Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Dec. 25 - So this is Christmas

We landed in Sri Lanka on Christmas Eve. Given the country’s overwhelmingly Buddhist population, I was surprised to see so many holiday decorations. Live Christmas trees were being sold at road-side stands. They are long-needle pine trees (skinnier and with droopier branches than the perfect cone-shaped trees in the US). There was a dance party on the beach last night. Apparently the locals think Westerners like a good rave on Christmas Eve. The house music stopped briefly around midnight - long enough for the DJ to play “We wish you a Merry Christmas” - and then it continued til dawn.

The villa where we’re staying is owned and run by Roger and Maureen, an English couple in their 60s. They serve us breakfast on the terrace. We meet Wayne and Ange, a couple from New Zealand that’s currently teaching English in Hong Kong. Wayne plays rugby for the national team in Hong Kong.

It’s drizzling and overcast. We bump into Sugith on the beach, and he agrees to drive us into neighboring Galle in his tuk-tuk.

Our ride: Sugith's tuk-tuk.


Lighthouse at the fort in Galle.

We see the main attraction in town: the fort. One side was packed with young lovers, canoodling under umbrellas. We have lunch at the Rampart Hotel, and then Sugith takes us to a food market, a clothing store and a jewelry store.

A little stiff from the airplane seats, we also go for an Ayurvedic massage. This is definitely not a Swedish massage. At the risk of oversimplifying this type of treatment, I will just say there is less focus on the massaging of muscles, and more concentration on the applying an insane amount of a dark, smelly oil. There was so much oil during my massage, it was comical. I felt like I was in a Saturday Night Live sketch.

We have Christmas dinner at the Camaron Beach Club with two people from the villa: Matthew and his girlfriend Nadira. They both work for the UN in Tajikistan. Nadira grew up there, but Matthew is originally from Montreal. The main course is lobster thermidor. The restaurant has an open kitchen, and a couple of times during dinner, lobsters escape and try to make a run for the ocean through the dining area.
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