10-24-05

Well it’s another gorgeous day in Sri Lanka. We’ve been here a week. Today is hot, damn hot but I’m lying low and Ron is traveling north of here. Fortunately the car is air conditioned but the drivers are totally insane.

I think I mentioned that they are doing a major upgrade to our hotel but here’s an observation from the past couple of days. We are on the sixth floor. The rooms are on the outer perimeter of the hotel with the center being open (like an atrium) down to the first floor. In other words you can open your door to exit your room and walk over to a balcony and look down to the first floor. They are sanding the wood floors in the hallways in order to refinish them. However they are also repainting the walls, at the same time! Sorry but seems to me the dust from sanding it going to be getting in all that wet paint????????? What do I know….

Did I say it was hot today? Well it just started raining in order to cool things off. It does that every day, thank goodness.
I woke up at 4:00 this morning. I lay in bed for awhile but decided to get up and read, do computer stuff and some breathing exercises that Raju taught us when he was with us. I showered, read the paper, and had breakfast. At 9:00 I decided to take a long walk along the Indian Ocean. I carry an umbrella because it can start to rain at any moment here but also for sun protection. I'm being super careful about my skin. My trip took about an hour and half plus I stopped at a coffee shop on the way home and had a bottled water because I was so hot and a decaf Americano, my first since arriving. Good coffee is hard to find here and I'm still searching. I actually shipped six pounds over with our air freight but it's not here yet and I won't be able to make any coffee untilwe are moved into whatever housing we end up with. What I had at the coffee shop was definitely better than our hotel's coffee. I am fascinated by the buses here. They all look old and dirty, they are not air conditioned and the driver sort of slows down but doesn't make a complete stop unless a whole lot of people are getting on and off. If it is just one person you sort of have to hop on or run after the bus and jump on as it pulls away from the curb. They are always crowded even on the weekend when there are a lot fewer people around town. The drivers are very aggressive in their driving, frequently blowing their horns for everyone on the road to get out of their way. Actually, all the drivers here are aggressive but the bus drivers take the cake! We usually pride ourselves on using public transportation but I don't think I'll try the buses here.
Ron called last night. I'm so glad we got the cell phones. Ron said the ride yesterday to their first stop took about 1.5 hours and he said he almost threw up when they got there. I asked him if he was car sick and he said ‘no, it was from anxiety of the driving’. Yikes! I’ve ridden in a couple of taxis and a number of three wheelers (tuk tuks) and I agree it is best to close your eyes. I have found one tuk tuk driver who is stationed at the hotel so I call him any time I am going out because he drives half way sanely and he has never tired to get me to go to a jewelry factory which is common here.
Since many of the places he will be traveling to are quite small or very rural, the accommodations will be limited. He said the place they were last night was a bit funky and the only place to eat was at the hotel. I can hardly wait to travel with him! I think the only places where we will find good accommodations will be when we are near some of the larger cities and they are few and far between here. Then again this is what we had expected here. It is very much a developing country and way behind Thailand. Twenty years of civil war has taken its toll. As I was walking today I noticed lots of infrastructure problems (goodness, it must come from hanging around that city manager guy)and I doubt that there are any funds to fix caving in sidewalks and the like. As Ron mentioned this place looks like it has been neglected for about twenty years and I'm sure that is a result of the civil war. Since TAF is on holiday today I can’t hook up with the person who is to get me hooked up with real estate brokers. That left me with time on my hands. So after my long walk, I answered some email then went out to lunch. I’m getting tired of eating at the hotel. There’s a lovely shop down the road that has outdoor dining. So I decided to treat myself to an outing. I sat under the covered area because there was a fan and I had an delicious lunch-pork black curry (oh my goodness it was good), rice, salty pickle something which was a great accompaniment to the curry, salad with mango, red onion, cukes, lettuce and yogurt dressing with tomatoes on the side, 8 slices of garlic bread (seems that is the standard whether there are six people or one person at the table), some crisps which made have been some sort of fried skin, and bottled water all for a whopping $7.80 which is expensive by the SL standards. I didn’t have the right change for a 20% tip so I gave a $2.00 tip. The waiter wasn’t there when I left the money on the tray but came and found me in the shop to personally thank me. I have a feeling I made his day. As Ron likes to say for a couple of bucks, I can be a hero! Some one said they thought a gardener got $3.00 a day and a hotel housekeeper maybe $5. a day. I will do more exploring about wages as I settle in and share what I find. Tuk tuk rides are usually $1.50-$2.00 and a taxi ride is usually $6.50. By the way the curry here is quite different from Indian curry but it is soooo good. I decided to do some shopping and bought a ‘book bag’ made of hand woven fabrics. It quite colorful and will make a great casual purse. It was $8.00. I picked up a paperback that had 5.99 pounds sterling marked on it and it was $6.50 then I got a lovely hand woven, hand made blouse for $16. Such a deal!

That’s about it for a Monday is SL.