Sri Lanka - Colombo

   2 or 3 days in Kuala Lumpur before the flight to Sri Lanka were spent in heavenly bliss as the Birds Nest Guesthouse (more affectionately known as 'The Nest') had cooking facilities, including a teeny tiny oven the size of a size 8 shoebox. Naturally, my first stop was to purchase self raising flour, milk, eggs, and sugar, which were used to create an assortment of delights over the few days, ranging from maple syrup or blueberry pancakes for breakfast to vegetable quiche for lunch and sultana scones for afternoon tea, with the piece de resistance being my blueberry-yoghurt cake for dessert on the first night of cooking. As the cake was too much even for my endless pit of an appetite, I recruited other guests at the Nest to help me finish the cake off. I felt like Santa Claus does at Christmas with the amount of appreciation I received for providing these weary vagrants with a delicious home-cooked cake. Our stay in Kuala Lumpur ended with an uncomfortable night at the LCCT terminal, which has cold tiled floors and rows of seats with arm-rests between them to prevent any hobo-style activities taking place. I thwarted their attempts to keep out hobos by pulling two seat rows together to make a space large enough to sleep on between the armrests. A short flight later, we arrived in Colombo at 7.15am.

The bus to Colombo was an ordeal, involving catching a bus to the actual bus, who quoted us 100 for our seat, and then tried to also charge 100 per piece of luggage, which took up much less space than we did. I disagreed with their valuation of the cost of transporting my luggage, so we had a hearty argument which ended up with the lovely gentleman charging us only 50 per piece of luggage. Content with the knowledge that either way we had been royally ripped off, we exited the bus in a bustling cityscape which contrasted strongly with the 2-hour drive in which a building was scarcely in evidence behind an unending screen of rainforest plants.

I've decided that I judge a country by three main aspects – how friendly the people are, how much greenery there is, and how good the food is. I decided within four hours of landing in this beautiful country that Sri Lanka scores the trifector, and is the nicest country I have yet visited. In Colombo, bakeries abound, intermingling with curry restaurants and occasionally breeding with them to create a hybridised curry restaurant selling baked goods. Although most accomodation does not seem particularly cheap, I managed to bargain a room down to 850 Rupees (1AUD = 115 Rupees). Most in Colombo seem to charge around the 2000 mark to begin with. To be fair, our room was not very nice, with no windows and a shabby bed squeezed into a room the same size as harry potter's staircase-cupboard abode. Perhaps shelling out the extra cash in Colombo would be worth it for a nicer room. In contrast to the highish price of rooms, everything else in Sri Lanka is only slight more expensive than Indian prices, which makes it far cheaper than South-East Asia. For lunch in Colombo, I ate 4 Aloo Parathas, two different bowls of curry (a potato curry and an onion curry) and a milk tea for 160 Rupees. A lovely Sunday afternoon was spent at the foreshore of Galle-face-Green, where Rebecca and I enjoyed watching the waves surge onto the beach below and the kites surge into the air above. We snacked on french fries and fresh pineapple, after which I had dinner, which was a lovely Sri lankan dish called Devel chicken masala. I can't wait to find a cooking course somewhere in Sri Lanka.