so many adventures...in a nutshell

I have not had the time that I had hoped to keep the blog updated, but do have some things to share.

We definately have had quite the trip, and found out today that we get to come home 1 day sooner, we were all very happy.

Today we flew to a place called Tirrupur, it was a quick 45 minute flight. The driving is helatious here, I mean deadly. We saw two accidents, and I am pretty sure they were fatal, nothing left of the drivers side :(

Okay, here is a recap of last week in Sri Lanka.

We went to two dinners on the beach. One at a place called Mt. Lavinia, we were greeted by an elephant, of which we also got to pet and feed. We then proceeded to the beach to sit at a long table where we were entertained by dancers, then they had a sign made for us out of fireworks. It was quite the evening.

The other beach dinner was at a place called Blue Waters, it was at a nice hotel near Colombo, definately not as eventful as Mt. Lavinia, but nice.

That's it in a nutshell, the pics are definatley more entertaining.

On Sunday, the first day for us in India, we went to a handy craft market, where I made a handwoven box out of palm leaves. It was quite moving to see what these people do to make these crafts, such as woven mats, bracelets, batik fabrics, and so on.

Somethings that we have seen:

cows running on the road

poverty, and lots of it

goats trying to pick their head up, and because it's tied to a leg so they don't run away, their leg comes up too...

Chickens being butchered

sad dogs running around, eating garbage

chickens walking around in the garbage

women doing laundry in the filthy river

crazy drivers, and hearing horns honking all the time

Can't wait to come home...

The adventure continues...

We arrived at the Cinnamon grand, and were relieved to know that we had clean sheets, and a nice place to lay down. I decided after a long drive, I would take a shower. I opened my suitcase to get my clean clothes, and to my surprise, my showergel had leaked. While it smelled good, it still got on some of my clothing. I proceeded to wash my toiletry bag, and realized at the end of this, I was delirious. I turned on the tub to wash out the bag, the faucet fell off, and water sprayed out with pressure. Then, after cleaning the bag, I took a shower, and as I was stepping into the tub, I said to myself " where is the shower curtain? this a really awkward way to shower", as I was using the wand in the tub with no curtain, I looked over to see the "shower stall", then I felt like an idiot. I jumped out of the tub, and turned on the shower stall, it was the wand again. I thought to myself "this is sure inconvenient to use this wand". Whlie I was looking up washing my hair, I noticed there was rain shower head, again "what an idiot!" I was so tired, that I realized I had no commen sense. It made for a good laugh to many though...

How the week began

Wow, what a week it has been. We had such an adventure in Sri Lanka, I can hardly remember all what we did. Here it goes.
When we arrived in SL we went to a hotel close to the airport called the Airport garden hotel, to freshen up and rest a little before we headed on our long journey to Centuria Tourist Hotel. When I heard the name, I had a feeling it may be the only hotel in the area, which could be scary...Well, my insticts were right.
When we arrived, we walked up about 25 stairs to get to the hot lobby desk, then to get to our room, we walked down, about 50 steps, to our room. My colleague and I were scared to stay alone, so we decided to room together that night. So glad we did, because we got into the room, and it was like this...little tiny ants crawling on the bathroom while, like on a highway or something, the toilet had a sanitzed label on it, but I think it was a few years ago. When I went to pull out the toilet paper, EEK! There were dead ant casings that fell out, thank God I carry tissue. Then I took a look into the shower, and said, "no Thanks!" Now mind you, this was after a 30+ hour flight, and another 6 hour drive. I am so glad we were able to take a shower at the hotel right after we flew in, because it would have been another day before I took one. This place was quite scary. I even brought a travel candle, so we lit the candle, and sprayed a lot of bug spray( with 25% deet, which is not good for ingestion), and turned on some music from the ipod.
Then, I was thinking, I will call for a tea Kettle, so I could boil some water for my freeze dried food, nope wishful thinking. I need to contact Bear Grilis to see what he would do in the case, oh wait, nevermind, he would probably say something about eating the bugs after he cooked them over the candlelight. Yikes, enough of that thinking. Now, it was time to go to bed, so we took sleeping pills, so we didn't wake up in the night, put shirts on our pillows, and carefully layed down in hopes we would not have visitors in our bed. The night was going well, until my collegue woke me up, because she has arachnophobia, and wanted me to kill the spider that she found while opening the bathroom door. EEK! I killed the spider, it was a little one, so that was easy. Then, when I went to go back to sleep, I saw 2 tiny ants, on my bed, and thought "just kill them and go to bed", so I did.
The next morning we packed our things as quick as we could, and got out. I only want that place to be a memory, not a place I would care to return to for a long time, if ever.
All I could think about was getting the day over, and going to the Cinnamon Grand in Colombo and taking a shower. That was what got me through the day.

Hours of sitting...80+ to be exact!

Wow, we finally made it to Colombo, Sri Lanka on Sunday morning at 6am Sri Lanka time, or 4:30pm Porltand time. We left on Friday at 1:45pm, I think after all said and done, we had been traveling for 26 + hours.
When we arrived in Colombo, we checked into a airport hotel for a few hours to take a shower, and get in a car for another 4 hour car ride...
The ride was long, and we were all very sore, tired and beat. We did however get to see a Komodo dragon, something that only few have seen in the zoo. When we arrived at the "Centuria tourist hotel", we were all hesitant, it was de ja vu from my India hotel experience a few years back. It was considered a "nice" hotel, but really it was hard to swallow. It was an eery feeling the minute we opened the room door, little ants scaling the walls, mosquitos buzzing around, and a spider to boot...Tulug (my colleague) and I decided we would share the fright together, and we shared a room. Outside the patio door was a lagoon, and trees covered with white birds. We sprayed bug spray, shook the sheets on the bed, layed a shirt on the pillow, and crashed. It was adventurous.
Okay, too tired to write more now. Will write more later.