Melt Down in Kandy, Sri Lanka

JANUARY 8, 2013

 "Money doesn't buy happiness.  But is sure gives you some options."

- Mike Reid, my first boss in the financial services industry

Kandy was a traveler’s low for me.  In addition to the iPhone being stolen, I almost ran out of money.  More accurately, I almost ran out of access to my own money.  

Plan A:  Come to town with a fist full of Indian Rupees and convert them to Sri Lankan Rupees.  Well, Sri Lanka is so fierce in their cultural separation from India that they go way out of their way to have a separate identity from their neighbors to the north.  Banks exchange 9 types of currency.  

FAIL:  Indian Rupees are not one of them.

Plan B:  I’ll hit up ATMs along the way and just pay the high fees.   

FAIL:  It turns out my new bank, Chase, linked my debit card to the wrong account and my card draws on the pseudo-business account for my rental property.  Withdrawing funds from that account for personal use would be disastrous in an IRS audit.

Plan C:  A failed IRS audit beats being destitute in a third world country.  I’ll spend down the rental property account and cross my fingers I don't get audited.   

FAIL:  The new electronic payment system Chase set up with my tenants for them to pay rent doesn’t work and they’ve been texting me for help to a phone I don’t posses anymore.  That account has been down to bones for a while and I didn’t notice on account of the fact I like to pretend I don’t own the house and never check on the accounts.

Plan D:  Call Chase, give them a piece of my mind, and get the debit card linked to my personal account.  Now all I have to do is transfer cash from PayPal (where my clients pay me) to my bank account.  It takes like 4 clicks on paypal.com and the money is in my hands.   

FAIL:  PayPal twice freezes my account because the IP address I use to log in from is in an area they block transactions from.  Twice I call them and am assured them money will come.  Twice an automated process stops my request to transfer money from myself to myself.  This is after running up a hundred dollar phone bill allegedly getting this squared away with them last fall when I was in Eastern Europe. 

At one point I emailed Theresa, a traveler friend of mine, and gave up.  I was going to take a bus to the airport with the remaining 2,500 rupees (about $19 USD) I had on me where I would then buy an early ticket to India with my fully functional credit card and then live for a month or so on the pile of Indian Rupees that are stuffed in the recesses of my bag. 

In the end, PayPal fixed the glitch and I transferred enough money to buy a small Sri Lankan fishing village.  Just in case. 

Recovery in Kandy, Sri Lanka

JANUARY 7, 2013

Still feel like hell.  Now off of anti-biotics.  My cold symptoms have lessened, though my body is now a mess.  Clearly lacking the energy to heal from my back to back hikes, my calves are so bad I’m walking like Ozzy Ozborn on a good methadone bender.  My back and spine are in knots.  I hurt so bad I can’t even think about yoga right now.

Plan A was to head east to the “hippie haven” beaches on east coast of the country but I’m already running out of time thanks to my illness and airfare messes.  Instead, I head north through the central highland.  My thoughts are that a beach is a beach and I’ve seen my fair share.  I will go check out the temples.  My first stop north was the town of Kandy. 

In Kandy I got a taste of more local culture.  My in-room yoga practice was disrupted by very very loud drumming.  So loud, I couldn’t even pretend to keep my mind calm.  I had to investigate and was treated to a Kandian drumming and dancing event.

The next day I would visit a batik factory when they apply wax to cloth and dip the cloth in dye in successive steps to make wonderful clothing and tapestries.  My interest in clothing in negligible, though I wanted to buy about a dozen different things in the show room.

After that it was on to a wood carving factory.  The end results were amazing, though the production floor looked a bit like a sweatshop to me.  No one was smiling and the conditions didn’t look so stellar.

The real treat was a tour of an Ayurvedic garden, given by a med student.  I learned about all sorts of natural healing remedies.  At one point he showed me a mixture of ordinary products – I forget what exactly, but it was like asparagus, turmeric, and avocado – he claimed was a natural hair remove.  I’m all for Ayurveda, but I didn’t believe this stuff worked.  Now I have a bald spot on my arm to remind me that I lost that bet. 

Note that my iPhone was stolen around this time, so you don’t get to see any of the pictures of the garden or the batiks. 

Views at World's End, Newralia, Sri Lanka

JANUARY 5, 2013

Against my better judgment, I leave Dalhousie and proceed directly to Neuralia.  More nature time ahead.  This time, at World’s End.  On the train to Hatton a few days back, a local kid overheard me talking to other backpackers and suggested I do World’s End.  He went so far as to say that Adam’s Peak was overrated and World’s End was really Sri Lanka’s marque hike.  He was right.

This is the official bird of Sri Lanka.

Hike up Adam's Peak, Dalhousie, Sri Lanka

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JANUARY 4, 2013

Little plugs of deliciousness.

  The hike up Adam’s Peak was brutal.  Still ill, I wanted to get the hike in and get out of the tiny village.  Adam’s Peak is a pilgrimage site for many Buddhists who journey to the top to see a print in the ground, allegedly made by Buddha or their other regionally accepted god who’s name escapes me right now.  The traffic on the mountain is huge.  There are over 5,000 steps from bottom to top, paved the whole way, and lined with shops selling munchies, tea and various trinkets and trash.

The idea is to leave around 2 or 3 in the morning and then hit the summit at sunrise.  The shadow cast by the mountain is not the shape of the mountain, supposedly.  My hike would be covered in rain and clouds.  No sunrise.  The views at the top were spectacular though. 

Three hours ago, I was down by that lake.

Ill in Hatton, Sri Lanka

JANUARY 2, 2013

I just keep telling myself it is from a ritual mosquito killing.

Sick in Hatton.  Fever.  Chills. Head ache. Stuffy nose.  No energy to find real accommodations. I'm only an hour drive to my final destination of Adam's Peak, but I can't press on.

Baby blue netting, pink pillows.  Masculine.

This is what I’m stuck with – a girly bed and blood on the walls.    

Another Memorable Bed in Dalhousie, Sri Lanka

JANUARY 3, 2012

Best drive ever.  45 minutes of wind in my face in the tuk tuk, surrounded by massive tea plantations.

That's about $300 of single estate ceylon tea laying in the ditch.

It took four days of sitting around and sleeping 12 or more hours each night before I was healthy enough to leave my guest house.  The locals were so sweet in taking care of me.  The first was my tuk tuk driver who took me to his family doctor.  I got and exam and antibiotics for 100 Sri Lankan Rupees, or about $0.78 USD.  

 Then, the whole staff at my guest house in Dalhousie was looking out for me.  Most people show up in the afternoon, hike at midnight (I’ll explain later why it’s a night hike), then leave after breakfast.  I’ve been loitering for 3 days.  And since I’m not nocturnal like the other guests, I hang all day with the staff getting work done on my computer.  My appetite has disappeared and they keep trying to force food on me.  Its all very sweet.  

And as for my new accommodations.  Well.....

Should have kept my mouth shut in the previous blog post.  Yesterday's bed is looking better and better all the time.

 

Late Arrival in Colombo, Sri Lanka

DECEMBER 31, 2012

Better late than never.  Asia.  Sri Lanka.  Here I am.

I bet he makes $.10 per hour. Seriously.

The airport is a sprawling modern complex.  The second you leave it, you’re in a whole new world.  It was all fascinating to me, though I cannot say I ever felt overwhelmed.  To get the full experience, I hired a tuk tuk (three-wheeled little vehicle) to take me the 90 minutes into Colombo where I hoped I still had a room reserved. 

The chaos on the street was unlike any U.S. city.  Vehicles zipped in and out of lanes.  The air was thick with exhaust.  The road was lined with tumble down shacks.

After checking into my guest house, I headed out for food.  It doesn’t matter how many people you talk to or how hard you study the Culture Shock guide book, there’s just going to be some things that are a mystery to foreign travelers.  Like how to order food.  In proper Sri Lankan restaurants there is a guy next to the door taking orders, another guy off to the other side taking money, and then a couple other guys behind the glass case of food preparing everything.  In two days, I ate out three times and only once was successfully seated at a table.  The other two times I was given carry out. 

Once seated, the whole experience became a bigger mystery.  No menu.  Limited English (it’s an official language, though Singhalese is predominant and the English comes with such an accent it took me a week to pick up on it).  They brought me out a tray with rice in the middle and a couple curry-like things on the side.  Then another shoeless guy brings out dal (lentil stew) in a bucket that holds at least 3 gallons of the stuff.  The people seated at my table – oh, yeah! I was seated with other people who couldn’t get enough of the weird white guy -  served themselves from the dal bucket.  I did the same.  A couple times it left our table and went to another and came back again.  On top of all this food, a plate of 7 different baked and fried bread goods get set next to me.  No silverware.  I’m eating rice and curry with my bare hand.  In Europe I was told that you have to eat everything delivered to you or it is incredibly rude.  I have 3,000 calories in front of me.  There’s no way.  From watching around the room I gather that you take what you want from the bread plate and leave what you don’t want.  That helped.  After eating everyone gets up and washes their hand (hands?) at a sink in the back of the restaurant.  When you sit back down they hand you two small squares of newspaper to dry your hands.  I dig it.  Everything was spicy.  I survived the local dining experience and spent the equivalent of $1.20 on the huge meal.  Victory.