Sri Lanka

A special Ayubowen to my good friend Portsmouth, so many memories. So today we are in Sri Lanka, the home to the worlds first president.

I have very very strong opinions of the whole 'cruise' tourism and today they came out in abundance. I really had to bite my tongue a lot of the time. However, I didn't appreciate the impact until we saw 35 coaches, carrying a maximum of 17000 people to this tiny island. 1700 people who don't like bartering and who have an obsecene amount of money to spend. More to follow on this subject when I have more time becuase I won't shut up. I have spent the entire day telling everybody what a fantastic island Sri Lanka is and they should not go on first impressions. I think my opinion is falling on deaf ears.

Portsmouth and I did most of the Sri Lankan site son our trip but we couldn't go to Collombo becuase of the war with the tamil tigers. Today I got to see Cololbo. The day started at a highly decorated hindu temple but we were only allowed to gaze from afar and not go inside becuase we were against the clock, much to my anoyance. Our next stop was to the nation museum which houses artefacts from the sites Portsmouth and I visited which don't mean much to the tourists who are visiting Sri Lanka for the first time. It was much stonework from Polonawura, Kandy and Sigiriya. My favourite visit of the day was to the Bhuddist temple, our 2nd on this trip but they are so colourful and majestic. Great pics to follow. We had a shopping oppurtunity but it was slightly odd becuase it was in a convention centre, its like us going to Birmingham NEC to buy nic nacs, eird. However, I did manage to haggle a free massage!

All in all I didn't relaly enjoy Colombo and can see why the tourists on the ship weren't impressed with Sri Lanka if they just visited Colombo. However, I am still a strong believer that you cannot judge a country by visiting it for one day, Sri Lanka has so much beauty and life that cannot be seen in one day.