The delights of Kandy
Back in Kandy for a couple more nights, in part because it's on the way south, and in part because Mel wanted to buy a sari, something she looks astounding in, we visited the Temple of The Tooth Relic.
We were met on the way by a young man who was offering prayers towards them temple, and who greeted us warmly, and showed us to a monastery where his father was a dancing teacher, and there were some amazing things we never knew about to be seen. Amazing marketing, because I'm still not sure whether he had a profit motive, or whether he simply wanted to show off the temple.
He did get us to sign up for, but not pay for, the 5:30pm Kandeandancing outside the Temple, but at 300 rupees I doubt his cut of the take was much, and he showed us a Batik shop inside, or maybe outside the monastery where we bought a couple of pretty Batiks at a much lower price than offered.
We'd seen the dancing before, so we didn't go. We did see the statue of the last King of Sri Lanka, though. Odd place to find it, in a temple. The story tells that he never touched alcohol until he was given a glass of toddy. After that he never looked back! And the sentences he gave out for minor crimes tended to involve people dying a lot.
Booze has a lot to answer for!
He did tells us [not the King, do keep up!] that some very high ranking Japanese Buddhist priests or monks were attending the temple of the Tooth relic that day, but we viewed that to be a terminological inexactitude to get us to go to the dancing, which we skipped, having seen it already in the Community Centre. It's a nightly thing in two locations!
Anyway, there wasn't enough security for any high ranking Buddhist blokes, so we wondered what he was on about.
Now, I've been roundly criticised for the way I'm writing up Sri Lanka. A very good friend said "I like the pictures, but the words, while interesting, are too long. Make it a vignette per item, otherwise you are forcing us to watch all your holiday snaps instead of letting us skip to where we want to go."
So that's the end of this vignette. He's probably right. He usually is.