In The Wake Of The Tsunami

A toddy-tapper.

 
      In the first light of dawn, I thought that they were monkeys flitting around up there, in the crowns of coconut palms.  Then I saw one balancing heel to toe, heel to toe between the tree tops, like the Great Wallini on the high wire.

     Eventually I learned that they were men collecting "toddy" -- the nectar of coconut flowers.  And that they were called "toddy tappers."  In bare feet, sarongs tied off into a knot below their belly buttons, chewing betel nut and occasionally spewing the reddish juice, they impressed me with their hands-on-hips, can-do attitude.

     The nectar is deposited into into wooden barrels on the ground and used to make a type of liquor called "arrack."  Very popular in this part of the world.  Local rot gut, if you will.  The collection process takes place mainly along the coast and this was where I discovered something else about Sri Lanka  -- the impact of the Great Tsunami.

The Sydney Hotel.

Twelve types of arrack on the "menu" inside.

     In my guidebook the Sidney Hotel is described as a deep, dark hole of iniquity. Curiosity got the better of me one day and I ventured in for a look-see.  A few shadowy figures hunched at tables waved and invited me to sit.  "Do you serve food here?" I asked one.  "No food 'ere," came the response.  "Only liquor."

      I looked around.  Sit?  Are you kiddin'?  I was afraid that something might crawl up my leg!

     On the way out, I snapped the picture of the arrack offerings shown above.  Then I noticed a photo on the wall of the bus station across the street, taken shortly after the tsunami...

     

Remnants of the bus station at Galle.

     

     I was astonished.  On December, 26, 2004, the entire bus station had been obliterated and hundreds of people along with it.  They had no warning.  It was a holiday weekend and many bore bags of gifts and food.  One minute they were sitting waiting for transport and the next they were flailing about in angry brown water.

     The entire southern coast had been ravaged, with the water three and four stories high (30 to 40 feet) in some places.  Approximately 35, 00 people perished.  About half of them were washed out to sea and never found.

     Seemingly everyone there has a story about that awful day.  Most go something like this:  My...(friend, neighbor, cousin, etc.) set out to do something that morning and that was the last we ever saw of him or her.

The old Dutch Fort at Galle present day.

The same view in 2004.

      Most heart-wrenching were the train stories.  That morning the Ocean Queen Express was running the coast from Colombo to Matara when the waves struck.  The huge diesel/electric engine was slammed one hundred yards and the rolling stock crumpled up like tin cans.  Most of the passengers never had a chance.  It remains the largest rail disaster in world history by death toll, with 1,700 fatalities or more.

    In completing my loop around the country, I rode a train along that same route.  Often it ran only a few hundred yards from the ocean.  At one spot, among the palm trees, a mass grave containing about 1,000 victims of the disaster.  Even though it was twelve years ago, don't think that I wasn't casting an anxious eye seaward as the journey proceeded!

    For what it's worth, an historian there told me that he could find no evidence for previous tsunamis going back five- or six-hundred years.  This event was an aberration unto itself and the people, and the government, unprepared as a result.

Part of the Ocean Queen Express.

      In many ways, Sri Lanka is a country on the mend.  In addition to the tsunami, a civil war wracked the island for decades, killing additional tens of thousands.  I saw people from time to time missing an arm or a leg or with burn scars only to learn that they were victims.

     Even though the conflict was settled in 2009, it made for a double whammy upon this tiny nation  -- the tsunami in the south and the war in the north.  The government was drained of resources and unable to provide as it should.  Litter and garbage disposal remain a problem, as do poverty.  Facilities for travelers are emerging but still on the rough side.

Some tourist "infrastructure."

     Despite this, many of the people are impressively educated and speak English well.  Almost to a person, they were genial and pleasant.  Even in the Sydney Hotel, where the sunlight rarely penetrates, the denizens were friendly.  My biggest concerns about crime, as it turned out, were from the monkeys.

     I came to consider the sparse tourist trappings to be an advantage -- there weren't yet many foreigners there.  All the better to experience the place and the people firsthand.

     All in all -- the culture, the food, the scenery -- added up to some memorable travel.  My advice?  See it before high-rises line the beaches!

[END OF SERIES ON SRI LANKA]

Of Deadly Snakes And Exotic Spices

 

     Regarding the snake thing...for whatever reason prior to this trip, I didn't get the memo.  Usually I study up on a country for months before visiting.  I pore through guidebooks and travel blogs, learning what to do, what not to do, etc. 

     Somehow this time I missed that Sri lanka has the highest percentage of poisonous snake bites per capita in the world.  The "deadly five" there account for most of them -- Indian cobras, Hump-nosed vipers, Russell's vipers... 

     

     To draw from an old saying, nothing to focus the mind like a green pit viper coiled up alongside a trail.  Nothing like knowing that if it nails you, you may have hours, not days but hours to get the antidote into you.     

Green pit viper.  Known locally as "pala palongo."

     While not even one of the deadly five, these are to be reckoned with.  One publication describes it thusly:  Venom can be quite potent and occasionally prove fatal.  Immediate treatment and medical assistance are recommended to minimize organ damage and preserve life.

     The good news is that the government encourages that school children be drilled on how to identify the different species, and how to avoid them.  Hospitals and EMTs (emergency medical techs) are trained, stocked with antidotes and ready for victims. You just have to get there in time.

     Be that as it may, I was fascinated with the snake shown above, and observed it for a good hour.

Schoolgirls in Galle.  The white uniforms are typical of here.

Exotic spices.

 

Our guide with a pepper plant...S.L. is one of the top producers.

     
     As all good historians know, Christopher Columbus did not set out to discover the New World.  What he really was after is shown above -- the spices of India and its environs, which include Sri Lanka.  He just happened to bump into the Americas en route.

     Back then the meals of Europe were so bland that eating was a drudgery as much as anything.  But not so here.

     Call this a culinary warning -- this food is not for the timid eater.   It comes right at ya. The fiery curries using different meats, the caramelized onions and chilies, the soups that make your eyes weep, and on and on.  Powerful flavors that startle the senses, widen the eyes of jet-lagged travelers lulled by the thick humidity only a few degrees off the equator.

     Unless you're one who revels in such things, you may wish to go in easy.  I practically had to take a course on how to eat there without injuring myself.  As much as in any country I've been, the food was an adventure unto itself.

Noodle soup with mutton (I think) and vegees.

Starting at top, clockwise -- lamb curry, chicken curry, fish curry, string poppers... mint tea.

     

Breakfast of Champions in S.L. -- fish "pocket" with Milo.

   
     The fish pocket or bun, made of delicious bread and containing tangy green fish paste (30 Rupees or 25 cents U.S.) was one of my favorites.  This may sound a little iffy, but I became fond of them from the first bite.  They jolted me awake as well as tasted good.

     (As an added benefit, at times I'd yearn for a Coca-Cola, my old nemesis, only to lose the urge by downing a fish pocket.  Evidently the spices pepped me up in much the same way.)

     I'd wash them down with Milo, a chocolate malt drink, served either cold as shown above or hot in a mug.  The problem is that humans aren't the only ones taken with such a combo, and it resulted in one of the scarier episodes of my three weeks in S.L.  In fact, even more so than the snakes, it was like something out of a cheezy horror flic...

Attack Of The Junk-Food Monkeys!

Junk-food monkeys -- with my junk food.

      One afternoon I was laying in bed with a big-bladed fan whirring overhead, reading the election news on my tablet.  I often did this type of thing to escape the mid-day heat.

     The hair on the back of my head stood up as something hunched and hairy troddled on into the room!  I had left the door open to my balcony, never dreaming that anything would bother two stories up.  But a monkey, scabbed and shedding patches of hair, bee lined up to a bureau a few yards away and seized a bag containing two fish pockets and a Milo!

     Another monkey, obviously a male, was hopping about with excitement in the doorway.  Both retreated out onto the porch and proceeded to woof my stash!  (see pic above)  Even guzzled the Milo! 

     Soon other monkeys zeroed in -- swinging in using branches, shimmying on phone lines -- until six or eight were perched on the railing.  Not only were they ugly, they were showing their teeth, making guttural noises.

    I slammed and bolted the door.  Long hairy arms poked in through windows, grabbed at my shirtsleeve, groped inside for anything that they could.  I whacked at them with my flip-flops, slammed shutters onto them, yelled like a madman...

     Eventually the manager realized my plight and tossed half a dozen "monkey busters" (cherry bombs) and drove them off.  Never underestimate the power of spices upon man or beast, seems to be the lesson here.

     Or the allure of Coca-Cola.  As this pic shows, we humans aren't the only ones taken with the stuff...

       

[PART THREE TO FOLLOW NEXT MONDAY, DEC. 12]

On The Tea Trail In Sri Lanka

Ascending into the high tea country.  Note tanker cars behind the engine and rows of tea plants below.

     Our train was a combination passenger and freight hauler.  That meant that it stopped at various stations on the long slog up from the coast, and generally stayed stopped for a while to unload not just people, but boxes, baggage, and more.  

     This was an opportunity for some of us to pop off and explore the station and a little of the towns along the way.  Maybe grab a bag of salted peanuts from a vendor, gab it up onlookers.

   After a while you got the rhythm of it -- one shriek of the station master's whistle and you better get moving back trainward.  A second shriek and you'd better be in proximity. Then a few blasts of the engineer's air horn and it was lurching forward -- sometimes with a few of us reaching out and leaping up the steps.

Scenery along the way, with more tea plants at bottom.

Just where is Sri Lanka?  A fur piece, as they say.

     Train travel in Sri Lanka is ridiculously inexpensive.  That five hours up from the coast cost 180 Rupees (about $1.25 U.S.)  A leg through the mountains later on, through some of the grandest scenery I've ever seen, was an astounding 60 Rupees (45 cents U.S.)!  Also for about five hours.

     True, this was for third-class passage; often jammed in between others in bench seats, in other words.  But what the heck -- all the better to mingle with the locals.
   

   

A typical station in the hill country.  Note station master in white uniform at center.

       

 
      The Sinhalese (people of Sri Lanka) take pride in their trains and their train stations.  Both are charmingly decrepit, with most left over from when the British colonized the island.  In general I reveled in the entire railroad experience there. I even liked the "chuck-chuck-chuck..." sound of the old engines.

      Who cares if they labored along?   I came to see the countryside and meet the people, not wiz from A to B.  

     A nice touch were the station masters.  They would turn out in crisp, white uniforms to welcome the trains and supervise the unloading of passengers and freight.  I would flip them a salute when I walked past and generally they would smile and flip one back.  Great fun and in keeping with the amiable nature of the Sinhalese people.

   

Women tea pickers near Nuwara Eliya, about 6,500 feet elevation.

    

     In keeping with my travel goals this time -- to explore the tea culture of Sri Lanka -- I visited not one but three tea plantations.  Two in the high country and one in the low, near the coast.  I picked tea, talked tea, sampled a dozen different types, toured factories, etc.

     Many of the pickers are Tamil women, who originate from India, with dots or caste marks on their foreheads.  Many do not wear shoes and have cracked leathery feet, reminiscent of a pair of hiking shoes stashed and forgotten about somewhere.  Displayed in one plantation house (lodge) are pictures of the cobra snakes some of them killed while working the fields.

    I was impressed with the can-do practicality of these women.  Despite the rigors of their labor, often in the blazing sun, many have managed to maintain an impressive femininity.  I was saddened, though, by how little they are paid.  In fact, Sri Lanka is the first of the twenty-some countries I've visited where crippling poverty really got to me.

     But that, as they say, is another story.  

Tea blow-drying at the Handunugoda Tea Factory.

Your humble correspondent at work sampling teas.

Our guide at Handunugoda explaining a tea plant.

Hibiscus, to be harvested and blended with regular tea for Hibiscus Tea

         

     As Sheldon would say on the Big Bang Theory, "Now here's a fun fact":  Almost all the teas purchased in the U.S. and elsewhere derive from the same tea plant, Camellia sinensis.  After its tea is shredded at the factory, it's sorted by size and this gives you the pekoe, the orange pekoe, the broken orange pekoe, etc...the different sizes of the shredded leaves determine this.  Not different species of tea plants.   

     Another fun fact:  Tea bushes are picked about fifty times a year.  Otherwise they'd be six feet tall!  They are, after all, a type of shrubbery.

     And another:  The"orange" in orange pekoe tea does not refer to color.  It comes from the House of Orange, associated with the Dutch tea traders of the 1800s.

     At any rate, enough of that.  Back to the tea trail, or the end of it, I should say.  After a sweaty day of hiking the fields, there's only one fitting thing to do...

A cup of Sapphire Oolong at the plantation house.

   [PART TWO TO FOLLOW NEXT MONDAY, DEC. 5th]