SRI LANKA had always been in my bucket list for such a long time. The fact that it was probably one of the most under-rated countries at least among most travelers made my curiosity grow stronger – so much so that when my friend Audrey contacted to ask if I was interested in joining her to this ‘little’ island off the south coast of India, I had to say yes.
With so many things to catch up with in the office, I decided it was best for me to go there during the long break of Eid Mubarak when all my other colleagues would leave the office deserted to go back to their respective kampongs. It was one of those rare times when a green light for a week-long break would be guaranteed from my boss. Heh.
Fast forward, the day of going on the trip came much faster than I realized. We flew from the brand new Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) on an Air Asia X flight right to Colombo, the capital city. Being wide awake all throughout the flight, 3 hours suddenly felt like forever.
The moment I laid eyes on Sri Lanka, I knew the country would not disappoint me. The sight of coconut trees swaying in the wind among the sea of greenery around the Bandaranaike International Airport signaled out such a warm welcome to this beautiful tropical island.
After changing some of our dollars to Sri Lankan rupees at one of the money changers, we dashed out of the airport and be ready to face the world.
Brushing those pushy cabbies aside, and after asking around, we made our way to a waiting bus. The bus was filled up to its capacity in no time and before we knew it was already pulling out of the airport compound, bringing us and our ever-growing excitement with it. Yippie!
Sri Lanka in general is quite well-facilitated with very well-maintained roads. In fact, the roads there look so much like ours back in Malaysia – or even better in many areas. Even the weather is so much like ours in Malaysia so I had to keep reminding myself that I was in Sri Lanka and not in Ipoh or probably Penang. Heh.
Colombo itself is quite a modern city, a far cry from how I imagined it would be, with fully-asphalted roads and well-paved walkways. I had first imagined that it would be more like New Delhi or probably Katmandu where the buildings are monotonously grey and roads are deprived of good pavement and the air is thick with dust. I was taken aback to see how well-off Colombo is and even Sri Lanka as a whole.
We disembarked at the bus station right in the heart of Colombo and were instantly embraced by the crowdedness and noisiness of Colombo streets. One thing I instantly noticed was the friendliness of the local people. We shared a table with a guy over lunch and had a lil bit of chat. When it was time for him to leave, he went to pay for his food at the counter and returned to our table to say good bye before walking out of the restaurant.
Of course it didn’t take long for me to find out that the people of Sri Lanka in general are very friendly. They are very much easy to approach and one thing that makes them so easily approachable to us foreigners is their ability in conversing in English. English as I was told has a very important place in their education system hence their good command in English. After all Sri Lanka was once ruled under the British empire.
The plan was to take a train to Kandy in which we’d be staying for the next 3 days. It would be our transit point to some other places of interest in Sri Lanka such as the triple UNESCO Sites in the middle south, namely Polonaruwa, Sigiriya and Dambulla also to our next destination from there.
Well, I guess we underestimated the large number of people that mobilize from Colombo to Kandy on a weekend. The train to Kandy was full which left us with no choice but taking the bus. The bus – as I found out was quite OK. I mean, there seem to be so many buses that mobilize people from Colombo to Sri Lanka and most of them if not all are air-conditioned and any bus with a working air-con is OK to me.
I would say it was quite a comfortable ride and it would have taken a much shorter time if the traffic was not that slow. It was more like an introductory ride to the beautiful countryside of Sri Lanka and I was already jumping in excitement. The bus took us across beautiful countryside, past beautiful villages, terraced paddy fields, farms, coconut plantations, blue lakes and many more things of beauty in my sakai eyes.
Of course we had come to find out that what we saw along the bus ride from Colombo to Kandy that day was nothing compared to what we would later be served with in the later days after as we ventured further and further into the highland areas of Sri Lanka.
We arrived in Kandy more than 5 hours later and I instantly liked the city. It is an old city nestled on a highland area at some 500 m from the sea level. Of course being at such a high elevation one would expect the weather to turn quite chilly in the late evening but seriously, I liked it.
Being the 2nd largest city in Sri Lanka, it doesn’t really look that big may be because the population is scattered all over. The city center is surrounded by hills with a beautiful lake dominating the city landscape right in the middle. Of course standing guard on top of one of the hills is the giant white Buddha statue at Bahirawakanda temple.
With all the people in Western countries celebrating the coming of summer in their respective parts of the world, we actually expected Sri Lanka to be deserted from tourists at least until the autumn came. I guess we were wrong. We had come to find out that Sri Lanka was in the beginning of its peak season so many of the hotels and hostels and even guesthouses were full.
We managed to find a hotel – or rather a guesthouse called Lakshmi Guest House. Located quite high up on a hill, it demands a lil bit of stamina to walk up and down the hill. In hindsight it was more like a preparatory training for us before we took on some more physically challenging hikes later in the trip.
KANDY that I found out is a very historical city. It has a very long history dating back to pre-colonial time when British took over much of Sri Lanka – back then called Ceylon – and made Kandy one of its most important bases in the region. Of course prior to the British occupation, Kandy was ruled by a series of monarchs who ruled the then independent Kandyan Kingdom within a span of 2500 years! The most prominent king is probably Vimaladharmasuriya I who turned Kandy into a very important site for Buddhism in Sri Lanka by bringing the tooth relic of Lord Buddha into the city.
Speaking of the tooth relic, we actually saved it for our last destination in Kandy. The tooth relic of Lord Buddha is said to be tightly kept somewhere in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic although it’s hard to tell if it really is there because public is not allowed to see it. It is so sacred that the mere presence of it in the temple makes it the most sacred Buddhism site in Sri Lanka.
The story of how the relic made its way to Kandy was storified in a series of paintings on the walls of one of the rooms at the temple. One of them showed how the relic rose to the sky and ‘shone like a bright star’ when a misled emperor tried to crush it with a hammer.
Being a site of the utmost importance, the Temple of Sacred Tooth Relic has become a target of at least two attacks in the past with the latest being a Tamil Tiger member who blew himself up at the entrance to the temple back in 1998. The security has since been tightened so each visitor is subject to a body search before allowed an entry.
We actually joined the crowd of people in attending the daily ritual when Buddhist devotees came to do the offering to the Lord Buddha in the 2nd floor of the temple. To tell the truth, there was nothing much to see but a long queue of people dressed in white lining up to do the offering. Of course there was a little bit of opening ceremony where a pair of men dressed in traditional Kandyan costume played the drums (or are they tablas? Can’t really differentiate :-P) but that was all there was to see.
I’d say the temple is much more about its architecture than the ritual and I wish I did go there earlier when it was still brightly lit by the sun so that I could visualize things better than they were after the sunset. Besides, the museum at the temple was closed by then.
Very much adjacent to the Sacred Temple of the Tooth Relic is the Kandyan Cultural Center (Avanhala) to where we went to watch the Kandyan traditional dance show. This form of dance is very much synonym to the Kandyan people who were once feared for their fearlessness and fierce resistance against any attempt of invading and colonizing their kingdom.
Due to their resilience, the British colonial forces literally had to go all out before they managed to capture the Kandyan Kingdom and subsequently ruled Kandy for the next 130 years. I’d say some parts of the dances are very interesting but there were times when I had to stiff my jaws so that I wouldn’t yawn because some of the dances were too repetitive. But still, they were worth the money and time spent.
Just like most other cities and towns that were once managed by the British, Kandy seems to have an excellent township system and a very systematic arrangement of buildings. Being a declared UNESCO World Heritage Site, many of the historical buildings have now been turned into hotels to accommodate the needs of the steady influx of tourists to this beautiful city every year. Of course one shouldn’t miss dropping by the Queen Hotel which was built by the British and has now been turned into a hotel museum.
It was at this hotel building that we bumped into Odel – a very famous shopping brand in Sri Lanka. I would usually avoid doing any shopping when I am still in the very beginning of a trip but Odel was just too hard to say no to. The prices of stuff at Odel are quite OK although I wouldn’t say they are cheap. Good thing is, the prices are well-justified by the good quality so it was money well-spent. Yippie!
I would say Kandy is not really a shopping destination. The number of shops is quite limited and most of those available only cater for the needs of the locals.
One thing that I instantly noticed when I was there is the popularity of Bob Marley among Sri Lankan people. I’d hear his songs being played in the streets and I’d see people emulating him everywhere. People would look at my cap and say “hey Bob Marley!” or simply “nice cap”. Being a big fan of Bob Marley too (No woman no cry?), I had the best of time buying whatever things that were associated with the reggae legend – so long as they were within my budget of course. Heh.
The availability of food in Kandy is not so bad. There are quite a number of eateries although you might run out of options if you stayed there for too long, say, three days or more. The prices vary from one restaurant to another although I suspected the prices for tourists differ from that of locals.
Out of quite a number of restaurants that we went to while in Kandy, the only restaurant that we went to for a second time was Malldine Restaurant. Located in the main and busiest street of Kandy (Dalada Weediya?), you know what it means when a traveler comes to a restaurant in a foreign city for a second time. Heh.
Of course, if you’re gastronomically less adventurous, you can always go to any of the fast food restaurants. I did see KFC and Pizza Hut somewhere in the corner but of course we didn’t go all the way to Sri Lanka to eat something that we could easily get back in Malaysia. We’d definitely put some shame to the word ‘traveler’ if we did. 😛
We were still very much in the beginning of our trip to Sri Lanka and we were already overwhelmed by all the things that Kandy alone had to offer. I knew from then on that Sri Lanka was going to serve us with many more amazing things as we explored further and deeper into it.
And it turned out I was right.