Don't Panic

Dear the authors of the Rough Guide to Sri Lanka,

Please take your paranoid, xenophobic tendencies somewhere else, and stop using them to publish books. You're scaring the rest of us needlessly. If you really can't deal with the food, the accomodations, the people, the bugs, the heat, the humidity, the public transportation, or the stores, then JUST STAY HOME.

That is all.

-Hallie

This entry is really long because I have a 3 hour download to sit through. Sorry.

I bought 2 guide books in preparation for this trip: Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. I like using multiple sources and the most recent Lonely Planet was written before the tsunami, whereas the Rough Guide was published a few months after it hit. I'm living in areas that were very badly affected by the tsunami, so I felt it important to do some targeted research.

The Rough Guide authors have a very frank voice. Optimistically, they really want to be thorough about preparing travellers for all eventualaties, and they realize that the Sri Lanka life style is much different from those of their target audience. But the book lacks balance, and the warnings of crowds, bumpy roads, and scams far outnumber the good points. This, combined with my experiences of being a white female in Sri Lanka, made me more than a bit wary of trying to get anywhere beyond walking distance. So I spent a lot of time cooped up in the house, and finally I just couldn't take it any more.

This morning, Meg and I decided to brave the bus system so that we could get to Ambalantota, a near by town about 15 minutes away. The Rough Guide had few kind words about the buses, but really they're quite handy. The rates are extremely cheap ($.30/per person round trip) and as long as you're going to a town, it's pretty easy. There aren't many roads, so generally you get on the first bus you see that is going the way you are. A conductor will find you and take your money in exchange for a ticket, and they'll always have change, unlike the three wheelers that run around. The buses can be very crowded, but they'll get you where you want to go.

We walked through Ambalantota to the computer store where we picked up a flash drive, some blank CDs, and a power strip. Then we walked back through down, stopping in a few shops, and caught the bus home. No big deal, and now I feel a lot more confident about trying to travel further to some of the historic sights around. So maybe on Monday I'll be a bit more adventurous. So the moral of the story is that the Rough Guide people are wimps.

One of the really frustrating things about Sri Lanka is that although the heat is sweltering, there are very few places to get cold drinks. Most of the time, the bottles are room temp. No one seems to own ice trays either. I don't know why. Maybe they just don't like cold things. It's a pity. I've been craving a Thai iced tea ever since I got here, and even if I can find the tea, I don't know what I'm going to do about the ice.

Tangentially (Tim, if you're reading this, stop saying that word because it rubs off on the rest of us).... I haven't been able to find Thai tea in the States. The restaurants must get it from somewhere, but the biggest supermarkets don't seem to carry it. If you know where to get some, please tell me.

The frogs in the shower have gotten a bit voyeuristic lately. In particular, one of them likes to hang out on the shower knob at night, so when I go to shower, we have a bit of a negotiation. The frogs are very cute, but they're not doing a whole lot to reduce the mosquito population. And the lizards really need to get cracking on this fly issue. Clearly, they're not eating enough.

One of my coworkers, B., decided to start copying some DVDs for me, which is great. Meg and I have gotten into the habit of watching them when we get homesick. Trouble is, I wasn't able to get any blank DVDs today to return the favor. Yesterday, however, I brought in my USB game controller, and I showed it to B. in conjunction with my Street Fighter Alpha 3 ROM. I've never seen someone's eyes light up like that before. So then the whole office was playing Street Fighter and getting a kick out of it. I think that the way I'll repay B. is by downloading a few emulators and a bunch of roms so that he can play after I leave. The roms themselves are platform independent, and it's easy to find PC emulators. So now all that remains is the controller. I may have to ship one when I get home. I don't know where I would find it here.

Everything else is cheap, but hardware is jaw droppingly expensive. It all has to be imported, and there isn't much of a market beyond the business sector. People here have never seen Apples before. The IT guy at the e-learning center thought I was running Vista, and I don't think he ever really understood that it wasn't Windows. B. asked me if it was OS/2. How someone might hear about OS/2 and not OSX is somewhat puzzling to me, but hey...

I finally got to do some yoga last night. I used one of the upstairs rooms in the house. Yoga has never seemed that strenuous, but it takes on a whole new dimension in 85 degree heat and humidity. I imagine this is what bikram is like. It's...different. And concentration is very hard when you're carefully balanced on one leg and you have to keep swatting mosquitos. So this morning I woke up and was all sore. I didn't even do the full routine. I was supposed to do everything twice, and I only did it once. Tonight I'll try again.

The IT guy here just called us all in to a room where we had a video conference with a class of kids in Kandy. Full (if very compressed) video and full sound. It was really neat. They sang and danced and we watched. The internet connection is flaky here, so we kept getting disconnected, but overall it worked very well.