Sri Lanka: Part 1

Friday night. After a couple of missteps, I end up at the bar of the Colombo Hilton listening to a Sri Lankan Eagles cover band. I shit you not. I'm the only westerner in the place, and almost the only woman. The waiter stood inappropriately close while giving me the bill for my Lion beer, so I shifted away to let him know that I am not, in fact, a prostitute. Awkward as it is, this is the first time I've been alone since I arrived and I'm enjoying it. Bonus points for seeing an ad for Step Up 2: The Streets on the bar television.

I can't even remember what we did on my first day here except go to a jewelry store where I coveted gold earrings that were out of my price range. The next day we left for Kandy where we attended the next-to-last night of the Perahera, a festival celebrating the Buddha's tooth-relic (which may or may not actually have been destroyed by the Portuguese in the 17th century.) Awesome fire-dancing and costumed elephants quickly turned into the longest, most repetitive parade of all time. Also, giant bats. Enough said.

On Wednesday we drove up to the hill country. Don't ask me where, because I don't know. Everything is already arranged, so I'm not paying much attention to those things. What I do know is that 1) we toured a tea factory and I bought some sort of ridiculously expensive tea; 2) we drove up 8000 ft. on windy and sometimes scary, but always amazingly beautiful roads; 3) we stayed two nights at Warwick Gardens, which is the sort of place where an Englishman would have gone at the turn of the 19th century to convalesce.

Yesterday back to Colombo where my only pair of pants was mildewing in our apartment's washer. Not sure yet if they survived.

Summary of the trip so far:

• interesting foods eaten: rambutan, mangosteen, avocado "juice," curd with treacle.
• monkeys sighted: four
• live performances: innumerable by other members of the group, one by me (coroner's speech from The Wizard of Oz)
• Times almost killed by a motorcycle: one
• Incidents of crying by myself or others: at least three
• Common features of Sri Lanka: saris, tuk-tuks, curry, Buddha shrines with flashing LED halos, roadside cows, wild dogs, cricket matches, military check-points, freezing-ass air conditioning
• favorite business name: Moxie's Chicken and Chicken Parts
• internet points found: 1

P.S. There's a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf here. I'm getting an Iced Blended before I leave.