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May 13, 2005
DISPATCH FROM ABROAD Serendipity - the name is Sri LankaFORMER PVT REPORTER VISITS TSUNAMI-RAVAGED SRI-LANKA; AMERICANS POPULAR
By MARK WAITE
KANDY, Sri Lanka - Former President Clinton, on a visit to Sri Lanka after the disastrous tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, remarked the best thing we could do for the country was to pay a visit. European tourists have been coming to this popular tropical getaway for years, some return every winter. Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is often described as a teardrop-shaped island off the southeast coast of India. Indeed the world shed a tear for the country after 31,000 people died in the tsunami, caused by an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, originating in northern Sumatra Island in Indonesia, across the Indian Ocean. The visit of former presidents Clinton and Bush to the south coast of Sri Lanka the day after I arrived in late February was all the buzz in Sri Lanka. Many Sri Lankans, upon hearing my nationality, were truly grateful for all the aid furnished by the U.S. "I like America, your people helping us," said a restaurant owner in the capital, Colombo. The driver of a tuk-tuk in the first capital of Anuradhapura - a three-wheeled vehicle with a 150cc motorcycle engine - remarked in his broken English, "very good help this time, USA." I almost wished the next time a Third World country had a major disaster Americans could open up their pocketbooks to help, followed by a high profile visit by former presidents. The goodwill generated would make Americans welcome visitors anywhere. Ironically, the daily newspapers were boasting about the reconstruction of the south railroad from Colombo to Matara within three months of the tsunami; the trains were shut down due to a one-day strike by railway workers for higher pay. But then Sri Lanka was once known as Serendib, the origin of the word serendipity, which means anything can happen - and it usually did on my trip. I ended up taking a bus on the busy highway from Colombo to the city of Kandy in the interior, the last holdout of the local kings against European conquest from the 16th to the 19th century and a center of Sri Lankan culture. It was a bustling road full of stores with scarce views of the scenic mountains and rice paddies. I held out a 500-rupee note ($5) but the bus conductor grabbed the 50-note bill; public transportation was ridiculously cheap in the country, the 50-cent fare covered a four-hour bus ride. Sri Lankan soldiers armed with automatic weapons peered out from behind sandbagged bunkers at a few spots on the highway, particularly near the airport. The government just celebrated the third anniversary of the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a terrorist group that waged a 14-year civil war for an independent Tamil homeland in northeastern Sri Lanka in which tens of thousands died. Tourism was just recovering from the war when the tsunami hit. Kandy wasn't high enough, at 1,700 feet, to be that cool, but there was a pretty lake right in town, walls around the road surrounding the lake and the key tourist attraction, the Temple of the Tooth, housing one of Buddha's teeth. About three-quarters of Sri Lankans are Buddhists. The guard at the temple sent me back to my guesthouse to put on long pants. I was later given a pat-down search going into the temple by a guard, as the Liberation Tigers once bombed the site. The temple wasn't a real exciting site compared to those in Southeast Asia, but bare-chested ceremonial guards with white turbans, staging their thrice-daily ritual of drumming were an interesting end to the day at sunset. One of the highlights of a trip to the center of the island is a visit to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, about a half-hour ride west of Kandy near the town of Kegalle. I wondered if I would make it for their morning bath, from 10 a.m. to noon, traveling on the slow buses. The orphanage was established in 1975 with seven orphaned elephants. Workers said there were now 70 elephants on the nine-hectare grounds. I counted more than 40 in the river getting baths. There is a captive breeding program; the first baby was born in 1984. Orphanage literature states they have now bred 23 baby elephants. Workers said they wouldn't release the elephants into the wild for fear poachers will shoot them. After the 40-odd elephants filed past the excited tourists armed with cameras from the river to the road back to the orphanage, camp workers happily allowed tourists to feed baby elephants from milk bottles, pose for photos with the elephants or pet the pachyderms, in exchange for tips. By 2 p.m. it was time for the herd to move back to the river for its afternoon bath. A man told me a tour of the herbal garden was free with the $5 price of the admission into the orphanage. He led me on a tour of the different plants, explaining citronella was good for warding off mosquitoes, cinnamon oil was good for afflictions like colds and ear pain, a cream mixed with white sandalwood was good for beauty treatments, and other plants were supposed to be good for anything from cholesterol to impotence to perfume. I knew citronella was good for warding off mosquitoes, though after he applied some white sandalwood cream to my face it still didn't diminish the wrinkles. I didn't buy any products at his shop, though the free sample of spiced tea seemed to cure my cough. Numerous herbal and spice gardens were advertised on the road from the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage back to Kandy, part of what Sri Lankans call Ayurvedic medicine, treatment with herbs. That evening I spent the 300 rupees ($3) to see a performance of the traditional dancing at the Kandyan Art Associations Hall. It included more drumming, dances by men and women in traditional costumes and ended with a fire-walking routine in which the fire walkway was so hot the tourists in the front row could hardly stand it. I stayed in Kandy a third day and was glad I did. It was time for the monthly poya, the monthly holiday for the Buddhist full moon. I knew something was up when people were decorating the Temple of the Tooth and the road around the lake with bunting and Buddhist flags. A procession began late in the day from the temple, proceeding around the lake, first with men cracking a whip on the streets, then drummers and dancers, then men sitting on half a dozen brightly-decorated elephants and finally, rolling out a white carpet for dignitaries including the second highest monk. It was a colorful spectacle well worth seeing. A volunteer tsunami worker from Park City, Utah was watching the spectacle. Afterwards, a Sri Lankan man asked if she wanted to see paintings by handicapped children; of course she did. Instead we were led to a batik shop where the man obviously got a commission. When we returned to the lakeside, another Sri Lankan lured the woman to the night market. Unfortunately, especially in Kandy, the Sri Lankans pester foreign tourists in sales promotions for commissions. The next morning I moved quickly to the train station to head to Nurewa Eliya, in the highlands. Tuk-tuk drivers aggressively tried to recruit me to ride with them instead, but I hopped on the train. I rode to the first two stops on the track. By then most people got off the train. A Sri Lankan man walked on the train and sat across from me. "Are you going to Kandy?" he asked. "No I just came from Kandy," I replied. He instructed me to get on another train on another platform to go to Nurewa Eliya; no one instructed me to do that and there were no conductors present anywhere. It must be serendipity, I thought. We quickly climbed up to the cool highlands. The man sitting next to me was evicted by the conductor after he couldn't produce a ticket, enabling me to get a window seat overlooking miles and miles of beautifully light green, perfectly manicured tea plantations with occasional eucalyptus trees and groves of pine trees. Youths hung out the doors between coaches and howled as we passed through tunnels. It seemed like a toy train, chugging uphill slowly; it took five hours but the mileage chart said it was only 77 kilometers, about 45 miles, from Kandy to Nurewa Eliya. Nurewa Eliya (pronounced like New Rail-e-ah) is also called Little England, the highest town in Sri Lanka at 6,187 feet elevation. A motel worker stoked the fireplace to keep the guests warm at night. The front desk clerk discounted a room from $18 to $11; she said rooms were normally full but there were fewer tourists now after the tsunami. Delightful English manors, like the Hill Club, were evidence the British had a nice life here in colonial days. At the Nurewa Eliya Golf Club well-to-do Sri Lankans were enjoying a beer, speaking the Queen's English after a day on the links. The holes were measured in meters, which made them a little longer than yards, but the elevation helped give the ball a lift. The green fees and other costs added up to $40, which included $2.50 for the caddy. It was one of three golf courses in the country. There were other signs of an English heritage, like stores that read "tea shop," "milk bar," or the horse racing betting shop, which advertised, "turf accountants." Since Ceylon tea is so famous, I took a tour of the LaBookelle tea factory. The guide said 6,000 kilograms, about 10,000 pounds, were produced annually at the factory. She said tea pluckers were required to pluck at least 18 kilograms daily, about 33 pounds, that's a lot of light tealeaves. For each kilogram they picked after 18 kilos the guide said they received a bonus of seven or eight cents per kilo. I learned the differences between the types of tea and selected a box of broken orange, pekoe, fanning tea. My driver took me a ways further to Ramboda Falls where some other foreigners were visiting the site with their car and driver, which seemed to be a favorite way for tourists to tour Sri Lanka who are on a short visit. I almost balked at visiting what is called the "Cultural Triangle," which includes the first two capitals of Sri Lanka and the rock fortress of Sigirya, due to the $40 price tag of the ticket. But I broke down and took the train from Nurewa Eliya to the end of the line, just past Kandy, to a town called Matale, which descended into beautiful tropical forest and scenes of people bathing in the stream late in the afternoon. On the train were a group of young Sri Lankan women singing songs. After hiking up to Adam's Peak, a pilgrimage site, so-named because it is claimed it contains the footprint of Adam. I never made it to the peak. I also passed up a visit to World's End, to see a view over a steep cliff of the valleys below, and to Yala National Park, with its population of lions and cheetahs that made it almost like an African game park. There were no touts to greet me in Matale, a typical Sri Lankan town without tourists. The next morning I was on a bus to Polonnaruwa, which became the capital of the country in the 11th and 12th centuries after Tamil invaders drove the Sri Lankans back from the first capital Anuradhapura - try saying that word fast to a passing bus conductor! I wondered if we would become another statistic barreling in the bus down two lane highways crowded with pedestrians, bicycles and cars. The ruins at Polonnaruwa weren't real exciting after I visited archaeological sites in Southeast Asia - the Tamil invaders destroyed much of them. I visited the Citadel, the King's Quarters and audience hall, then the Sacred Quadrangle, where Sri Lankan school girls in white school uniforms and the typical, long, braided pigtails, were viewing some Buddha statues left fairly intact among the pillars. The Rakoth Vahora was the biggest dagoba, or stupa. The Gal Vihara, with a 44-foot, stone carving of a sleeping Buddha and a standing Buddha next to it, was the most interesting and thus most popular site. A tour guide said there would normally be 300 tourists per day visiting Polonnaruwa; after the tsunami there were probably fewer than 100. I had hired a driver for $30 to take me around Polonnaruwa one afternoon by tuk-tuk, then the next day by air-conditioned van to the hilltop fortress of Sigiriya, then drop me off in Dambulla, near the Dambulla Caves. Elephant dung could be seen on the back road leading to Sigirya, constructed by a prince in the 5th Century A.D., a sheer, rocky outcrop more than 600 feet above the surrounding plain. Underemployed people wanting to be my guides instantly besieged me; one man wanted $20 for the service. Frescoes of topless concubines, part of the prince's harem of more than 50 women, could be seen painted on the inside of a rock part way to the top. A man pulled back the tarp to let me take pictures for a tip as flash photography wasn't allowed. The windy top of the fortress afforded a great view of the lakes and green countryside. The Sri Lankan tourist department may have been a little overly enthusiastic when they described it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World." The Cultural Triangle ticket didn't cover the Dambulla Caves. The cave temples, with more than 20,000 square-feet of cave walls, were constructed in the first century B.C. The five cave shrines included numerous pre-Christian rock inscriptions on the ceilings and Buddhist murals, along with dozens of Buddha statues and a 47-foot, rock-cut, reclining Buddha statue. My driver dropped me off at the caves where I took a bus to Anurhadapura, the capital of Sri Lanka from around the fifth century B.C. to the 11th century A.D. I hired a tuk-tuk driver for $6 for four hours, but the ruins here were less defined. The large bathing pond used by the Buddhist monks and two large dagobas under construction by UNESCO weren't interesting enough to be photographed. A toothless man led me to the Sri Maha Bodi, a sapling of the same banyan tree under which Buddha achieved enlightenment, where dozens of Sri Lankans were praying just before sunset. The finale was the best site, the Ruwanveli Dagoba, my "guide" said it was 350 feet tall and 350 feet around, with 336 elephant heads carved around the base. The guesthouse worker in Anurhadapura forgot my wakeup call, (more Serendipity?) so I climbed over the walls the next morning to grab a tuk-tuk and get to the train station for the 7 a.m. departure to Colombo. At the train station, I was told by the man punching my ticket the train left on platform No. 2. When I saw everybody walking to platform No. 3, a uniformed train conductor said the train left on platform No. 3. Serendipity, I thought. But it was the only fast train I rode in the country, and with a reserved, air-conditioned, first class seat for $3.50 for the speedy, three-hour trip. I changed trains in Colombo for the train to the south coast - to the most devastated area. Colombo has four casinos; three of them are named the Stardust, Bally's and the MGM Casino. Unlike their namesakes in Las Vegas however, these casinos are small, like country casinos in Nevada. I doubt if Wayne Newton ever sang at the Stardust in Colombo, while the MGM Casino wouldn't host big boxing cards and major concerts as it only has five roulette tables, five baccarat tables and five blackjack tables, with a minimum bet of 500 rupees ($5) and a maximum bet of 25,000 rupees ($250). The train traveling south from Colombo quickly pulled right alongside the shore on the Indian Ocean, closer than Amtrak's Coast Starlight along the Pacific Coast of California in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. I often had to stand on the train as there were usually no reserved seats and all the seats were full. A handful of tourists on the train who would've been smiling at the pleasant ocean view in the past, were showing frowns instead as they appeared a little shocked to see all the devastation from the Dec. 26 tsunami. The damage could be seen less than an hour out of Colombo, with some areas completely wiped out and only building foundations remaining, while other areas appeared almost unscathed. The residents didn't have much to start with, the existing homes still standing on the coastline near the train tracks were very simple stucco or wood structures. Galle, about 70 miles south of Colombo, a two-hour train ride, was the headquarters of the Dutch colonial administration along Sri Lanka's coastal provinces from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th century. The well-preserved walls of the 17th century fort, a clock tower and a lighthouse encircle a historic neighborhood of old homes and churches. The walls protected that neighborhood from the tsunami, though the waves destroyed neighborhoods around it. The Dutch Reformist Church contained graves on the floor, including one of Jacobus Vandorhorst, who died in September MDCCXXVII. The All Saints Anglican Church down the street was a little more recent, it dated from 1829. While there weren't many vacationers, the Dutch Villa Holiday Home in Galle was full of aid workers. I decided to visit a couple beach resorts. Unawatuna, a few miles to the east, still boasted a nice, white sand beach; I located one of the hotels still standing, the Sea View Inn, which now had a good view of the ocean as some buildings on the seafront had been destroyed. I was worried I'd be accosted by desperate people begging for money, but there were only a few people walking the beach. Perhaps some vendors had been killed, I thought, while possibly others weren't coming because there were few tourists now. Some tourists relaxed on the beach, oblivious to the piles of debris from ruined buildings nearby. "Tsunami coming, everybody going," a vendor complained in broken English, selling the usual wooden statues of Buddha and elephants. One man who said he lost his livelihood as a fishermen due to the tsunami, offered me a couple coconuts; I gave him 100 rupees ($1) well above the going price, but he asked for 250 rupees for powdered milk. I drank a few beers from a man's restaurant that was now reduced to only a single storeroom and some chairs set up outside, after the tsunami. The Hard Rock Restaurant was attached to the Sea View Inn; apparently copyrighted names aren't a problem in the land of Serendipity. The scene over dinner seemed to be western women eating with Sri Lankan men; fair play I thought after Thailand where it was almost always western men with Thai women. I stopped in the other beach resort of Hikkaduwa, which was more hard hit by the tsunami. I was the only guest at the Beach Side Inn, where the two rooms closest to the sea were destroyed but five rooms were left. Only a few tourists roamed the golden sand beach. One morning I was tossed around violently by some rough breakers; it made me think for a moment of the horror the people had who were tossed around in that much bigger wave the morning of Dec. 26, not knowing where they would end up. |
