Sri Lanka

Hikkaduwa

Green tea if you got it, and why wouldn’t a Ceylonese merchant not have green tea?

The sunrise is on the other side of the island but the changing light is still worth going out.

One arrack, two beers, a mojito and a few cigarettes came to a violent one off evening end.  This is how we lose weight the next day, not smart Jack.  Not even savory papaya helps.  How about some local indigenous organic medicine?  A little to help flush out the remaining bile and phlegm and then I’ll sit under a huge coconut tree and listen to waves crash coral. 

Yesterday great, funny, outrageous ideas flowed on the beach but without pen and paper and as soon as I get my journal I forget everything.  At the end of the day there is one that doesn’t leave me.

Laxman and I are sitting outside our room resting after four hours via taxi from Colombo and other guests at the Curry Bowl Inn meander by:  The Germans.  Elderly Germans.  Let’s talk German.

Who were the first inhabitants of modern day Germany?  The Aryans from the upper steppes of the Hindu Kush.  Descendants of Alexander the Great.   

At Al-Ain’s bus station I negotiated a taxi fare to Dubai with five Afghanis and one of them, holy cow, you could plop him in Cheyenne or Bavaria and the girls would go nuts, tall, dusty rust hair, sparkling blue eyes and smooth young leathery skin.

And your point is?  The ancient Aryan symbol is the swastika, health and happiness it means.  The Nazis borrowed it because they knew the symbol was in their bloodline. 

That’s all.  The German tribe.  9000 Europeans were killed in the 2004 Tsunami.  They came back and rebuilt this city and perhaps many others.  I see it here in the architecture, the restaurants are mostly co-owned. 

More bile is simply unacceptable as is the burning in my esophagus.  Fresh mango and pineapple smoothies help.  Some panadol and codeine will help too.  And floating in the ocean. 

Sri Lanka lost 35,000 in the tsunami eleven years ago.  According to wiki 280,000 were killed on that one day.  I watched a Galle video, 30km south of where I am and it is enough.   Watching people know they are going to die is grim and depressing.  I don’t know how many died in Hikkaduwa but the owner of the Curry Bowl said water came in 30m high.  How are the people here doing mentally?

Two boiled eggs, nice crunchy toast and a big pot of tea.  A pot of tea is better than a cup of coffee around here.

We took the new north-south expressway and it saved a few hours.  We missed the standing room only train by five minutes and we were eating lunch when it arrived. 

Hikkaduwa highlights:  the sea turtles, the fishing boat.

In Sri Lanka people eat shark.

In Australia sharks eat people.

The ocean is a place where people think and meditate.  The mountains are a place where people listen.

Sri Pada (Adam’s Peak)

I read on line a tourist climbed the mountain in nine hours because of the number of people who go up for sunrise.  I didn’t want to do that.  We left our room at one am and reached the top in three and a half hours.  We could have made it up faster if we didn’t get caught in scrums, stopped solid.  It came to mind stampedes in India.  What do you do if you can’t move and something bad happens.  I would have to fight my way out of the masses.  I also replayed that awful incident somewhere in England at a football match and they let too many people into the grandstands and they filmed the crush and every look was one of imminent death.

‘move to the right’  Left is always right, especially in a scrum. 

Three cups of tea and I don’t have to pee.  It must be energy. 

Highlights of Adam’s Peak. 

a row of monkeys sit on a building’s awning looking down at a very fat happy dachshund.  We’ll play with you dog, and then we’ll eat you.

the moon and the sun are together.

Kandy

I had 20 hotels on my list and I stayed at two of them.  Predictably the first and second choice places were full.  We stayed at the Serene Grand Hotel and while it was more expensive than I wanted to pay, it was clean, there was a good buffet, the shower was immaculate, the bed was most comfortable, there was room service, the A/C worked quietly well and that was enough. 

Eleven years ago I spent four hours in the botanical garden.  This time almost four hours again.  The large trees, the fruit bats, not too many orchids this time, those in Singapore are better.

I couldn’t remember why I didn’t visit the temple of the Buddha’s tooth last time.  Then I remembered when I wasn’t allowed in this time.  Shorts.  This time I covered up and it was, I don’t know about the relic thing.  Hard to verify but if it is a tooth from Siddartha, due reverence is expected.  We visited a monastery with vivid murals and yet I feel this loss of devotion.  Seven years ago the search for love drew me closer to these ‘power’ places.  Now, I take a few photos.

The Englishman who first put a little bit of sugar and milk into the tea knew he was going to be a wealthy man.  A big pot of tea is just ridiculously good.

My feet are black but they’re not dirty.  It’s temple organisms. 

The Serene Grand has an elevator with the number of floors in descending order and every time I don’t know if I am going up or down.  Go down to go up.  I pushed all the buttons for two days.

In the temple of the tooth I forgot to ask for mercy for my own teeth.  After I bought two clay cups, oil and wicket I lit the candles, for my parents, for my spirit.  I understand what a relic’s intentions are, to bridge a gap between the divine, the divine connection.  Is it akin to intercessory prayer, I don’t know, but in prayer the lines of communication never stop, the saints are always working, and why not, a spirit doesn’t need sleep. 

Why don’t Protestants tap into this resource, yes, Jesus is the sole mediator, but the saints are a little closer to us and if they weren’t allowed to intercede on our behalf, well that is impossible because the souls are all around us and have been given a set of rules where they do do something.  Besides consider the spirits of James and Luke, Peter and David, have they been all decommissioned?  No, they intercede.

Negombo

Ash Wednesday.  We went to the oldest church on the island, St. Marys, to receive the ashes.  Laxman got them too, he identifies with symbols on people’s foreheads.  Public manifestations, remembrances, acknowledgements of the third eye.  Wisdom is here.

The Topaz Hotel.  At check in, three nights.  Breakfast not included.  We ate out the first morning.  The second morning we ate breakfast and I paid the bill which I assumed included the breakfast since it was more than the original statement.  On the last morning a man at the desk gave me another bill for breakfast.  I got in the taxi, it was three in the morning, and told him to leave.  Though there haven’t been many incidents, this was an unscrupulous hotel.

My smart aleck phone reduced my reading and writing time and for what.  Most of the time I couldn’t access the internet.  On occasion I used the camera and that was it.  I just can’t buy into the trend that these things make life better. 

I do not think my birthday and the Chinese lunar new year have anything in common.  And I don’t know if being on an island on my birthday has anything to do with the fact I’m a Pisces.  The Indian Ocean off Negombo is, however, much better to swim in than the chilly salty Hikkaduwa beach. 

A man politely accosts me on the beach with his five children.  ‘Please sir, take photo, take photo of my little girl’.  An incredibly cute four year old and such a photo would be cool.  Sorry, the sunset is finished and so are my photos.  He continued to plead with me while his clan from the cute kid to a 17 year old girl who didn’t speak much English stood around almost embarrassed that father wouldn’t give up.

Say, I will take your photo, but please answer me a question.  Why do you not do this? And I put my hands together and fingers pointed up I acknowledged the divinity within him.  Why don’t you do this?  Are you Buddhist?  No.  Are you Catholic?  Yes, I saw Catholics do it at St. Marys during the exchange of peace.  I turned to the cute kid and her sister and did a little TPR.  “This is Buddhist, hands together, bring to chest, this is Catholic, the cross, touch your forehead, then down, right-left.”  Ok, repeat, Buddhist, Catholic.

Another man said maybe people are Muslim.  And you are?  Buddhist?  Why don’t you use this?  Of all the Buddhist countries Sri Lankans are the only ones who don’t acknowledge the divine.  Have they stopped believing in something after a 10 year civil war?  Did the tsunami wash away their hope and beliefs?  It is a mystery I hope to answer.

Final thoughts on the final day of a pretty good rest.

I find a Barista coffee shop and enjoy a 4am cup and a blueberry Danish.  I am surrounded by Russians here.  The Russians don’t tan much, and I don’t know why.  They’re in the water and on the beach.  The white Russians.  In the bars here I order white Russians and get black Russians.

It is evident and obvious, no doubt once again, that I have been assigned to the corner of happy endings with my laptop.

A 75 minute Ayurvedic massage was good.  It took a year or two off.  A 15 minute greasy neck and shoulder massage was not necessary.