Hotels, Ruins, The War
Did I tell you about the hotel at Pollonaruwa? Or show you the view from the top of the Sigiriya rock?
No, I did not!
I’m right back at the theme of Sri Lanka needing tourists. We stayed at the Siyanco Holiday Resort. Now look, it isn’t a holiday resort. It’s a very good medium range hotel. 3,500 rupees for the three of us for the night. This was a bargained down rate because we chose to have the aircon switched off and just use the ceiling fans. It’s a four month old hotel, bright, clean and sparkling, with excellent facilities, great staff and no guests.
They treated us so well that I promised them a plug, so here it is. Book on 027 2226867/68. They do have a website "coming soon", but I expect that will be November some time. Sri Lankan timelines are not the fastest in the world! Marketing cuts both ways. We had the best rice and curry ever in the evening, and great conversation with the manager. So I am marketing his hotel.
He needs to market it, too. There isn’t a sign, there’s no website, and it’s too new for The Lonely Planet.
He’s pretty damned fed up with the war. Everyone wants it over soon. It affects tourism badly, but it just doesn’t get into the lives of individual tourists. We see army checkpoints and machine gun nests, of course we do, but they only affect us if we travel by bus, or sometimes by tuk tuk.
I also never showed you the Lotus Pool!
There are (probably) seven of them, but this is the only one excavated so far. To a stonemason this is all in a day’s work, but I think this sculptured pool is absolutely amazing. But what would it look like full of water? Are the lower steps a waste and a conceit, or do they work?
Maybe one day we’ll find out. It would be absolutely great to see Pollonaruwa with all the hydraulics functioning
I left something out of the Botanical Gardens, too, at Peradeniya. The snogging forest, the one with more than snogging in places!
I left out the handbag trees!
There I was, minding my own business, wondering why Melanie always takes my camera and deciding to buy her one of her own, when she asked, "What is that in that tree?"
"Handbags. It’s a handbag tree!" Well, I was hot!
Then we looked closely as something the size of a tea tray took off, circled the tree and landed.
"Twinkle twinkle, little bat, #How I wonder what you’re at. #Round about my head you fly, #Like a tea tray in the sky!"
There were trees upon trees with them. And, that night, at dusk, they flew into Kandy. We also saw them at the tank in Pollonaruwa.
I forgot the pillar box in Sigiriya, too! Not just in Sigiriya, of course not. Another legacy of the British Raj, and very much in use today.
In Kandy we posted four postcards in one that looked neglected, expecting them to arrive in December. But they arrived before we got home!
Amazing when a plan comes together.
There’s so much there it’s impossible to show even a tenth of it. The atmosphere, the hawkers of goods, the smiles on the locals’ faces, especially when you wear a sarong instead of trousers. No, they’re pleased, not laughing at you. Truly. It’s not like when you wear a kilt and are not Scots!
The hawkers all sell the same crappy tat, though. "Magic Box, Sir? Can you open Magic Box?"
Well, yes, I can. I did, eventually, buy a coconut bangle for a good friend and an elephant hair bangle for me. Mel bought carved elephants, and Al bought an amazing Krishna with very good carved detail.
While they are obviously aimed at tourists they are not at the hugely inflated coach tour prices of the Sigiriya woodcarving workshop. We recommend street vendors and haggling any day.
I was very remiss in not showing you the view from the top of the rock, too.
The lake at the foot is natural. On the top of the rock is a swimming pool, of all things. And the water was pumped up the rock from the lake using bamboo pumps and pipes.
If you look carefully you can reverse the view and find the Hotel Sigiriya, too. Now, which one of those monkeys stole my breakfast?
There’s a guard post on the rock with a highly polished seat that overlooks an unfenced precipice. The idea was that you did not fall asleep at your post. or I suppose you tendered your immediate resignation if you did, while screaming in your sleep as you fell!
And I never showed you us, shown here in Lake Bungalow in Kandy on an antique bench between the tusks of a long dead and much loved family tusker.
We headed back to Kandy via Dambulla, where the Japanese government has donated a huge and gaudy golden Buddha that looks rather plastic. It’s so plastic it’s rather horrible. But the virtue of Dambulla is high up the rock there.
About half a Sigiriya Rock high there are the most incredible caves with painted walls and ceilings. They’re rammed full of Buddhas, but the Buddhas are not the wonder here. It’s the painted rocks you’ve come to see, so try not to be distracted by the statuary.
I’m back to my theme, though. It was wonderful not to be sharing the five caves with a charabanc tour singing "Didn’t we have a luvverly time the day we went to Bangor...", but we shared them with no-one.
The peace was wonderful.
But these places need money in order to survive and be maintained. They do not survive on fresh air and good will. They require tourism, with all the positive and the negative benefits of tourism. And there are no tourists.
So, let’s get this right. The civil war is contained. It’s irrelevant. The tsunami is long gone. Folk died in each, folk are still dying in the civil war. It’s a crying shame that each disaster has happened, but they should not keep you away from this superb nation with its awe inspiring treasures.
Just be aware that climbing Sigiriya Rock and Dambulla on the same day is a challenge for a tubby middle aged bloke