Trincomalee: Trinco Blu

We were very well-protected during our drive from Jaffna to Trincomalee, on the east coast. Our driver had a Ganesh and a Buddha on the front dash and a cross hanging from his rearview mirror. As we left Jaffna, he had to make a quick prayer stop at a temple. He played great music the whole way, and when we got to the hotel, he seemed to have a different understanding of things than we did. Usually we think we're just hiring a driver to get us from one spot to another, but this young man (and even more, the next one who drove us to Pasikudah) lingered and I wasn't sure what his expectations were. I was sitting in the reception area getting the check-in process started while Marc was paying him, and I turned around and the driver had come in to find me, to tell me he was leaving. It was sweet and a little confusing, and I wondered if I was supposed to have invited him to sit for a while.

We had planned to stay in Trinco two nights, but changed our plans. Primarily we wanted to get to the next hotel a day earlier than we'd planned because the weather was changing (lots of rain in the forecast) and we wanted one additional nice day at the next place, which was a big splurge hotel. But also, the Trinco hotel -- while perfectly nice, really -- was not exactly our favorite kind of place. It was kind of large and corporate, and filled with big groups vacationing together, lots of families. Which was fine! Everyone was lovely and all, and in fact, when I was in the pool briefly, three young girls swam towards me and their dads were helping them ask me questions in English. I had my kindle in the pool, which they must have thought was a tablet, because they swam very close and one dad asked if I wanted him to get a picture. I would have, if I could have. They were sweet, and so were the couple of ~teenage girls who wanted to talk to us in English. No one was obtrusive, the place was just fine, but we decided to leave a day early after all. We never left the hotel, really, having checked in around 3pm and leaving the next morning right after breakfast.

On our way back to our room after breakfast, we again encountered a big-clawed crab on the stairs. We'd seen him on our way down, and by the time we got back he had made it up a few stairs higher. One claw was really big, and he was backed into a corner and as we approached, he waved that big claw at us. It was kind of funny, and also sad. Poor crab. How did he get so lost. The hotel grounds were also full of crows, which I'd come to assume must be the Sri Lankan national bird because they are EVERYWHERE. I love crows, and enjoyed seeing them everywhere. Monkeys were climbing all over the roof of the restaurant, which was also fun. 

No real memories, then, of Trinco. At the end, it really just kind of broke up the long drive from Jaffna over to the east coast and then down that coast to Pasikuda. Russia viciously attacked Ukraine and the news was so very heavy and awful, all-consuming, and such a bizarre contrast to us there, lounging around in pools and on sunny beaches, living the life. It was also the 2nd anniversary of my sister's death, so terrible war plus that sad anniversary plus perhaps the best vacation of our lives, it was hard to let it all settle into place. Most of the tourists we encountered were in fact Russians or Germans, as our cab driver had mentioned the first night we landed in Negombo, and hearing Russian people talking, while their country was attacking Ukraine, was often very hard. Me being me, I kept thinking I'd go up to them and say, innocently, "Oh, are you Ukrainian??" and when they'd say they were Russian, I'd glare or something, but of course I didn't and wouldn't actually do it.

BEST MEMORY/FOOD WE ATE: I'm combining this here because I think it's the pretty clear choice. Just outside the hotel was a lovely little restaurant Marc found for us called Rice 'N' Curry. Everything about it was fantastic. The guy who ran it (and the guy who cooked the food) were so sweet and seemed so happy that we loved their food. The restaurant was upstairs in a kind of lovely treehouse-type setting, the music was great (house music), and the food was spectacular. I smile just remembering the experience, it was all-around just so lovely. Had we stayed a second night, we would've definitely eaten there again.

Jaffna: Fox Resort

Such an easy and comfortable train ride from Anuradhapura to Jaffna, and how very different Jaffna felt from where we'd been. It wasn't as dramatically different as arriving in another country, but the differences felt very pronounced. There were cows in the streets, the people looked different in a darker way (not just skin color but also expressions), and as we'd notice, there were many more visible army bases and checkpoints.

The hotel we stayed in, the Fox Resort, is a historic place. It had been the home of an illustrious Northern family, but then insurgents grabbed it, then the government used it as an office space. The owners got it back and remodeled it into what was clearly once a lovely resort. The various underground bunkers were transformed into art galleries, which we never got around to visiting even though I'd thought I'd do that. It's fallen on hard times. We had no hot water in the shower, and the shower door wouldn't close, and the windows were a mess and we couldn't see through them. Just overall, it seems to have fallen into disrepair. The pool was lovely, and guarded by a giant dragon-harp-thingy, and the egg hoppers at breakfast were delicious. One guy at the front desk was so, so lazy, telling us the first night to just go out to the street, we could flag down a tuktuk to take us to dinner....which (a) wasn't at all easy, and (b) there was almost no English, and (c) only one tuktuk driver knew where the hotel was, when we wanted to get back. After that first difficult time, we simply told the guy at the front desk to get us a tuktuk and tell them where to take us, and that was that. Getting back, though, required many, many tuktuk-driver-conferences. Yes, they'd say immediately, they know where it is, and then obviously they didn't, so they'd consult with other drivers, sometimes a whole bunch of them, and finally they'd figure it out.

Oh, we loved Jaffna. It was so vibrant, and we enjoyed walking around. Finally we did some shopping—two silk saris for me, a couple of crazy Hindu prints in sparkly gold frames for the house, some spices and curry blends, and an egg hopper pan—and that was loads of fun. When I think of Jaffna, these things stand out for me:

• We went to a big Hindu temple, Nallur Kandaswamy, at the end of our first day. No photography is allowed inside, and my poor memory being what it is, I rely on seeing our photos to recall our trips, so this wasn't great....especially because of how Marc was required to dress. As long as my shoulders and upper arms and knees were covered, I was good. Marc, on the other hand, was required to take off his shirt (required of all men), and since his long shorts just hit his knees, he was wrapped in a yellow sarong thing. I really wish I'd been able to get a picture. The interior was so beautiful and surreal and outside my own worldview that, combined with incense and the fire in one ceremony, it just took me outside my reality. Tor me, the visual aspects of Hinduism are psychedelic and so over the top: vibrant endless colors, wildly colored avatars of Vishnu, along with the various deities, like Ganesha. We walked through the large space, shadowed by a frowning man whose displeasure was perhaps due to our being Westerners (maybe he thought we might take a photograph surreptitiously), or maybe he was offended by my calf tattoo (on which more in a second), or maybe that was just his face. There was some kind of ceremony going on in a small structure within the space -- a kind of building within the building -- with priests(?) lifting and circling plates of fire, or something, and I wished I understood what was going on. I remembered being in Varanasi for the evening Ganga Aarti ceremony where the Brahman lifted big lamps filled with incense and fire, and wondered if it was some non-river version of that, especially since the temple closed when it finished.
  
  
• We returned to the temple the next evening, not to go inside but really just as a drop-off spot because we wanted to walk around and see all the other, smaller temples and shrines in that neighborhood -- and because it was very close to the restaurant. This second night, we were just walking along and a local man started calling out to me about my tattoo. He was not the first one to do that. Even though I was with Marc, he fell in step with us and kept trying to talk to me about it, and I felt a little scared and threatened and Marc felt protective, so we got ourselves away from him. This is one thing I will remember about Jaffna that doesn't feel so great. I was stared at a lot, and I didn't always feel OK. It was so hot, and I had a dress with a modest neckline, but it was sleeveless and hit at my knee and the fabric was cool, but it was apparently provocative. The cholis that women wear under their saris have sleeves that hit just above the elbow, but their bellies show, so I was left believing that it must be the upper arm that is too risque. My tattoo was probably too provocative, although my legs were also showing below the knee and saris of course go to the ground. Whatever it was, I didn't feel as safe as I did in the south. I'm not saying I felt scared, as I often did in India, or threatened by leering men (again, as I did in India), but it was markedly different for me.
  
  
• We ate at Malayan Cafe our first night, a small restaurant that TripAdvisor listed as the best in Jaffna, and we'd seen it in a video, too. It was dark and close inside, and bewildering, but Marc somehow ordered something for us, and we took our seats. We were the only Western people there, and whoo boy were we of interest to the locals. Banana leaves were placed in front of us as plates, and we unrolled these cylinders of brown rice and coconut, and gradually figured out that we should break it up and spread it out a little bit. Then a very frowny man came along with small buckets and ladles and dumped stuff on top of the rice. I'd learned ahead of time how to eat, and knew a couple of things already, like you do NOT use your left (dirty) hand, only your right. You kind of smush the food all together, knead it together a little bit, and then gather a clump of it in your fingers and thumb it into your mouth, kind of like a marble. Oh, people around us were smiling at each other in what felt like a "look at those people!" kind of way, but it was still fun. The dour, frowny man served us stuff from several different buckets (we didn't really know what any of it was), and stood right next to us as we ate, kind of glaring down at us. He spoke zero English. When we finished, we took our banana leaves to the back and put them in the trash, and washed our hands. As Marc was paying, when we had finished, the dour man looked at me and smiled SO BIG and gave me a thumbs up. As much fun as the whole experience was, eating in this new way, it was the shock and surprise of his big smile that I'll remember best.
  
  
• The second and third nights we ate at a restaurant called Mango, which was also highly rated. The food was great, but the experience was bewildering. The first night, we studied the menu and made our choices, only to be told by the first waiter that no, we could only order from these sections of the menu. So we studied it again, made our choices, and when a different waiter returned, he said no, we could only order from this section of the menu. The second night, we knew going in that only some sections of the menu were available, so right away I asked the waiter (the first guy from the night before) which sections of the menu were available. He kind of snorted and rolled his eyes and said, "Like I told you last night. This and this and this." Except the second guy the night before had told us something different. Marc got kotthu roti that was delicious, the best he'd had, spicy and fresh.
  
  
• The other tourist place we visited was the Dutch Fort, as we read it referred to everywhere except there, where it was called the Jaffna Fort. The Fort is most striking from above, because it's constructed in the shape of a 5-pointed star, and they used blocks cut from coral to construct it. It was built by the Portuguese in 1618 and captured by the Dutch in 1658. The British took it over in 1795, and between 1986 and 1995 it was under control of the Tamil Tigers, during the civil war. It's largely in ruins, and when I saw the Sri Lankan flag flying over it, I thought that he who laughs last, laughs best. Take that, colonizers. It was very hot, and on the ground the site isn't all that interesting to see, so we didn't stay too long but I'm glad we saw it anyway.
  
  
• We went to a regular grocery store in our ongoing quest to find coconut sambol to take home. We didn't really find the kind of markets we always find in SEAsia, so we thought maybe we'd have some luck at a plain old grocery store. As you enter the store, a man at a counter takes your motorcycle helmet for you, which just tells you how ubiquitous they are. We never did find coconut sambol anywhere, but we bought some sambol spices, and some packets of Sri Lankan curry mix, and of course packets of cookies.

BEST MEMORY: My best memory is eating at the Malayan Cafe, more for the experience of it than the food, though I did enjoy it. One thing I always appreciate about Marc is that he gets me out of myself, out of my laziness, and into the world. Even though I had wanted to eat there, when we got there and I was confronted with all the uncertainty, had I been alone I might have gone somewhere else, and I'm so, so glad we ate there. For Marc, 

BEST THING WE ATE: I just loved the egg hoppers at breakfast, so much. They were reliably good and well-made, unlike the ones in Tangalle at Buckingham Place, which kind of went downhill every day. The hopper shell was crispy at the top edge, the eggs were perfectly done, and the chili and coconut sambols were just perfect. We didn't know we could order them the first day (the hotel had a breakfast buffet, but we learned we could ask for anything), and I wish I'd had them the first day too. For Marc, 

Anuradhapura: Aryana Boutique

The last time we came to Sri Lanka, we had an extremely bizarre experience at our hotel in Hatton, up in the tea hills, where the hotel management was so controlling we felt like we were in prison. That link goes to the post about that experience. We'd thought it was a one-off.....until we came to Anuradhapura. 

As we were checking in, kind of strung-out from that several-hour drive and just wanting A MINUTE to think, the hotel manager showed us a menu and said what do we want for dinner. And what time to we want to eat. Wait, what? We are sitting here in the waiting room with our luggage, can we at least get to our room please? No, he expected us to tell him right then. So we both picked something, and when he asked what time we said 5:30, and he said no, dinner service begins at 7:30. So, OK, 7:30 then. We looked at each other and thought uh-oh, this feels familiar.

I don't even remember what we did for the few hours before dinner -- napped, probably -- and when we went down to dinner, we were shocked by how bad the food was. Like, it all tasted rancid, and it was all greasy, as if cooked and fried in rancid butter. Every single bite except the dessert, which was OK -- but not enough to get that rancid taste out of our mouths. We finished very quickly, since it was hard to eat the food, and bolted for our room. We made it only to the stairs before the manager chased after us shouting, "What do you want for breakfast? What time will you eat?" We said we didn't know, we'd order in the morning when we went down for breakfast after they started serving, and he said no, he needs us to tell him right then. Again we said no, and he said he'd send someone up in a minute to take our order. I was all but shouting at him and Marc and I kind of dashed up the stairs and locked the door, feeling pursued. 

So the next morning we went downstairs for breakfast and simply asked for coffee, fruit, and toast, and said that's all we want, and they just didn't know what to do with us. I guess all the other guests were pre-ordering their breakfasts the night before, and reporting what time they would eat, and that makes sense if you want a Sri Lankan breakfast of curries; everywhere we've been, you have to order that ahead of time, and that's fine. But we only wanted fruit and toast and coffee, and it never failed to disorient them and make us mad. I'll come back to the bizarre and terrible manager at the end.

But in between, we did some sightseeing. On the first day we went to the train station to buy our train tickets to Jaffna, and the sweet old grandpa tuktuk driver, named Bas, would figure in heavily the following day. He dropped us off at the restaurant we'd chosen for dinner and told him we'd walk back to the hotel, which is always our preference if that's possible, so he gave us directions, which included things like "Turn left at Ganesh." The restaurant had a big buffet of curries, so we did that, and as I was ladling dal curry onto my rice, with a big smile, the waiter said, "Oh, you like dal curry? I'll bring you an extra bowl of it." We sat upstairs in a kind of hot but attractive loft area, like a treehouse, and were the only people there. As we paid and left, and raved about how good the food was, I told him we'd be back the next night. As always, everywhere we've been -- both restaurants and hotels -- he directly asked us to write a review on TripAdvisor, which of course we'd planned to do because times have been so hard for restaurants and hotels and their food was really wonderful. We snuck into the hotel past the manager and dashed to our room carrying a little bag of bodega cookies we'd bought on the way home.

After our uncomfortable breakfast the next morning, we climbed into Bas's tuktuk early in the morning, when it was still at least a little less-hot, for a trip to the big things to see in Anuradhapura, which are -- of course -- temples. I was wearing a knee-length, sleeveless dress, with a modest neckline, but Bas sent me back to my room to change clothes, indicating his shoulders. I changed into a white top and a pair of capri pants, and when I came back down he smiled and said, "Now very pretty." Well, OK. We gave him a list and figured he would arrange them in a reasonable order, route-wise, and we started at Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, a huge, huge Buddhist temple complex. It was good I'd randomly chosen a white shirt, chosen only in the interest of coolness in the heat, because nearly everyone was dressed all in white. We always prefer to just do things by ourselves, and hope drivers don't speak English, but Bas spoke some English and got out when we parked. I tried to short-circuit him by saying, "OK! Meet you back here--" "Oh no," he interrupted, "I am teacher. I go with you." Well, he was such a sweet, twinkly-eyed grandpa, and the day before he'd tried to talk to me about Ukraine (Biden and Putin were really all I could make out, plus the word Ukraine), and I liked him, so off we went.

Of course we had not asked him for this -- never would've even thought to ask -- but he said he was sneaking us in different ways so we didn't have to pay entrance fees. (Bas!) He kept up a steady pace, chop chop, and didn't linger too long anywhere, but he did explain things to us, and helped us know what was ok to do, what not to do, when and where to put our shoes somewhere, etc. Marc wanted to walk around the gigantic stupa and I said I'd wait in the shade, and Bas said, "But you might not ever come back! You spent a lot of money to come here! You must walk and see it!" So properly shamed, and knowing that he was right and I was just being lazy, I went, too.

But the funniest thing about our time with Bas at the Buddhist temple was the way he took pictures of us. And the way he posed us! So many of the poses I never, never in a million years would've taken, because I'd be sure they would be seen as mocking. For example, he had us stand facing each other in front of a Buddha, hands holding flowers, and facing him with a smile. Or standing in front of some shrine with our hands in prayer, smiling at him. We had read all the temple etiquette, which is quite rigid (it had seemed) here for Buddhist temples, but he threw all that out the window. It was simultaneously funny and very embarrassing in front of all those Sri Lankan Buddhists who were there to worship. He wanted to take us to more places but it was so hot and we'd kind of had enough. There were many more temples to see in Anuradhapura, but I think we both felt we'd seen what we needed/wanted to see.

We'd planned to lie by the pool that afternoon -- not nearly as fabulous a pool as in Tangalle, but ok enough -- but the skies opened up and great downpours of rain started falling. It was great in its way, too. That afternoon, when the rain stopped, we walked down the street to a kind of restaurant joint on the corner, the kind local people stop for lunch, the kind where there is no one who looks like us, the kind where we are gently humored and kindly helped. We ordered kotthu roti and it was hot and great, and the man who helped us asked us where we are from, and we had a little sweet chat. That night we walked back to the restaurant from the night before, but a big bus full of people had cleaned out the curry buffet, boo, so we ordered something else and called it a night.

The main thing we're both going to remember about Anuradhapura, I think, is the hotel manager, and here we find ourselves in the same boat as in Hatton. It really didn't matter what we wanted. Marc had asked (several times) for a taxi to take us to the train station the next morning at 8:30. The train station is just a ~10-minute drive from the hotel, and our train was supposed to leave at 9:10, but we prefer to be early....and anyway, that's our business. 

• MANAGER: You don't need a taxi, you can go in a tuktuk.
  
  
• MARC: We have lots of luggage and backpacks and need a taxi, it's too much for a tuktuk.
  
  
• MANAGER: I will go in your room and measure your luggage.
  
  
• MARC: NO, just get us a taxi for tomorrow morning at 8:30.
  
  
• MANAGER: You don't have to leave at 8:30, the train station is 10 minutes away and the train leaves at 9:30.
  
  
• MARC: NO, our tickets say the train leaves at 9:10 and we want a taxi tomorrow morning at 8:30, and that's it.

We went to bed having no sense that we'd have a taxi at 8:30. At breakfast, of course we didn't see the manager anywhere -- always present when you don't want him, never there when you need him -- and the poor waiter kept saying the car would be there at 8:45, and we kept saying no, and demanding to see the manager. The waiter said he would call the taxi and ask him to come early.

Well, he came at 8:45, and just as we were furiously getting in the taxi (at least it was a taxi), here comes the manager, leisurely strolling out. Marc was shouting at him about it all, and we felt time-crunched already (and very angry), and as we were entirely packed in the car and ready to go, the manager says, "You have to pay the bill."

We hit the ceiling. Time-pressured because he had decided to do what he wanted to do instead of what we asked, and since he hadn't been there before the car came, demanding that we reconcile the bill when we were already running very late was just the terrible rotten cherry on that sundae. Marc guaranteed him the worst review he'd ever seen, and we left the parking lot.

The poor taxi driver was trying to calm us down, telling us the train doesn't leave until 9:30, don't be angry, and then he started saying it was his fault -- which it absolutely was not -- and by the time we got to the train station we were a little calmer but very ready and willing to talk about that stupid manager and how horrible he was and just wait until we write our review.

Well, turns out the train did leave at 9:30. We were sent to the closest track, and told the first train would be going to Colombo, and the next one to Jaffna.....which was confusing, because they're going in different directions. That train, the one to Colombo, did arrive at 9:10, and the Jaffna train did arrive at 9:30, so we don't know why our tickets (TO JAFFNA) didn't just say 9:30. When the Colombo train pulled out of the station, an old man approached us and told us we needed to be on the other side of this track, at the next one -- up these stairs, over the tracks, down to the other platform. Which, you know, made sense finally, so we thanked him and accompanied him to the other platform. 

It really sucks leaving Anuradhapura with such a bad taste in our mouths from that awful, lying, controlling manager, but it's easy to recall Bas and his easy smile (he once pulled down his mask to show us his smile, just as Umesh had done), and to recall walking to and from that restaurant on a hot night, after eating such delicious food cooked by such sweet people, and so that's where I'll be focusing my thoughts when I think about Anuradhapura. The whole thing I record here, because in retrospect it's finally kind of enragingly funny, but Bas, food, hot nights, and now we've been to Anuradhapura, a place we never knew of before.

BEST MEMORY: For Marc, it was telling the manager he was going to write the worst review he had ever seen. SO DELICIOUS! For me, it was Bas, in all his sweetness and too-muchness. Once I told him Marc was Buddhist and he asked if I was. I told him no, and he said (making a cutting motion across his forearm), "We are all the same. Buddhist Hindu Christian Muslim Biden Putin, all the same blood, all the same."

BEST THING WE ATE: Well, it sure wasn't the rancid "coconut lake fish" we ate at the hotel that first night! Aside from the rancid bit, there was no coconut, and it was chunks of frozen fish that were fried until they were burned. For Marc, it was the kotthu roti he ate twice, once at the sweet restaurant and once at the corner joint. For me, it was that curry buffet the first night. And the Marc-and-Lori thing of local strange cookies bought at bodegas and eaten at night in our room.

Tangalle: Buckingham Place

The drive from Negombo to Tangalle was much easier this time than during our last visit nine years ago. (It's kind of remarkable to realize that when we went, the civil war had only been over for four years. And it was three years ago that the Colombo bombings happened on Easter. So much tragedy for such lovely people.) Anyway, a new highway took us a little farther inland, so there wasn't as much winding through small villages along the coast, combined with the special way of driving here.** So it was a smooth, speedy trip, which my easily carsick tummy appreciated. We saw big yellow warning signs along the highway, "Danger Peacocks Ahead," which was so startling. We learned that there are so many peacocks (no lie!) and they fly over the highway and can cause accidents, or get killed by cars and trucks. We've seen elephant crossing signs and monitor lizard crossing signs and random mammal crossing signs before, but never a peacock crossing sign.

We stayed at Buckingham Place last time, and since then Nick, the owner, did a huge upgrade to the property. It was nearly unrecognizable, moving from a kind of small property with a small dining area, a very small and unremarkable pool, and several rooms, along with easy access to the beach, to a very dramatically designed place with a HUGE dining space, lots of places to sit on a couple of levels, a billiard room, a piano, and a completely gorgeous infinity pool that overlooked the ocean. Nick had been away the last time, so we finally met him. He favors very long, brightly colored shirts (more like dress-length) and uses a cane, wears his hair pulled back in a low man bun, and he is a very good host in that he smoothly and seamlessly adapts himself to the guest. I am casual and personal and he was immediately that way with me, but I saw him interact differently with other guests.

Another change was the level of formality in service. Our chairs were pulled out for us, we were ma'am-ed and sir-ed and our French press pot was pressed down for us and coffee poured. Some of the staff spoke English very well, and all spoke English 100% better than I spoke Sinhalese, but communication could be a little confusing -- and made more so because the staff all wore masks, without fail. We didn't have to wear them, which was a relief. We were introduced to the property by Umesh, a really beautiful young Sri Lankan man with very good English. After showing us around the public spaces and explaining things, he took us to our room and as he was leaving, he pulled his mask down quickly and smiled and I felt like crying. It was so beautiful to see his face, to see a smile, and it was only the first time someone would do that and it was stunning both times. Both times (with Umesh and with Bas, in Anuradhapura), seeing their full faces was surprising, and they looked different than we imagined. It moved me then and it still does, when I think about it. The staff had hung a huge "Welcome Back" banner in our room, and left a bottle of white wine for us/me. Since it was Valentine's Day, they had also spelled out "Happy Valentines" in leaves and flowers on the foot of our bed. At dinner, they gave us a Valentine's Day card that every single staff member had signed. They hung hearts everywhere (shaped in lights) and each table had vases of red flowers. They went all out.

Mostly what we did here was to swim, go to the beach (on which more in a second), enjoy the fantastic breakfasts, Marc took walks on the back roads, and we took tuktuks into town for dinner. It was so good to be back in a tuktuk; the last time for us was October 2019, in Myanmar, before the world closed down. Being in a tuktuk with Marc is my favorite place to be in the whole world, wherever it might be. It was so relaxing, so beautiful, so special, that we extended our stay by two days. We'd planned to go to Colombo, mostly to break up the long drive from Tangalle to Anuradhapura, but we decided to just deal with the long drive. On which more in a second. I read a few books (The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers; To Paradise, by Hana Yanigahara; Bewilderment, by Richard Powers; and Matrix, by Lauren Groff, and they were all amazing).

Marc has thought about the beach--Rekawa Beach--with great longing since our last trip, and it really is one of the most beautiful beaches we have ever seen. There is a strong riptide and the sea is wild, there, so it's not a place to swim, but the pristine beach is brown, damp sand, very clean, empty, and with great rock outcroppings along the way that provide places to sit and enjoy the view and the surging water without being swept away. It's a little too wild and unpredictable for me, so while I enjoy seeing it and watching it, it's hard for me to walk in that unpredictable water's edge, that seemingly randomly stays away, washes over your feet, surges up to your knees, from one moment to the next. Once I was walking on the beach and the water was coming in, so I wanted to take a little video of it. I was walking backwards, looking at the screen as I videoed, and failed to remember an outcropping of small boulders behind me, and took a tumble. It's one of my favorite videos. Marc went to the beach quite a bit, and once we sat together in one of the protected rock areas and marveled at all the sea urchins (which he kept calling sea enemas) and crabs crawling and hopping all over the rocks. It was so very alive. Sea turtles were laying eggs, so every morning we'd see those great, lumbering tracks from the sea to the back of the sandy beach, and the large holes dug for the eggs, and then her lumbering tracks back to the sea. They close the beach at 7pm to protect the turtles during this time, and and the area is one of two Turtle Conservation Sanctuaries on the southern coast of Sri Lanka.

When our hotel comes with breakfast included, if it's a good breakfast we always eat there, and our ordinary habit is to eat dinner somewhere else if at all possible. The breakfasts were so, so good, and the egg hoppers, which I have been craving for nine years, were on the menu. We also loved the chili eggs with bacon curry, mmm. We would have gone into Tangalle for dinner on our first night, but we were still very tired from jetlag and they had a big ta-da deal for Valentine's dinner, so we stayed, much to our regret. I mean, the food wasn't bad, but it really wasn't great. I don't even remember what we ate, a bunch of unremarkable curries, only that it was really disappointing. The rest of our stay, we went into town for dinner.

We had a couple of dinner spots we remembered from nine years ago and wanted to revisit: the hilariously named Cactus Cafe, right on the beach, and an amazing little restaurant next to the bus station, called Prem. Of course the pandemic has had a devastating effect everywhere, and small restaurants were often closed, so we did the best we could. Tuktuk drivers take you to the restaurant and sit and wait for you, at such a nominal hourly rate it's kind of heartbreaking. We had such a lovely tuktuk driver, it was always so nice to see him each night. Cactus Cafe was still great--fresh fish and prawns and the crispiest French fries ever, and a Lion beer for me. Marc found a small restaurant at a guest house, so we walked there one night and were served good food by the most beautiful young Sri Lankan woman, the daughter of the guest house owner. We had to call ahead and tell her what we wanted to eat, and when we would arrive. The owner was proud of her food and kept inviting us back, and back. When Marc was scouting the place, he walked into the property and saw a closed door with a welcome mat, so he knocked, and then opened the door.....and it was some guy's room! From what we saw, the guest house catered to young people with backpacks and frugal budgets. 

Aside from those meals, we tried the best restaurants we could find, all of which were kind of lined up on one road. The first of those was really great, with the friendliest people. Marc asked if they had okra curry -- just asking if they did -- and the waiter said just a minute, ran out to a man on a motorcycle, and came back and said his dad was going to get some okra, it would be a few minutes. They had decks of cards on each table, so for the first time in our lives together, Marc played cards with me, gin rummy. "Boy, you're competitive," he said, and I smiled and said no, this is not me competitive, we aren't keeping score, this is just me, professional gin rummy player, with thousands of games under my belt. Still, he beat me more than he lost. It was so much fun.

The best food we ate at those restaurants was on our last night, at a family place (they all were family places). The setting was nice, ceiling fans, nice tables, and the young man who took our order seemed off-kilter or confused or maybe just not up to the task. We didn't have any confidence that our order was taken correctly, and in fact it was not. Marc didn't get the food he ordered, but he had kotthu roti that was the best we'd had up to that point. So all the thumbs up for the food, thumbs down for the service. Otherwise, we ate at one sweet place where the dad was so proud of his food and family and it was OK and we were hot and sweaty and bitten by mosquitoes, and another place where we sat outside on a patio and watched a family of Russians sitting on a covered porch....before the war with Ukraine began. Since this is apparently Russian season, as our Negombo taxi driver informed us, encountering Russians since the war began has been hard for mouthy but passive-aggressive old me. I keep wanting to go up to them and say "I heard your accent, are you from Ukraine?" with a big smile and enthusiasm and then when they say Russia, to scowl at them. Of course I didn't do any of that.

Buckingham Place is filled up with peacocks, a few monitor lizards, and monkeys. There are so many peacocks, they're just like more-beautiful pigeons, really. They walk around the dining room. Perch everywhere. What's that out of the corner of your eye? PEACOCK! The peacocks like to scream a lot, and one day it sounded like one was right at our door screaming. One morning, when we'd moved to a room on the ground floor after we extended our stay, a whole flock of peahens and peacocks stood at our window, looking in, and it made me laugh so hard. The bulk of our time was in a 2nd floor room, where monkeys sat on the railings, jumped from one balcony to the next, and gathered in congress on the roof of the building below us. One late afternoon a male peacock was there among all the monkeys, raising his beautiful tail feathers and ruffling his butt feathers, which was confusing because the monkeys didn't care. Marc saw monitor lizards a couple of times, always coming to tell me with little-kid excitement that made me melt.

When it was time to leave, we were sad, even after seven days there. The drive was 6.5 hours long, and our sweet driver was taking us and then turning around and making the return trip immediately after. We wanted to get a SIM card in Tangalle before we left, thinking it would just be a quick and simple thing, but the rude person at the store was entirely unhelpful, and even though it meant we were later getting away (and so he would be even later getting home), he drove us to two different places to get help.

Driving here is messy! It's fine if you're in a big van, but it goes like this. Tuktuks and bicyles and motorcycles and cars and trucks are all in the lane, fitting together however they can -- i.e., not lined up -- and the oncoming lane is the same. Passing means a bit of honking and just pulling into the oncoming lane no matter who is coming, except for big buses or trucks, and everyone just figures it out. Somehow it all works, and while it's kind of terrifying in a tuktuk to see a big van or car coming right at you, it all works out. It also involves a lot of slowing and going fast, slowing and going fast, and getting through towns and villages is an experience. It doesn't seem to work in quite the same way as in Hanoi, where everyone seems to be anticipating what everyone else is going to do so it's important that you keep going since everyone is predicting you. In some way this felt different to me, though maybe it wasn't. To me it seemed like everyone was just focused on themselves: I need to pass this car so I'm just going into the other lane. Then the drivers in the oncoming lane had to reckon with you. I don't know. Somehow it felt different. But it was always interesting!

So onward to Anuradhapura!

BEST MEMORY: For Marc, it was walking on back roads (he always loves that), walking on the beach, and sitting in the rock pool. For me, and I feel kind of not-great saying this, it was just being in such a beautiful place and enjoying the luxuries of it. I don't think of myself that way, and never want to be spoiled, but I really did enjoy that part the most. Marc feels that way too, so it was nice to share both the pleasure and our somewhat uncomfortable feelings about it.

BEST THING WE ATE: Marc really loved all the grilled prawns, and I loved the breakfasts the most, the egg hoppers, the chili eggs, the fruit and juice and coffee. I couldn't make coffee in the room because there was no kettle, and we were up much earlier than they served breakfast, but I could always get a cappuccino in the bar before breakfast. They weren't the best at milk foaming, but it was very sweet.

Getting to and Staying in Negombo

When you fly on frequent flyer miles, you only have so many options in terms of timing and mile usage; once in a while, it turns out better for us to just buy the tickets instead of redeeming miles, and that's what we ended up doing on this trip. For some reason, the options for getting to Colombo from NYC are limited, and it seems that you have to transit through the Middle East. The last time we flew on Etihad and transited through Dubai, but this trip we took Qatar Airways and transited through Doha. Very unusually, we left JFK at 11am -- bizarre, we always leave for these trips at midnight -- and we were scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka at 5pm, 20 hours all together, with 3.5 hours in Qatar. That seemed ideal, to arrive in time to get some dinner and then crash, leaving us reasonably able to spend a full day the next day.

We always get a window and aisle seat in the hope that the middle seat won't be taken; having that extra bit of space in economy makes such a difference. When we saw the plane filling up at the last minute, we paid extra money to get a better grade of seat, in the extreme hope that no one would pay extra money for that middle seat, but nope. There were empty seats when the plane took off, just not our middle seat. It would have been great for these flights because Qatar Airways really packs the seats in, and these had less room than Cathay Pacific airplanes. By the time we finally arrived in Colombo, my knees were hurting so, so much I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk. But the most startling thing was how actually great the food was! We had a lunch, a snack, and a breakfast, and everything so was good, spicy, cooked well. In fact, we had a meal in Tangalle that left us commenting that the Qatar Airways food was a lot better.

In Doha, there are very few places to sit in the terminal, and they have every other seat blocked off for Covid distancing, but there, at the gate, the promised land of abundant seating! They don't let you into the gate area, unfortunately, until about an hour before boarding, and since we had a 3.5-hour layover, that sucked a lot, because we'd just come out of the 12-hour flight and we were so exhausted. Two other bizarre things about the Doha airport, which loudly trumpets itself as the greatest airport in the world: (1) no jet bridges! We were on a giant plane, a long-haul flight, and we exited the plane onto the tarmac and boarded a bus for the arrivals terminal. It wasn't just our flight, either; there were no jet bridges anywhere. Usually this happens on a smaller flight, at smaller airports, or on Air Asia, where they seem to park the plane 15 minutes away from the terminal. (2) The simultaneous mentioning of prayer rooms and the biggest commercial space I've ever seen at any airport. It felt like the worship of capitalism more than Islam.

But everything went as smoothly as it possibly could! Although historically the flight leaves JFK at least an hour late, we left on time. The transit was simple and we arrived without problem (although whoo boy we landed through a storm, lightning and a bit of plane tossing, and everyone applauded when the pilot touched down). Passport and visa, done. Baggage arrived, check. Money changed, simple. QR code shown to the health agent, done! That whole process of uploading copies of our passport, vaccination card, and PCR test in exchange for a QR code from the Sri Lankan government worked like a dream. And then the driver from our hotel was waiting, and off we went. 

The driver told us about SL's response to the pandemic, and how they worked very hard to get tourism up and running again, because it's the primary income for the country, even before tea exports. The country is 80% vaccinated, he said, and there are fines if you don't wear a mask, even outside. He talked about the war, and said that SL was actually two countries, with the Tamil north being Eelam. This is very confusing, and contradicts what I find about the country online; I read that Eelam is the proposed country the Tamils in SL and in the diaspora wish to create. He said the war was terrible, and that the bombings in SL in 2019, by Muslim terrorists -- he emphasized terrorists, and said most Muslims are not terrorists -- was horrific. He said that kids in school learn three languages: Sinhala, Tamil, and English, and he said that was necessary for the country to be unified. He was lovely and told us that Sri Lankan people are warm and smile a lot, and asked if we'd noticed that when we were here before. The flight from Doha to Colombo was full of Russians, for some reason, and they dressed alike in pastel colored, puffy track suits of a sort, and they seemed to be athletes of some kind when I saw the bags they were picking up, so I asked the driver if there was some kind of sporting event happening, and he said no, it's just Russian and German season. NO IDEA.

The hotel we stayed in, Daffodils Beach, was completely empty except for us and two sweet Sri Lankan guys who run the place, young men, soft-spoken and gentle. If we wanted breakfast the next day, we had to let him know the night before because, we gathered, he'd have to get the cook to come over, and get food. When we said no, that's OK, we'll eat breakfast somewhere else, he seemed relieved. The room was huge and comfortable, but there was nothing on any of the walls, which made it seem like a big, comfortable cell, despite the good bed and fancy bathroom. The safe sat loosely on a sagging shelf and could easily be picked up and carried off, which made us laugh. The hotel was new and just getting off the ground when the pandemic hit, what terrible timing for them.

We were just a quick walk away from the main road along the beach, and Marc had scouted out a couple of places for dinner our first night since he knew we'd be kind of strange and shattered from the trip, so we ate dinner at Seafood Embassy. Marc ordered deep-fried prawns, which weren't on the menu as such, and I got a simple Sri Lankan fish curry. His were overfried and bad, but my fish curry was really good, and there was so much that sharing was required. Fish curry, beet curry, dal curry, coconut sambol, and mango curry on a big mound of fragrant rice with julienned vegetables on top. 

The next morning I was really hoping for egg hoppers, but we couldn't find them anywhere. We had breakfast at Salt, a very highly rated restaurant just a few doors away from our hotel, which was great because it was drizzly. It turned out to be the restaurant of a small hotel, and the staff seemed a little confused by us since we weren't guests of the hotel. We got the Sri Lankan breakfast, which was fresh fruit and juice, rice and a bunch of curries, and a pot of instant coffee. We went back to the hotel and crashed, then got out for a walk along the main road to see what's what, then back to the room to just kind of crash and be too tired to get up. The main reason Marc chose this hotel was its beautiful pool, and in the late afternoon when the skies cleared up we talked about going down to the pool but we were just strangely too tired to do more than talk about it.

Dinner that night was amazing, at a small family-run restaurant called The Jade Restaurant. It was so sweet, and the waiters were attentive and just adorable. One told us that they were a family, with a smile. Our meal was excellent, and so, so inexpensive, and we left full and happy. I wanted a bit of gelato from a place I'd seen as we walked to the restaurant, so we stopped and I got a coconut gelato, just a small cup of it, and it cost as much as our entire meal -- which is both a comment on how inexpensive our dinner was and how crazy expensive that gelato was.

Our last morning, we tried to find egg hoppers but just couldn't. The waiter at The Jade had told us they started serving breakfast at 8am, and that they serve hoppers, but we got there at 8 and the place was closed. Marc found someone -- the dad, I guess -- and he said no, 8am is the getting-up time, not the restaurant time. So we went back to Seafood Embassy and had an American-ish breakfast, and that was that. We were planning to leave at 10am, but our driver was already there so we left early for Tangalle, since there wasn't anything else to do in the part of Negombo where we stayed. Next stop: Buckingham Place at Rekawa Beach in Tangalle!

Hotels

We're staying at some really lovely hotels around Sri Lanka, one of which we stayed at last time. A theme emerges in the photos we've chosen: pools! Sri Lanka is sunny and hot and we plan to soak up as much sun and pool time as possible, between eating and rambling around.

In Negombo, we'll stay at Daffodils Beach:

In Tangalle, we return to Buckingham Place. It has been upgraded since we were there last, but we have remembered it all these years and we're super glad to return. So far the customer service is just as amazing as we remembered.

In Colombo, we'll stay at the Cinnamon Lakeside, which is walking distance to Galle Face Green, where we hope to eat some delicious food.

Away from the coast, we head to Anuradhapura, where we'll stay at the Aryana Boutique Hotel. Anuradhapura is a holy city in the mountains, so there will be stuff to see in this UNESCO World Heritage City.

To the far northern coast, we'll stay at the Fox Jaffna. Jaffna was the center for the Tamil Tigers of the civil war, and the culture there is more Hindu than Buddhist so it will be interesting to see.

Off to the eastern coast, we'll stay at Trinco Blu, in Trincomalee.

Down that coast, in Pasikuda we'll stay at Karpaha Sands, where we will have our first (and probably last) experience glamping.

Hopp(er)ing Around

The last time we went to Sri Lanka, in 2013 [blog here, Slinking Around Sri Lanka], we were looking forward to the food, because we knew it would be spicy. And it was! It was great, one of the best parts of the trip. What we didn't know about were egg hoppers, which are eaten for breakfast but they're also street food snacks. A very thin rice flour batter is poured into a bowl-shaped skillet, and then an egg is cracked in. Chili and coconut condiments go on top, then you pick it up, kind of roll it together, and eat it and I can't properly say how much I love it. I have dreamed about it for the last eight years. 

These were made by Ravi, in Galle

Then there are the curries -- typical meals feature 11-ish curries at a time, a table loaded with small bowls to share, a kind of Sri Lankan tapas, of a sort. We had a table full in Kandy, and a table full at a great little restaurant next to the bus station in Tangalle, swoon-worthy. Kotthu roti was harder to find than we anticipated; part of the fun of getting kotthu is watching it being made. The rhythmic sound of the chopping at the end always makes me smile.

We're rambling all over Sri Lanka this time, top to bottom and west to east, so finding a title that pulls together hoppers and hopping makes me smile. Because there aren't internal flights, mostly we'll be driving from place to place (hiring a car and driver, that is), but we're planning to make one segment a train ride, details still TBD. The route: Negombo to Tangalle to Colombo to Anuradhapura to Jaffna to Trincomalee (which Marc frequently calls Trichonosis, so that's now how I think of it too) to Pasikuda and then back to Negombo. Lots of driving. Counting down days now....