Leaving Sri Lanka
Monday 22 January, 2007 – 21:31
Tomorrow we are leaving Sri Lanka for Male in the Maldives, 420 miles away. Cynthia has jumped ship and joined our friends from s\y Alexes. Son Richard and his girlfriend have joined us after touring around for a few days. They went on a safari and were lucky enough to see a leopard which is quite rare. Their arrival in Colombo wasn’t too welcoming as immigration at first wouldn’t let them into the country as they didn’t have return air tickets. They ended up spending 14 hours at the airport waiting for our shipping agent to do all the necessary paper work. Not an ideal start to your holiday!!!
Penny and I spent 5 days exploring the inland areas of the country. We saw the usual things – tea plantations, Buddhist temples, old ruins and traditional dancing. The area around Kandy is very beautiful, with its old colonial houses set high up in the hills over looking the city. You can just imagine the fan wallers keeping their white colonial masters cool. Its a shame everything is run down, there hasn’t been any investment in the country for years. The roads are diabolical- 100 klms can take 5 hours and all the buildings are run down. There is certainly no shopping centres here.
