Wake up late, with a hangover. Not the best thing, considering that I have a day's walking around an old ruined city ahead of me.
The guidebook suggests that you rent a bike from your guesthouse (approx 150 rupees) and use it to get around the 4km sq old city. Being lazy, hot, and hungover, I opt instead to hire a tuk-tuk to drive me around the various sites - for the not so expensive price of 500 rupes. This proves to be a great idea, especially after a few ants start biting my bare feet.
Anyhow - so. It's an old city. 1000 years old. Buddhas, everywhere. If I knew anything about archaelogy, I might have enjoyed it more.. but it just looked like an old city. A hot hot hot old city. Lillian, where are you when I need you? I make the most of it though, and try to at least learn a bit, spending approx 4-5 hours there in total.
As a number of the ruined buildings were shrines, you need to take off your hat and shoes before entering - which, when the building no longer has a roof, means that you are walking on hot-as -hell rocks to get up close to a Buddha statue. This was fine for a bit, until someone "helpfully" moved my sandals to a shady spot hidden behind where I had left them - and I end up spending about 10 minutes searching for them, hopping around from one foot to the other (much to the enjoyment of touring Sri Lankan schoolchildren) and generally trying not to say obscene things in a very holy place - all while my feet start to burn.
I head back to the main town after, and try to find a Doctor open (I can feel an ear infection coming on). At 6pm, on a Sunday, I find that the "hospital" in town (really, one room with a bored doctor sitting at a table) is open. The doctor examines me (using a knockoff maglite to look in my ears), and writes me an rx for some drugs. Total cost for the doctors visit = free (government hospital). Total cost for the antibiotic drugs = 50 rupees.
Remind me again why US healthcare costs are so high?
Eventually, I catch the 11:30PM train to Columbo - where I do indeed have a 1st class bed... with a private toilet in the cabin. This would normally sound lovely, except for the fact that a private toilet means that my bed is literally less than a meter from a urine soaked room. Ick.
Still. It was 1st class. I could sleep, had a fan. and arrived relatively refreshed in Columbo this morning.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Drunk in Polonnaruwa
The first thing I do after getting to Polonnaruwa is to go to the train station to reserve my 1st class berth (bed) ticket for the night-train for the next (Saturday) night. I've learned already that you need to book the good seats as soon as possible.
There is some confusion at the station, and the guys tell me that there are no berths on this train, and that I can just book a vanilla 1st class seat (which won't allow me to sleep well).
I go to my guest-house, check in, unpack, shower, etc, and start speaking with the guest-house owner - a very nice chap. His wife calls the station to try and clear things up. It turns out there are indeed berths available, but that they've lost/never taken down my reservation - which I had made 20 mins before.
The owner offers to drive me into town to check it out. In the end, it seems my reservation was valid, and the train station employees were just idiots, and couldn't find my name on the reservation sheet (pretty difficult as I was the only 1st class reservation).
On the way home, the owner asks if i'd like to go to his local bar for a quick drink - naturally, I agree.
It turns out that Polonnaruwa is a heavily muslim area, and with Ramadan starting soon, he's not allowed to drink in the house, and his wife turns a blind eye to him drinking out of the house. What started as a quick drink turns into a decent stint of Arrack consumption = 3/4 of a liter between the two of us... which after a meal, sends me straight to bed.
There is some confusion at the station, and the guys tell me that there are no berths on this train, and that I can just book a vanilla 1st class seat (which won't allow me to sleep well).
I go to my guest-house, check in, unpack, shower, etc, and start speaking with the guest-house owner - a very nice chap. His wife calls the station to try and clear things up. It turns out there are indeed berths available, but that they've lost/never taken down my reservation - which I had made 20 mins before.
The owner offers to drive me into town to check it out. In the end, it seems my reservation was valid, and the train station employees were just idiots, and couldn't find my name on the reservation sheet (pretty difficult as I was the only 1st class reservation).
On the way home, the owner asks if i'd like to go to his local bar for a quick drink - naturally, I agree.
It turns out that Polonnaruwa is a heavily muslim area, and with Ramadan starting soon, he's not allowed to drink in the house, and his wife turns a blind eye to him drinking out of the house. What started as a quick drink turns into a decent stint of Arrack consumption = 3/4 of a liter between the two of us... which after a meal, sends me straight to bed.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
To Polonnaruwa
After checking my email/posting to my blog on Friday afternoon, I headed back to my guest-house in Dambulla which had been hanging on to my backpack for me. With the backpack in tow, I headed to the main bus station in town to catch a bus to Polonnaruwa.
One important lesson I've learned thus far, is that with both the train and bus, if you catch it close to the beginning of the line, you're fine - however, if you catch it at any point in between the beginning and the end, there is no way you'll get a seat. This is even more of a problem when you're carrying around a massive packpack - as Sri Lankan busses don't seem to have luggage storage.. you just buy an extra ticket for your bag, and put it next to you on the seat.
Thus, i'm waiting at the Dambulla bus-station (or at least, the spot on the main road where busses pull up ), and fully expecting to find a nice empty bus. After all, the bus to Sigiriya the day before had originated in Dambulla. Why would today's bus not do the same?
10 minutes later, the Polonnaruwa bus shows up, having originated from Kandy (3 hours away), and packed to the rafters with people... this wasn't looking good.
Now, backtracking slightly, the moment I showed up at the bus-stop, a few tuk-tuk drivers started trying to get me to go with them. Normally, a bus is a much better option - it's cheaper, it's safer, and you won't be hassled by someone trying to make a comission on everything you do. One chap had even told me that he lived in Polonnaruwa, and was trying to get back there that day - and that he just needed to charge me enough for petrol... this smelled like bullshit to me, and so I ignored him.
However, once the packed-o-matic bus passed by, I began to talk to the agressive tuk-tuk driver again. In the end, I got him to drive the 1.5 hours to Polonnaruwa for 200 rupes = the price of 2 bus tickets.
To make matters worse, half-way there, he gets flagged down by a police officer for speeding (I'm not really sure how they can prove it.. they don't have any speed sensing equipment), and had to pay an on-the-spot bribe of 150 rupees.
It wasn't till I finally got to my guest-house that I discover that a tuk-tuk would normally charge 2000 rupes (20 dollars) for this journey.. So I actually did luck out!
One important lesson I've learned thus far, is that with both the train and bus, if you catch it close to the beginning of the line, you're fine - however, if you catch it at any point in between the beginning and the end, there is no way you'll get a seat. This is even more of a problem when you're carrying around a massive packpack - as Sri Lankan busses don't seem to have luggage storage.. you just buy an extra ticket for your bag, and put it next to you on the seat.
Thus, i'm waiting at the Dambulla bus-station (or at least, the spot on the main road where busses pull up ), and fully expecting to find a nice empty bus. After all, the bus to Sigiriya the day before had originated in Dambulla. Why would today's bus not do the same?
10 minutes later, the Polonnaruwa bus shows up, having originated from Kandy (3 hours away), and packed to the rafters with people... this wasn't looking good.
Now, backtracking slightly, the moment I showed up at the bus-stop, a few tuk-tuk drivers started trying to get me to go with them. Normally, a bus is a much better option - it's cheaper, it's safer, and you won't be hassled by someone trying to make a comission on everything you do. One chap had even told me that he lived in Polonnaruwa, and was trying to get back there that day - and that he just needed to charge me enough for petrol... this smelled like bullshit to me, and so I ignored him.
However, once the packed-o-matic bus passed by, I began to talk to the agressive tuk-tuk driver again. In the end, I got him to drive the 1.5 hours to Polonnaruwa for 200 rupes = the price of 2 bus tickets.
To make matters worse, half-way there, he gets flagged down by a police officer for speeding (I'm not really sure how they can prove it.. they don't have any speed sensing equipment), and had to pay an on-the-spot bribe of 150 rupees.
It wasn't till I finally got to my guest-house that I discover that a tuk-tuk would normally charge 2000 rupes (20 dollars) for this journey.. So I actually did luck out!
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