Nuwara Eliya, Srilanka

25 Jun

Learning our lesson from Sigiriya/Dambulla trip, we left Kandy early in the morning for our last stop, Nuwara Eliya, the "Little England". En route to Nuwara Eliya, we made a stop at Labukale Tea Factory. We had a guided tour to the factory, tasted tea with chocolate cake and bought some tea leaves back. It was a scenic route from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya with all the tea plantations along the way, the road is small mountainous road though. We managed to made it for lunch at Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya with Sachini and Indra.

En route to Nuwara Eliya

A cup of tea from Labukale Tea Factory

After lunch, we checked in to Governor's Chalet. It was the best in the trip, the chalet is right beside Gregory Lake. One chalet could accomodate 4 people, 2 on the ground floor and 2 on attic floor. The only disappointment was that June is not good season for visiting Nuwara Eliya. It rains almost everyday. Hence, we could not do much outdoor activities.

Gregory Lake

In front of our Chalet

After checking in, we visited a Rama temple that was claimed as the only Rama Temple in the world by Srilankans. We also went around Nuwara Eliya town and visited St. Francis Xavier Church there. We packed kotthu roti and chinese roll back. Dinner was at Governor's Chalet's restaurant. The food is good and service is slightly faster than other places.

Rama Temple

St. Francis Xavier Church in Nuwara Eliya

26 Jun

We decided to relax in the morning, took our slow breakfast, and started our trip back to Colombo only at 12 noon. We reached Kithulgala resting place at around 2pm for our late lunch. The food is OK only and as usual, the service is slow. Nothing much to do at this place except for meals. We continue our long journey to Negombo beach, on the way we made our stop to buy some cashew nuts as well. We reached Negombo beach around 6.30pm, a bit too late to take nice photos there.

Waterfall!

Negombo beach is only 1 hour away from Colombo airport. We made it back to the airport at 9.30pm and waited all the way to our midnight flight back to Singapore.

Kandy, Srilanka

23 Jun
En route to Kandy, we visited two famous places in Srilanka, the Sigiriya Rock and Dambulla Cave Temple. It took around 4 hours from Colombo to reach these places, however, because we needed to exchange money, we took a detour and reached Sigiriya very late at around 2pm. We had lunch first at Sigiriya Hotel and it took 45 minutes just to get the food served.

We reached the gate of Sigiriya rock at around 3.30pm and it was very hot. It is a 2-hour-climb to reach the top of the rock, hence we decided to forgo it. Sigiriya rock was a palace of Srilankan king before. The view surrounding the rock is nice though, we took several photos and moved on to Dambulla Cave Temple.

River surrounding Sigiriya Rock

Sigiriya Rock

Dambulla Cave is around half an hour from Sigiriya, there is some stairs to climb there. We need to wear covered clothes and take off our footwear when entering the temple. The view along the way up is awesome. The temple is inside a cave, there are lots of old nice paintings on the cave's wall.

Golden Buddha Statue in front of Dambulla Cave Temple

View on the way to Dambulla Cave

Sunset at Dambulla

Inside the Cave

Outside

We headed to Kandy right after Dambulla, it took us 1 hour plus to reach Kandy. Dinner was at Flower Song Chinese Restaurant. We tried Srilankan Chinese food, it is great. I feel the spices are a bit different from usual Chinese food. We spent around LKR7000 for 7 of us. We stayed at Thilanka Hotel for the night. The hotel is good and clean, it is located on top of a hill. From the balcony of the room, we could see Kandy city and Kandy lake.The only thing is their lift is under renovation and we need to climb stairs up and down.

24 Jun
We started the journey at around 9am in the morning right after breakfast. It took 1 hour drive to reach Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. There are so many elephants there, big and small, we came at their bathing time. Small elephants are cute.

Big!

The entrance ticket to Pinnawala includes the entrance to Herbal Garden. There is a guy bringing us to visit Herbal Garden who said it's free in the beginning then asked for tips afterwards, so be careful here.

We had lunch at Devon Restaurant in Kandy. It was nice apart from, again, the waiting time. Lots of local people have meals there. I finally had my Srilankan food there.

Our next stop is Gadaladeniya Temple. It's another ancient temple around 10km from Kandy. The road going there is small and bumpy.

Statue inside Gadaladeniya Temple

Our final stop and main attraction of Kandy is Temple of the Relic Tooth. We made it there at 6.30pm when the Thevava rites began. Only during Thevava we could see the shrine of the Tooth, the book and the crystal. We were lucky to be able to see all. It's opened only for 10 minutes, hence people are squeezing each other in order to see.

We rush back to hotel after the Thevava to have our ayurvedha massage. It's not a massage at all, I feel they just pour oil and rub it. We had our dinner in the hotel, and by now we set our expectation already that food will be served in around 45 - 60 minutes.

Temple of the Tooth Relic

Another Golden Buddha

Colombo, Srilanka

The long awaited trip to Srilanka is finally here, this time we are a group of 7 going to Srilanka to attend Sachini's wedding as well as travel in Srilanka. We have Salinah, Bawani, Shishi, Fanfan, Putput and Arthur on board. There are not many choices for ticket to Srilanka, we missed the cheaper deal by Emirates, hence we took Singapore Airlines flight to Colombo, my second Singapore Airlines flight in my life. For this whole trip, thanks to Sachini for arranging a very detailed itinerary for us.

21 June
We left from Changi Airport Terminal 2 at 22.45 to reach Colombo at midnight. Sachini has arranged a driver to fetch us in the airport. We could bring USD or SGD to Srilanka and exchange it in the airport. The rate is not bad in airport and we need to declare it to customs if we bring more than USD10000 or equivalent.

We stayed in Galle Face Hotel for two nights, the hotel where the wedding would be held the next day. It's a collonial style hotel, used to be a mansion to a British governor. The room is big and clean, the location is good, right beside the beach.

Galle Face Hotel

22 June
The wedding ceremony started at 8.30 in the morning, with procession by Kandyan dancers. Sachini looks gorgeous in her wedding sari. It was 6 months since I met her last time when we went together to China. We missed some of the wedding due to our preparation. All girls wore sari, and 3 out of 4 don't know anything about sari. But finally we made it to the ballroom in sari. Srilankan wedding is quite different from the weddings I see in Indonesia or in Singapore. The bride and the groom will go around the tables, greeting all the guests before lunch. They need to kneel down to the elderly as well. After the greetings, the host will bring a glass of water on a plate to all the guests as a symbol to invite them for lunch, and the guests need to touch the plate as a symbol of accept it.

Photo taking sessions follow after lunch and the bride and groom need to symbolically leave the ballroom at 14.30. When the bride and groom walk out of the ballroom, we shower them with flower petals.Yes, it was symbolically because not long after that, we saw Sachini again in the hotel.

Anyway, we wish Sachini a happy married life, it was a great pleasure to be able to attend your big day.

For the rest of the day, 4 of us (because the 3 guys prefer to sleep in hotel) rented a taxi for LKR3500 for 4 hours to go around Colombo. We visited some of sari shops as well as Odel, their factory outlet. We went back to hotel to meet up with the guys for dinner. Dinner was at Raja Bojun Restaurant, it was Srilankan food buffet.

Srilanka's beach

23 June
Sachini has arranged a driver with a van to pick us up in the hotel early in the morning. We went to visit the biggest Buddhist temple in Colombo, which is the Gangaramaya Temple. There is one unique rule to enter temple in Srilanka, we need to wear long and covered clothes as well as we need to take off our footwear. The temple is big and there is one elephant there. Elephants are holy in Srilanka. The journey continued to exchange money and we headed to Sigiriya and Dambulla.

Gangaramaya Temple

The elephant