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Sri Lanka PTR - Part 7: Galle

gavin

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Here we go again then. I’ve been putting this off since I got back over a week ago despite having f**k all to do at work. However, since I know that everyone is desperate for a report on the theme park Mecca that is Sri Lanka, here it is.

A couple of people from here have already been, making this a basic-bitch trip on my part, but they didn’t get creds, so there’s that.

Colombo

Despite landing at 1am, the airport was a f**king nightmare and took ages to clear. There were just loads of people arriving there for the Christmas Holiday and a disorganised mess to get to the immigration counters. I think it was around 3am by the time I got to the hotel, which was lovely, pretty cheap for the quality and in a fab area.

The next day was spent walking in a huge circle looking at stuff. I’d intended to get taxis/tuk-tuks to get between places, but the distances between each bit weren’t that far and the weather was surprisingly really cool.

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The Red Mosque was fab, right on a busy street and tucked in between regular fugly buildings.

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Around the same area:

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It funny how, when it’s the first day of a holiday in a new place, the ridiculous crowds make a place feel “vibrant” and “energetic”, but when it’s taking me almost 10 minutes to make the 3-minute walk from the metro station to my flat on the way home from work, I want to stab every c**t in the face.

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To be fair, the rest of the city, including the area immediately surrounding my hotel, wasn’t too crowded at all. It was just this one area around the mosque thanks to it being a main thoroughfare and having a bunch of markets in the area.

This tower is very new, and now apparently the tallest structure in South Asia. I saw it lit up at night as well (from a train, so didn't get pictures), and it looks amazing, but I never went up it.

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More stuff. All very nice.

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It was all seeming relatively normal, but then this happened:

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Yes, it seems that you can hire a Sri Lankan Mr. Bean impersonator to officiate your wedding.

There was a big museum nearby, and I was going to pop in to pretend to care about their old s**t so that I could use their bogs, but it was closed. No idea why: holiday or summat.

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This temple wasn’t on the cards – I was heading to somewhere nearby and it jumped out at me, so I had a quick look. It was nice.

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The nearby shopping mall was under the same company that has one elsewhere with a cred, so I popped in. No luck. I didn’t go out of my way at all since it was just there on the lake I was heading to anyway.

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The lake (whatever it’s called) was nice, with a fair few animals around considering it’s right in the middle of the city.

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From there, it was back around to the hotel area via the sea front. Not really much of the “beach” that it’s labeled as, but it's a nice area.

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I’ve kept this relatively brief and not massively picture heavy, but I got a lot covered, probably walking a good 15km from start to finish.

I really liked Colombo. Because I’m clearly a massive racist and "they're all the same", I was expecting it to be more like a big Indian city, but it wasn’t at all. It was much more chilled out (apart from the area around the Red Mosque), less stressful, and a lot less crowded in general.

Parks in the next bit. They’re obviously going to be amazing, so that’s something for you all to look forward to.
 

Hixee

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Sri Lanka has been bobbing around for a year or two on my "possibly this year" list, as you're not the first person I know who's been and enjoyed it*.

Rather like that Red Mosque though, that's great.

*Colombo only, so far, I know. :p
 

gavin

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Sorry to keep everyone in such suspense. I intended to get the second part of this hammered out a few days ago, but couldn’t be f**ked.

The parks here were an “if I’ve done enough the previous day” sort of thing since they’re pretty far out of the city and don’t have much to offer. I started off by having to go to some travel agent’s office to pick up a train ticket for the following day. It was supposed to open at 10, I rocked up about 10:45 and it wasn’t open. The lazy c**t showed up at 11, and the ticket wasn’t even there. It got delivered to the hotel later that day, but still. Ugh.

This first park was very, very unlikely to happen at first since there’s a only a big apple there, but I had the rest of the day free and realised after getting to the travel agent that Pick Me - a local version of Uber – was cheap as s**t. It took about an hour to get there and cost me about £6-7.

Leisure World

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This looked very promising:

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There were various packages available, but I saw that the basic entrance ticket, at a whopping £1.20, also included 2 rides. I only wanted the solitary coaster anyway, so that worked out well.

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It was only a small place, but was quite pleasant really.

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The water park looked ok.

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But I was obviously here for this beauty, A Beijing Shibaolai big apple.

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But, what’s this?

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YAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS!

RCDB, very wrongly, doesn’t list them, so they’re always a surprise when they pop up. I’ve shown them in trip reports before, but usually either just sitting there because they’re SBNO, or just sitting there because the park has been empty and I’ve been the only person to ride them, but here they are in their full glory:

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I got one go from my cheap ticket, but then had to buy ride tickets for the other 4, taking me around an hour to get all 5 done. The ride ops were quite confused, especially when I was being demanding about which colour I needed (“I tried the yellow one already” – “They’re the same, Sir” – “NO!”), but didn’t make it a problem. I don’t think I’ve seen them from Bejijing Shibaolai before, or if I have, I haven’t noticed.

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So, I spent longer here than I thought I would, but the +1 turned into a +6, so it was all worth it.

It was onto Pick Me again (no cars for a while, which was worrying, but as soon as one popped up it was there in a few minutes) and another hour up to another park.

New Saniro Dream Paradise

This place promised two creds, so was always the more likely of the two parks to bother with.

I came in through this beautiful entrance plaza:

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This place pissed me off big time. They have different prices for foreigners, which is just f**king gross. It happens a lot in Asia with big tourist sites and temples and s**t, but that’s understandable; they need money for upkeep, but they should be available for locals to access at a reasonable price (or free) since it’s their stuff. I get that and have no issue with it. For an amusement park though, it’s just money-grabbing bulls**t. The only other place I can think of that does this is Siam Park City in Bangkok, and they can f**k off as well.

I didn’t want any of the packages – all more expensive for foreigners – just a basic entrance ticket and then I’d buy the two ride tickets I needed. At £2, it wasn’t expensive, but that’s not the point. It was 5 times the price it should have been, which is f**king disgusting. They get no foreign visitors anyway, so ripping off the tiny, tiny number they might get isn’t even a decent, regular revenue stream; all they’re doing is pissing people off for a few pennies every now and then. Idiotic.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the dump.

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Crappy powered dragon:

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The Jungle Mouse was pretty good for what it was. No idea who makes this one, but it was smoother than most and seemed perhaps a bit bigger, too.

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I left via a different exit, which is completely superfluous given the size of the place, and ended up with the same Pick Me driver to take me back to Colombo. He’d been hanging around and hadn’t had another fare in the 20 minutes I was at the park. There were a bunch of buses outside which I assume were heading back, but I wasn't doing that.

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So yeah, f**k that place.

All in all, not a bad day really I guess. Despite some long distances, the travel was easy, cheap and comfortable. The first park was nice enough, with no bulls**t price gouging and a bonus set of rainbow shuttles, so I finished with a +8 when I was expecting a +3

There’s more to come, mostly culture s**t, but there was another cred as well. In the meantime, you can all book your tickets to New Saniro Dream Paradise, or go and shame them on their Facebook page. Up to you really.
 

Hixee

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All in all, not a bad day really I guess. Despite some long distances, the travel was easy, cheap and comfortable. The first park was nice enough, with no bulls**t price gouging and a bonus set of rainbow shuttles, so I finished with a +8 when I was expecting a +3
What it's all about really, innit?
 

gavin

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I can’t be bothered with this, but I can be even less bothered to mark a pile of dreadful writing exercises, so here it is.

After Colombo, I took a train to Kandy, which isn’t that far away, but took a while since the trains are slow as f**k. It was all quite pleasant though. After I’d booked it, the travel agent emailed to ask if I wanted to pay a few extra dollars for some upgrade to some “luxury” carriage which had been added to the train since I’d booked.

The white colonialist carriage was like something out of an Agatha Christie novel and was quite fab:

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The journey was all very nice as well:

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Kandy’s not a very big place – well, at least the bit that’s worth bothering with - being focused around a lake.

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Temple thing. I hadn’t planned to go in on that day, so was dressed scandalously in shorts that ended a few millimeters above the knee. Luckily, there was some guy out front selling overpriced sarong-type things, ready to rip off scantily-clad tourists. I could’ve just popped back to the hotel since it was only a ten-minute walk away, but parted with 3 quid instead.

The Temple of the Tooth, as the name cryptically suggests, has some old tooth from the Buddha in it.

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I had a bit more of a walk around the lake, which had some nature and stuff.

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Surprisingly for such a small place, the shopping mall (itself not very big at all) had an indoor/outdoor kiddy park.

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CRED:

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I didn’t really need the special offer, especially since they sent it round a few times anyway.

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They were quite excited to get a foreign visitor, so I let them send me around multiple times rather than do the “once is enough thanks; just need the cred” thing.

With that coaster, I had completed Sri Lanka (there’s probably some other stuff somewhere though), or so I thought. Later in the trip I stumbled across something that will no doubt shake the world of coaster enthusiasm to it’s very core, so stay tuned for that a bit later.
 

Hixee

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All looks rather pleasant, that.
Later in the trip I stumbled across something that will no doubt shake the world of coaster enthusiasm to it’s very core, so stay tuned for that a bit later.
What a cliffhanger - you know how to keep us coming back!
 

gavin

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Some culture stuff in the next few installments.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but a lot of places on this trip had been really busy with local tourists. I usually stay around Asia for Christmas, which is usually not a problem at all, but Christmas is a big holiday in Sri Lanka, which I hadn’t really expected, but could have found out really. Kandy had been heaving, and the next couple of days were a massive pain in the arse because of tourist numbers as well.

I’d originally looked into doing the next couple of places using public transport, which looked easy enough, but I realised that the crowds would be a problem and that I wasn’t poor, so opted to just hire a driver for the day.

Sigiriya

This was a good 3-hour drive north of Kandy, and is one of the “must-do” places in Sri Lanka. It’s an old ruined city on top of a rock, and was all very nice apart from being stupidly, stupidly crowded.

It didn’t seem too bad around the base of it.

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But then there was the climb up.

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F**king vile. It would have been a lot faster if there was any semblance of moving in an orderly fashion, but it’s South Asia, so there wasn’t. Instead, it’s just a constant push and shove all the way. Looking at the positives, the climb seemed easier than it actually was since it was moving so slowly.

There’s a flattened out bit before the final stretch to the very top.

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The actual top area was fab and definitely worth the crap to get to it. It was also surprisingly quiet.

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I went a bit apes**t with the uploads, so here are more pictures of the same:

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Getting back down was much better than getting up, apart from the final load of steps going to/from the peak. Too many people were just being complete f**kwits and doing that grab-the-handrail-and-step-down-sideways-one-step-every-thirty-seconds thing. If you’re not good with heights, you’ve got no f**king business climbing up something like this. It would also serve you better to get down quicker if you’re scared instead of lengthening the agony by being so f**king slow. Morons.

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Back at the bottom then. The whole thing took around three hours. If it hadn’t been so crowded, it wouldn’t have taken half that. So yeah, highly recommended, but I wouldn’t go anywhere near it during a holiday period.

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Heading back into Kandy, I stopped off at another place. These two always seem to be done on the same day by most people.

Dambulla Cave Temples

I took the gamble of driving past it on the way to Sigiriya, thinking that a lot of people would hit it first on the way up, and this seemed to be the right thing to have done since it was fairly quiet by mid-afternoon when I hit it on the way back south, while Sigiriya was still getting an influx of people as I was leaving there.

It was another pretty horrible climb uphill. As the name suggests, it’s a series of temples in caves. I like temples. I like caves.

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From there it was another couple of hours drive back to Kandy for the night.
 

Benenen

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That climb to the top looks horrific. I had a similar experience climbing St Peter's in Vatican City where it was shoulder to shoulder up narrow stairs and very claustrophobic. The view from the top looked worth your ordeal though.

Do the Komodo Dragons roam freely or do you have to go far off the beaten path to find them? They look utterly terrifying, are they aggressive and hissy?

Enjoying the report, it's interesting to see a country I know little about so cheers for that.
 

gavin

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^ They're not komodo dragons. Komodo dragons live on/around Komodo Island. There's kind of a clue in the name.

The first one in the earlier post was a water monitor. The second one was a bengal monitor. It depends where you see them, but if they're hanging around where there are a lot of people, then they're not bothered at all.

Water monitors are really common over South and South East Asia. I've even seen them in theme parks before now. They're very big and potentially dangerous I guess, but they don't tend to attack if you leave them alone. You don't need to go out of your way to see them though; they just pop up anywhere near water really, even if that's lakes/ponds in or near cities.
 
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gavin

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Next bit, starting with some light reading:

I was supposed to be taking a train from Kandy to Ella, billed as “one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world”, which I’d booked months in advance. Ella itself wasn’t really on the cards, the “journey being more important than the destination”, or some other such Lonely Planet bulls**t.

Anyway, a week before the trip, I got an e-mail saying that I didn’t actually have a ticket on that train since they were sold out. It turns out that there’s no actual live online booking for trains in Sri Lanka. You book a train and pay for it, then, when the tickets are available, a travel agent has to physically go and buy the tickets. Because it was a ridiculously busy period, there were no tickets left by the time the travel agent got their arse into gear.

I went to the train station as soon as I arrived in Kandy to see about getting a ticket. As expected, the reserve tickets were all sold out. There’s always an option for unreserved tickets – you will get on the train – but given how busy Kandy was, I was pretty sure it would be a horrible experience with little to no chance of getting a seat for the 5-hour ride. Plus, I had luggage. Staff at the station confirmed that the last few days had been horrendously busy and that that wasn’t likely to change until into the New Year. F**k that then.

So, I was in Kandy with no train ticket to get to Ella. I considered sacking Ella off completely since it was the train journey I was more interested in anyway, but the hotel had literally just taken payment and it was still on the way to where I was going next, so I stuck with it. Glad I did.

There were some ticket touts - yes, really – flogging train tickets outside the station, but at ridiculous prices. I ended up just using Pick Me (the local version of Uber) to drive me down there. One really good feature with Pick Me is that you can prebook really long car journeys. The three-and-a-half-hour drive to Ella cost me around 30 quid and mostly followed the same route as the train anyway, so I got to see what the fuss was about from air-conditioned comfort rather than hanging out of windows with dreadful backpackers.

Have a picture:

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Rant over.

Ella

Almost rant over.

My “hotel” wasn’t actually on a road, so I had to lug luggage along some train tracks for 5 minutes to get to it. It was f**king fab though.

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There were only two rooms, and I’d got the more expensive one on the higher level which was still only around US$50. The views from the balcony were amazing, but the best thing was watching the peasants gazing up longingly as they trudged along the train tracks to whatever backpacker hellhole they were staying in.

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It was early afternoon by this point, so I went straight out, following the train tracks into the main “town” and then heading up some hill I’ve forgotten the name of and can’t be arsed to look up. Little Adam’s Peak?

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The first, and only, experience with ****ty weather decided to happen right as I hit the top though. It started massively pissing down and didn’t ease off for around an hour. It got better after that, but it was still raining to some extent for the rest of the day.

Climbing back down then, piss-wet through.

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Side note: Most of the buses in Sri Lanka, not that I got on one, look a lot like this:

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One of the “must-see” attractions here is some old bridge. Most people get there either by following the train tracks or getting tuk-tuks to one end of it. I was going to do that, but noticed some footpath through the jungle from where I was, so took that. Some fairly expensive shoes got f**ked up good and proper.

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But then you approach the bridge from this angle, with no other people around. It was a moment.

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Down to the bridge then.

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It’s all very nice. Not gonna lie, growing up 5-minutes from a load of similar-looking, Thomas Telford s**t, which is actually loads older, there was a bit of a “Is that it?” attitude, but I get that it’s cool to see something so old and British in the middle of the Sri Lankan jungle.

I hadn’t planned on it, but a train was about to cross (only a few a day), so I got to see that without working my whole day around it like others there had seemed to. It’s a train crossing a bridge, so whatever.

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I walked back along the train tracks to my place, which took quite a bit longer than expected, but was pleasant enough.

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Nothing to do with Uber:

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Oh well, a bit late now.

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Back to the room.

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It totally pissed down all night, so it was really noisy, but in that quite nice, “nature” way, and there was loads of noise from frogs all night. Plus, a family a squirrels were living in the roof (not in the room itself, but between the roof and metal sheeting above it) and there were a bunch of geckos scuttling around. None of that bothers me in the slightest, but I imagine it would put others off.

I’d planned to wake up early and go out walking a bit more, up to some waterfall, but decided to just chill out on the balcony for the morning instead.

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The original plan to get to the next place was to use a couple of buses since I was in no real rush that afternoon (stuff to do the next morning, but not on that actual day), but I decided I wasn’t doing that when very long car rides were so cheap and convenient, so I did that again, getting the driver to stop off for a few minutes at the waterfall I skipped that morning, not the same one I could see from my room.

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Considering it was only supposed to be a place to sleep after the amazing train journey that never happened, I loved Ella and could easily have had another day there, but I had other s**t to get to.
 

Hixee

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Wow that looks great. Jungles and mist are a great combo.

Beautiful. Might even say it beats the creds. ;)
 

Niles

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WOW looks amazing, I would love to see it for myself, really interested to what comes next
And 10/10 bridge
 

gavin

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Got to hammer this out before I go away again on Saturday. After Ella I got another car/driver to get to the next place, Udawalawe National Park. Like I said in the last bit, I had worked out how to do it by bus, and had all day to do that, but couldn’t be arsed in the end.

Udawalawe

I had a safari booked for the next morning, so had the afternoon with nothing to do. Up until now, the hotels had all been great, but this one was s**te. There’s literally nothing in the area apart from the national park, so it was all a bit boring. I had to read a book and everything.

I only realised the next day that I had a terrace area out the back. Luckily the door was locked since I’m sure this tree would’ve killed me in my sleep otherwise.

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The safari was decent, and probably would’ve been a lot more impressive if I hadn’t done a “proper” one in South Africa a few years ago. The park is mainly about the elephants – there’s a fairly big population in a comparatively small area compared to most places, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to see some. A couple of them got ridiculously close to the jeep – touching distance, but I didn’t – which was cool considering they’re wild. I had my own jeep and driver/guide, and it cost f**k all, so was well worth doing.

A bunch of pictures in case you don’t know what an elephant looks like:

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I got back to the hotel for around check-out time and got a car/driver down to the next place. I’ll shove that in now.

Mirissa

This was a beach resort on the south coast. I always like the idea of chilling on the beach, and then I realise that it’s really f**king boring, so after the first afternoon, I booked a whale-watching thing for the next day.

I’d only just done one recently in New Zealand, which was amazing, but this one was cheap as s**t and it gave me something to do the next morning.

5 hours and all we saw was a few dolphins. Ugh. No pictures of that. Back to the beach in the afternoon then.

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You get the idea. All very nice admittedly, and a good choice if you’re into that whole beach holiday thing: large main beach, smaller beaches just off that, a lot of beach bars/restaurants etc.

One final bit of this, which I’ll (probably) get up tomorrow.
 

gavin

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Final bit, with an exciting twist. Oh, the suspense…

Mirissa was only about an hour away from the final spot of the trip. Again, there were public transport options. Again, I couldn’t be bothered to use them.

Galle

The city as a whole is pretty big, but I just stuck to the Dutch Fort area, which is a small peninsula in the south of it. It’s all really cute, but very touristy. The middle of it is all restaurants, boutiques and coffee shops, and you can walk around the edges of the whole thing along the old walls.

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All very pleasant, but not very big and doesn’t take a lot of time. I had a lot of time the next day – train out of there around 4pm - and was realising that I really didn’t need it. At the top of the peninsula, there’s a patch of open ground and a cricket club.

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YAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSS!

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At this point, it was impossible to tell if it was just being set up, or just being taken down. The last time I accidentally stumbled on a travelling fair was in Mexico, the day after it had closed (3 unattainable creds).

Continuing on to more old fort stuff.

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And then down to the field to see what was going on.

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How exciting! It wasn’t open at that time, but a stage at one end was clearly in the process of being put up rather than taken down.

More walking around then.

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After it got dark, I headed back to the cred to see what was going on.

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And the whole, massive fair was open. I was there quite early and it was quiet, but there was a fairly big stage set up at one end with posters of people who I assume were quite well known. I didn’t stick around for any shows though. Just got the amazing bonus cred and f**ked off.

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See, wasn’t that worth sticking with the report for?

The next day consisted of a lot of hanging around. I checked out of the hotel, left bags and just hung around the Dutch Fort area for a few hours, then got a slow-as-f**k train up to Colombo (not too far away) to hang around in a coffee shop for a few more hours before getting a taxi up to the airport for a 1am flight, which meant ringing in the New Year sitting at a departure gate, which was less than fabulous.

General thoughts then. Sri Lanka was fab on the whole. I got a fair bit done and still had a couple of days to chill out and not do much. I’d definitely recommend going, but would definitely avoid the Christmas Holiday. It was actually mostly fine; the only real problem area with crowds was Kandy/Sigiriya. Even Galle, which is very touristy, was pretty chilled.

Clearly, this wasn’t a coaster trip, but I managed to complete the country’s 4 listed coasters, plus add SIX unlisted things as well, so a nice +10 when I wasn’t really planning on bothering with any at first was decent enough.

The end.
 

Hixee

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This has been a good one. I do enjoy your cred reports, but these ones focused on the other stuff (not creds, ew) are great to read.

Plus, a +10 (expected +4) is pretty good going!

Thanks, as always! :)
 
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