So desperately sad for Sri Lanka!

I can't believe it! Although to be honest, I suppose we should all "believe" it shouldn't we! Those bastards are just getting sicker and sicker - whether it be killing muslims in New Zealand or killing Christians in Sri Lanka!The latest atrocities this Easter Sunday mornng in Sri Lanka just break my heart for the very gentle people we met. I stayed my first night in Colombo in a pretty luxurious hotel but thankfully it wasn't one of those hit in the bombings. Our first night on tour we did spend in a rather ramshackle hotel in Ngombo though. It was a pretty poor fishing village about 15 minutes out of Colombo. Oh there were a few nice hotels and some lovely small restaurants where you could eat really well, but basically it was just a poor village trying to make its money from fishing and tourism. I suppose the tourists will stay away now though won't they. And that was where St. Sebastian Church was. I remember it - slightly set back from what was, pretty much, the one and only road through town. So very, very sad!

St. Sebastian Church, Ngombo

And finally!

Crikey, if I don't finish writing up my "diary" of my trip to Sri Lanka soon I'll forget what we did - and that is the point of this online diary business - well for me at least. It's to write down my memories so I can revisit them later should I wish! Trouble is, I've been away again and only got back last night. Now don't be thinking all this travelling was planned - mostly it wasn't - but "circumstances" happened and I feel like my feet haven't touched the ground since I retired, even if it was mostly of a pleasant nature! Oh well, hopefully it'll start calming down a bit from now on!

Anyway, our last evening in Sri Lanka was spent in Unawatuna where the beach was just lovely (although sadly we only got to spend one night there)! In fact one of my comments back to the travel agent was that it would have been nice to spend maybe another couple of nights there just to relax a little after what turned out to be a very fast-paced trip! I hope they take that into consideration when they are planning the next trip - I think people might appreciate it!

This was the day those of us that wanted to got to get up before the imps and pixies to go out whale "hunting". I have never seen whales in the wild before so I dutifully got up, got dressed in the dark and was on my way to our rendez-vous point by about 5 a.m. The trip organizers had thoughtfully put out sea sickness pills for anyone that wanted them "just in case" and since I didn't know how I would feel after about five hours on a boat out at sea I thought I would take one! It honestly didn't take too long before we came across a pod of dolphins (they were playing with the boat almost immediately), and then a group of pilot whales, which are much smaller than the blue whales we were after but just as fun!!!! But guess what, we lucked out! Now I don't know if we saw four blue whales or, more likely, the same two several times but boy were they impressive! My pictures weren't very good unfortunately and I felt that I was spending too much time trying to get pictures and not enough just breathing in the thrill of being so close to the world's biggest mammal - so I put my camera down and just enjoyed the moment!

When we got back to "base camp" we had a couple of hours to clean up before we headed off to our final destination of Galle - a pretty coastal town built by the Portuguese and then Dutch from the 16th and 17th centuries. Unfortunately this was the one time on our trip that it actually peed down rain so the tuk tuk ride to Galle was a white-knuckle event. The traffic and heat was horrendous, the rain torrential and what's more it was International Women's Day so there was a march also taking place made up of young girls all wearing t-shirts saying "I am the voice, not the echo"! Very appropriate!

In the end the rain stopped and we got to visit Galle and do some shopping before going out to a final, very good evening meal.

Galle

The next morning it was again up early and off to the airport. Our guide did ask if we wanted to stop and get pictures of the famous Sri Lankan pole fisherman, but when he explained that the legitimate fishermen were out there before dawn and that "our fishermen" were just locals trying to make a buck out of the tourists with the photos we gave it a miss!

So then we headed straight to the airport for my eleven hour flight back to Zurich. As I flew over the various landscapes I took the same picture out of the plane to show the different "seasons" we were flying through!

Leaving Sri Lanka

Over southern India I think

Somewhere over Turkey I think

When I landed in Zurich and turned my phone back on I got a "welcome to Turkey" message - I just hope they didn't charge me for data roaming! Anyway, I spent a very comfortable night at the Radisson Blu Hotel at Zurich airport before catching the train the next morning for my three-hour journey back to Geneva. We hit a snow storm somewhere around Berne - boy was I suddenly feeling cold!

When I got home we got a pretty heavy snow dump over night, which was somewhat unexpected, but happily the sun came out later in the day leaving the world looking a prettier place altogether!

Tuesday morning

Wednesday morning - now that's much better!

Unawatuna!

Our first stop on leaving Kandy the next day was to visit the Botanical Gardens in Peredeniya. I remember when we were in Mauritius many years ago we visited the botanical gardens but made sure to hire a guide and it was so worth it. There were so many things we would simply have missed without her knowledge and the smell of the tree bark she handed to us to sniff has always remained with me - it was what they made Old Spice aftershave out of!

Anyway these gardens were very different from Mauritius - less "intense" to a degree because they were more spread out, but still very, very beautiful. But crikey it was hot! And we saw a whole gaggle of little school kids dashing about playing tag while we were all hopping from one shady spot to another! Still, it wouldn't do if we were all the same would it! But the gardens were truly amazing and it was here, apparently, that Earl Mountbatten often stayed during his time as "Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, Southeast Asia" during WWII!

These little devils were never very far away!

  

A google image - I couldn't "capture" it!

That's not a very good picture but those are actually bats in that tree - known as flying foxes!

Prasana, our guide - he was excellent!

After leaving the gardens we stopped off at the Luckgrove Spice Gardens - which, again, were really interesting to me. Our guide was very knowledgeable but "weird" in an "Elvis has left the building" kinda way. I don't really know how to explain it but by the time we had gone through the tour he had asked me very insistently for my telephone number!!!! He found out that I lived in France and since he "loved France" I guess I was fair pickins'!  Not that it worked of course but he was sure gonna try! Their spice production was very much centred around ayurvedic medicine - indeed that was their biggest export - and towards the end we all got a short massage (designed to make us buy stuff I guess) that was really great. They used a kind of "hot" oil for the massage and my neck and legs really did have a lovely warm glow after the massage (or it could just have been the handsome young man that was massaging me!). I bought a few items but I was happy to do so anyway because that is an area that really interests me!

Before heading to our final destination of Unawatuna, we stopped off at a small tea plantation. Now frankly this didn't interest me so much because "tea" - you know - but the tea they served us at the end of our visit was actually quite delicious and very refreshing (and not a jug of milk in sight)! They showed us how to drink it with "jaggery" - basically raw sugar - but they don't drop it in the tea they dip it and then take a bite. Either way it was delicious!

Jaggery!

But the thing that really caught my attention was when we left the tea plantation we passed a flatbed truck going in the other direction … on top of which was an elephant being transported further inland! Our guide explained that elephants are working animals in any case, but to see an elephant being transported as we would see a cattle truck was really weird. I guess it's the little things that stay in your mind isn't it!

Kandy!

Crikey, I don't half get side-tracked don't I!!!!! Anyway, back to Sri Lanka again! Next day we headed up to Kandy, which is situated in the centre of the country. Actually, and going off on a totally different tangent (yet again), I read "The Tea Planter's Wife" by Dinah Jefferies sometime ago, which is set in Ceylon (as it was then) and loved it. I've read a few of her books and love the way she manages to give you the feel of the place in her writing. I remember her describing travelling down to Kandy for supplies and so on and now, having seen the place for myself, I can see how evocative her writing is!

Our hotel for this night was the fairly majestic Queens Hotel. Well I say "fairly majestic" as it had obviously been pretty classy and, I suppose, fashionable, many years ago, but I have to admit it was a little "tired". Oh the main reception and dining room and so on were pretty nice, all beautiful wooden floors, but the rooms and the bathrooms definitely needed money spent on them and updating!

Queens Hotel, Kandy

Actually, my room had a kind of small corridor leading off it with a door to an adjoining room (I'm guessing) and then on to my bathroom, but I did find it somewhat "spooky" so whenever I feel like that I always wedge either a chair or my suitcase up against the adjoining door "just in case"! On our trip there was a group of three friends who travelled together once a year, having met up in India on a previous trip. They were about my age, I would guess, or maybe just a couple of years younger. Anyway, while they were friendly enough they pretty much kept to themselves and did their own thing, so I got quite a shock the next morning when one of the woman said she had had a man banging on her door during the night. Now these three could put the booze away and there was also much drinking and revelry coming from a wedding party at the same hotel, but she said it frightened the life out of her! I don't know if she called reception but I certainly would have and asked them to send someone up to make him go away! Then the next morning we were told to put our suitcases outside our rooms by 7.30 a.m. so that the porters could load them on to the bus. I was at the end of a long corridor in the penultimate room and there was a Buddhist monk just "prowling" around as I was putting my suitcase out. All the different nationalities were pretty much kept on separate floors and I'm 100% certain he wasn't staying in that corridor so I made an excuse to go back to my room "to check on something" and he was just coming out of the last room in my corridor where the door was unlocked! You know, the one with the adjoining door to my room! He wasn't staying in that room and he definitely gave me the creeps, what with the hotel having a bit of a feel like the hotel in "The Shining". Can't say I was unhappy to leave there!

A group of us decided to go out for dinner that evening and again the food was very good, after which we went to a display of Sri Lankan dancing (and drumming - which was pretty impressive). Both the men and the women wore beautiful costumes and as long as it doesn't go on forever I actually enjoy it very much!

Anyway, the whole point of that stopover was to visit the Temple of the Tooth (which, it is said, contains a shrine housing one of Buddha's teeth), and the temple was indeed really spectacular! Whenever you visit these temples you are expected to cover your arms and your legs (at least as far down as your knees - both men and women) AND your head must be uncovered and shoes are not allowed (although you could walk around in socks). Now at some of the other temples I saw people in shorts, which I thought was disrespectful, but nobody said anything to them. At this temple, however, there was no way anyone would have gotten in if they didn't meet the strict dress code. The men went in through one door and the women through another, and although I had on long trousers and a shawl to cover my arms, there was a lady security guard there who tugged my shawl high up to my neck and knotted it (the shawl not my neck)! Our guide, Prasana, told us that one time he had a Turkish lady on one of his trips and she insisted that she was going to keep her veil on - but there was no way she would get past the security at the temple like that! Oh she kicked up a big fuss but there was no doing. My thoughts are "if you are adamant that you are not removing your veil, why go visit a temple in the first place"? Doesn't make sense to me!

The temple, of course, was stunningly beautiful but very crowded and I was as hot as hell with my torniquet of a shawl! But it was definitely worth a visit, although I felt my pictures couldn't do it justice so had to use some google pictures to try to show how beautiful it was!

The lake at Kandy

 

The Temple of the Tooth

As I say, I don't feel that even the google pictures do it justice - but it really was just stunning and so worth the visit!

And I thought winter was over!!!

I had an appointment set up for today to get my winter tyres switched to summer tyres but when I woke up the electricity was off and I looked out my window to see this. Damn!

Actually that wasn't the half of it as it snowed most of the morning, so I would guess we got about eight inches in all, judging by the state of my car. The garage just laughed when I called them to cancel the appointment - obviously they were up to their eyeballs in snow too. Still, it didn't last too much longer as the electric came back on (and hence the heating), the sun came out and the roads are (finally) looking pretty decent again after the snow plough came round. Hopefully most of it will be gone by morning, although I understand getting to work was, once again, a laugh a minute for most people!

I think I'm in love ... well not really, but "yay" me anyway!

I had an appointment last week with my bank to organize the final pay-off of my mortgage at the end of this month. I had calculated I owed about 90,000 Swiss francs (that's just over $90,000) but "allowed" 95,000 in my calculations just in case. Well I was bang on and I'm so glad 'cos if I had messed up somehow and "forgotten" or "missed" an additional, massive amount I would have been totally screwed now that I've retired! Anyway, I'm all signed up and "it's all mine!!!!!!" as of 26 April. So that's a relief! As I was talking to her, though, I happened to mention the situation of my brother and how we had managed to sign him up for a funeral package just before he died so that everything was taken care of for his sons … and that's when she pulled out the relevant paperwork for me! Well actually it wasn't telepathy as she reminded me she had actually called me for something when I happened to be in Wales for the funeral so had put together the basic "package" and intended to bring it up at my appointment. Wise minds think alike I guess. Not that thinking about your own funeral is a barrel of laughs but I realized that I wanted to avoid my sons having all that to deal with "if and when". It doesn't cover a burial plot but I want to be cremated anyway, so she said I would have to sign up for spot in a "cremation pillar" if that's what I wanted!! Nah, I told her I wanted to be cremated in banana leaves (not possible apparently - although I think a raffia coffin is) and then my ashes scattered on the mountains behind my house. Apparently that's illegal but then there's not much they can do about a carrier bag with a hole in it is there! And since the mortgage insurance will now drop off my monthly payments the amount saved will now pay for my funeral package. Great fun! I just have to mention it to my boys now, but at least that's checked off my "to do" list! That should be an interesting conversation next time they come for dinner!

After everything was signed I asked her if she could tell me how much interest I had saved by paying off my 17 year mortgage in seven years and she said she couldn't do it just like that. So when I got home I took my original loan amortization paperwork and worked out that I saved roughly €32,000!!! I know it's complicated switching from euros and Swiss francs but that's the way it is over here. Wow, €32,000 (that's almost $36,000)! I tell ya, it was so worth it knuckling down and throwing as much as possible at that mortgage. Well, in all honesty, if I hadn't done that I wouldn't be retired now (or any time soon I suspect). So yay me!

On the not so "yay me" side, I just received my mobile phone bill covering the period I was in Sri Lanka! Bloody hell. €120!!!! It's usually about €30, and since I crossed the border every day for work I knew to keep mobile roaming turned off, but 5-6 times when I was in Sri Lanka I switched it on briefly to check my messages! Well lesson learned I guess!!! And another horror story … I was in the newsagent's on Saturday buying stamps and I told the man next to me to go ahead as I was rummaging about in my purse. So he asked for one of those little "roller thingies" to roll his own cigarettes "because they were cheaper that way". Out of curiosity I asked the lady how much a carton of 200 was and she said €86!!!!! Bloody hell, I used to buy my ex's cigarettes every week in a vain bid to stop him going into town to buy them (after which he always ended up legless in the bar opposite the newsagents - yeah, that really worked well!), but crikey! €86!!! And to be honest my ex would get through two cartons a week because he would light them up and leave them burn in the ash tray after only taking a couple of drags!!! I'm so glad I'm not paying for them any more. He did tell me around this time last year that he had quit smoking three months earlier. Good for him as I'm sure it can't be easy. But I did point out how glad I was not to be living with him at that time - or any time since actually!!! I don't know if he has remained "quit" as I don't have any contact with him by choice, but since my next door neighbour was taken seriously ill in January (hospitalized with pneumonia) and she has had to quit I can see how hard it is on her. But she no longer has that rasping cough and sounds so much better! I'm so glad I never started though!

On a totally different subject (Brexit - yay Brexit) I had dinner with my old friend last Wednesday and it was good to have a catch up after so long. She is British and lives in France like me. She has her paperwork pretty squared away to get her resident's permit for France to be followed by her request for naturalization. I'm gonna wait until this whole debacle is sorted (if it ever is), so she's ahead of the game at least. It was important to her anyway because she gets a small UK pension which her daughter is using while she is studying in the UK and there is some talk that UK pensions of British expats might no longer be index-linked! Great fun, screwed over again, after not having a vote to begin with. Anyway, she was telling me that her son has just been offered a job in Switzerland. For which he needs what they call a "frontalier permit". For which he needs proof that he is legally resident in France. For which he now needs to apply for a resident's permit. And for which the local French administrative offices are no longer giving appointments for us to hand in our paperwork! Like I saw on a sign in Wales - "bollocks to Brexit"! I'll drink to that!

And finally, I had my appointment with another tax guy today after getting the shock of my life when the last "expert" told me that I would have to pay €29,000 tax on my €132,000 lump sum when I was expecting to pay just over €9,000! I went back and forward with him until a colleague in a similar situation took it up with the local tax authorities, who basically told her my "expert" didn't know his a$$ from a hole in the ground. So I got an appointment with this other guy today. When I showed him what expert no. 1 had given me he burst out laughing and said you had to be careful as there were a lot of "charlatans" out there (I know, that probably sounds better in French than English!). But he confirmed what the tax people had told my colleague and now I will be paying the €9,000 figure and not his €29,000 figure! Wow! Just wow! I'm so relieved. As I told my new "I'm in love with you" tax guy, I just want everything to be in order as I can't afford for the tax people to come back in a couple of years time saying I owe them €20,000 (plus a fine probably). So a good day all round. And "yay me" like I said!

Then on Thursday ...

… we set off again en route to visit Sigiriya Rock, also known as Lion Rock because of the two enormous lion paws carved into the rock. It was here that you could see the ruins of the fifth century "Sky Fortress", which was built in just seven years years as a fortified palace for King Kassapa - who became king by assassinating his father and deposing his brother. I guess there's a "black sheep" in every family then isn't there! Said brother managed to take back his "kingdom" 18 years later though - so it all got a bit complicated for me to follow! But it was a beautiful site, although a hard climb in horrendously hot weather meant we had to start off pretty early to beat the crowds and the heat!

Sigiriya Rock

After lunch we headed out to a game park to go elephant spotting. It wasn't difficult, actually, because there turned out to be quite a few elephants for us to "spot". The Canadian lady traveller made a valid point though in that she felt that there were just too many jeeps allowed into the park at the same time. We counted 25-30 jeeps in one spot and while none of the jeeps deliberately got close to the elephants, as the elephants wandered on their way sometimes we felt that we really were just too close to them. I can't say we felt in any danger - more that we were crowding them out. Still, I was very glad to have seen them - they are so impressive, even if they are not as big as African elephants!

After that we headed on to our next hotel - which again turned out to be a pretty nice place. It was quite late by the time we got there so it really was a case of get washed up, eat and go to bed because we were on the road again to Kandy the next day!