grew hungry and bought some snacks, including a king coconut. King coconuts are different from the ones I'd been used to in Malaysia because they have only water and no flesh. Even so, they're cheaper than bottled water and far tastier.

As we devoured our snacks, a gang of young Sri Lankans, mostly guys, showed up on on the beach. They told us they were engineering students from a nearby university and had come to party on the beach. It was fun to watch them dancing and we spent some time talking to a few of them. One of them was shocked to hear that there were no coconuts grown in the US. Evidently he'd seen palm trees on CSI Miami and assumed that they were coconut palms!

At Anita's urging, we ended our night on the beach by dissecting the shell of a coconut. It was to be the first of many random things we dissected. A girl after my own heart indeed.

In the morning we walked down the tracks to the nearby train station and rode the local train into Colombo. We'd been hoping to lie on the grass in a park but the grass was withered from the heat so we strolled along the beach instead. Anita wasn't feeling too well that morning so we soon stopped to rest at a nearby Buddhist temple that had a large golden statue and an interesting pagoda with depictions of the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

After resting for a while, we headed back to the train station for lunch. The place we picked for lunch had a wonderful surprise in store for us: they served faluda, a delicious milky drink that I that despaired about ever finding again after I left Karachi. Anita had never tasted it before but after just one sip she had been won over. Although we were bowled over by the availability of faluda, we did have some trouble asking for a more mundane item: salt. Anita wanted some to help with her dehydration but we simply could not get across the concept of salt to the one waiter who spoke any English! After a long and frustrating struggle to communicate our desire for salt, another patron took pity on us and translated the word. I think the poor waiter was almost as relieved as we were.

When we returned to the beach, I spotted a bunch of guys playing cricket there. I was a little surprised that they were able to do so without constantly losing their ball to the waves. I actually wanted to join them but I was too tired and thirsty to bother. Instead we just relaxed at our hostel for a few hours before heading out for a bite.

There was a little restaurant on the main road near the hostel that appeared to have cheap local food. Inside it was a guy constantly chopping a mixture of veggies and meat with a pair of large metal implements. It sounded something like a drum beat and grabbed our attention as we walked by so we walked in and ordered the stuff he'd been making, which is called kutto. I was fascinated to discover that they served the food on a sheet of cling foil! Not only does this eliminate the need for washing plates but it makes for an instant doggie-bag at the end of the meal.

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If you ever end up visiting Siem Reap, make sure you know what the capital of Madagascar is. Outside every temple are a gaggle of impressively multilingual and endearingly cute kids whose extracurricular activities seem to consist of selling trinkets to tourists. Some of these are even worth buying. As always, however, you need to bargain hard. And these kids employ a unique angle in their bargaining tactics. After you make a counteroffer to their initial wildly inflated price, they will lay down a challenge. If you can name the capital of Madagasar, they'll sell you the trinket at your asking price but if not and they can name the capital of a country you choose then you must buy it at their price. And, believe you me, they've spent far more time than you have memorizing capital cities.

At one point we were leaving a temple after being wheedled by these kids when our tuk-tuk suddenly encountered a parade of elephants walking down the street. It took us a while to pass them and while doing so we could see random people feeding bananas to the elephants as they went. And then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, the elephants vanished behind us as we sped away.

Another random cool thing we got to see required taking a different form of transport. We piled into a motor boat and went down a river into a lake to see what is known as the floating village, a collection of houseboats stationed some distance from the shore. In the midst of these was a fish and crocodile farm. Apparently he crocodile farm used to be a cash cow a few years ago, fetching $100 per croc, but in recent years the value of a croc has dropped to just $20.

One evening we visited the famous night market in Siem Reap. As far as I could tell, it just had even more of the same stuff we'd seen already. But May fell in love with a t-shirt that had a picture of a chicken on it. Sadly, the shirt was too small even for her. Not one to let such minor hiccups get in her way, May bought the shirt anyway and even put it on. I took a photo for posterity. Speaking of inappropriate, we found a place that serves do-it-yourself barbeque, via one of those little cooking devices at your table. In the heat of Cambodia, that turned out to be the worst way to eat a meal. But I guess that's why they can offer a buffet: nobody can put up with the heat long enough to eat very much.

We kept seeing these places that offered to let us soak our feet in a tub of fishes that would eat away our dead skin. Intrigued, we decided to give it a shot. They normally charge $3 for 15 minutes but we got them to let us have 2 people in for 5 min each for a total of $2 instead. The fish were quite ticklish but they did work and our feet looked considerably better at the end. While we were sitting there, they guy running the joint realized that having us laughing as we sat there in full view of the street was good for drumming up business so he let us stay for a lot longer than we'd paid.

For most of our time in Cambodia we shied away from the really sketchy food for fear of getting sick. But on the last day we decided that we should go for it. That turned out to be a great idea as the sketchy resaurants has delicious food that was much cheaper than the stuff geared towards tourists. Some of it was similar to what I'd had in Malaysia and other things, like eating raw flowers, were entirely new. And nobody got food poisoning out of it.

The other thing we'd been meaning to do before we left was get a massage in the traditional Khmer style. May opted out but Kim and I found a place that offered an hour of full body massage for just $4. It proved to be an excellent use of our money as both of us emerged feeling relaxed and refreshed. Right after our massages, we met up with May and set of for a buffet and traditional Khmer dance performance. Unlike the barbecue, this buffet was incredibly good and easily worth the $7 it cost us. The dancing was a treat as well and an amazing way to end the trip.

One of our few regrets about this trip to Cambodia was that we did not shop around for the best price when hiring a tuk-tuk driver for the 3 days we spent visiting temples. Our driver cost us $25 apiece while we were able to find others offering the same service for as little as $40 regardless of how many people we had. 

In the airport on our way out, I was pleasantly surrised to discover that they offerend free wifi at the boarding area. They also had a suggestion/complaint box for people to leave feedback about their airport experiences. The box was made of clear plastic so I tried reading some of the notes. One of them complained that a Customs official had tried to exract a bribe at night! We never encountered any such issues ourselves, fortunately.

In fact, my only beef with the Cambodian airport system was that they made us all get off the place for 15 minutes when we made a brief stop at Phnom Penh and then put everybody through a security check as we got off the plane. Of all the times to put people through a security check, that has got to be the most pointless one! Clearly if we'd boarded the plane already then we must have cleared security. I cannot fathom what they were they expecting to find. Worse still, by the time we cleared security, it was aleady time to reboard the plane and we didn't really have time to even use the toilet!

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On our 2nd day in Cambodia we woke up at 5am to watch the sun rise at Angkor Wot. By the time we reached it, there was already a substantial crowd of tourists gathered there in lawn chairs. On a whim, May thought it might be a good time to visit the temple itself without being bothered by anybody else. That turned out to be a stroke of genius that would prove useful for the rest of the trip. By starting very early, we found ourselves with nearly two hours of relatively uncrowded time at Angkor Wot.

The temple is extremely large and is currently under renovation by groups from a variety of countries: Japan, Italy and Germany; the entire axis from the 2nd world war, interestingly! Despite its size, even the surfaces of walls are covered with intricate designs. Some of them have scenes from the Mahabharata, which is not even part of the local culture any longer!

When we were done with the temple, I was quite hungry and decided to eat a young coconut, only to discover that, unlike in KL, not all coconuts in Cambodia have flesh in them. Meanwhile we were besieged by a horde of children hawking postcards. At 10 for a dollar, they seemed like a pretty good deal so we all bought some. Only later did we discover the subtle scam behind this seemingly innocuous enterprise. But the kids were fun to talk to and seemed to know a surprising number of languages!

Our next stop was a 1500m hike up a hill to see stone carvings near a stream that date back to the 10th century. There were also many butterflies at the top, drinking salt from the moist earth. After descending and eating lunch, we headed to another temple that had awesome statues of monkeys and then finally we went to yet another temple to watch the sun set. 

Hitting the temple circuit early had worked out so well that we did it again the next day to see Angkor Thom. Although we were the first ones there, our idea wasn't unique as a few other tourists did show up shortly after us. Even before entering the temple we could see the giant stone heads for which the temple is famous. Upon walking inside and up to the top, we found many more such heads, some better preserved than others. There were also a multitude of stone lions scattered around the temple. Somewhat removed from the giant stone heads were a collection of small temples buiult in honour of the king's 12 wives. They're nowhere as interesting as the heads and I would't have visited them if they hadn't been near the toilet.

Also nearby is an enormous stone statue of a reclining Buddha. It's currently under rennovation following centuries of neglect and wear but it's still possible to discern the outline of the face in the wall. Interestingly, this is the second time it is being rennovated; it was previously rennovated in the 16th century, when it was four hundred years old. Perhaps it will need to be rennovated again in four centuries...

A little further up is the elephant terrace, which was built as atonement by the losers of a war in which all the Cambodian king's elephants perished. The terrace has a few different types of elephant statues but it also includes a maze containing a five-headed horse and a seven-headed naga.

We began our final day with a visit to the jungle temple, so called because it has become overrun by large trees that dominate the stone structures as they slowly desroy them. The sight of centuries old trees crushing even older temples is so remarkable that the Fench restoration authorities decided to avoid restoring this particular site to its original state. Apparently the trees are the result of birds droping seeds on the roofs of abandoned temples. The seeds slowly grew into trees with their roots growing downward around the walls and enveloping the structures.

After that we went to see the hall of dancers, whose ruins depict dozens of dancing figures, both carved into walls and as frestanding statues. Kim took her cue to strike up some awesome dance poses before we ended our temple tour with the oldest building we'd seen yet. This one was constructed in the 10th century with brick instead of stone and has stood up to the ravages of time far better than any of the more recent temples, although it's also far less interesting as it lacks the cornucoia of stone carvings that add character to the other ruins.

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