In what was our first foreign excursion with the kids in what seems like years, we made a nine day trip to Sri Lanka over the Christmas-New Years break. Crystal planned a great trip for us visiting lots of different places. She arranged a van and driver, Chandrasiri, who met us at the airport and acted as our guide for the entire trip. He was a Buddhist himself so our arrival on Christmas day didn’t put him out at all. Christmas is a holiday in Sri Lanka and we were surprised at all of the decorations that were up. I guess there is a pretty substantial Catholic presence in the country from the Portuguese.
We left Dhahran at sunrise on the 25th and landed in Sri Lanka just as the sun was setting. Nora had a cough and was under the weather as we left home and the three hour night drive up winding roads had me thankful that I pilfered all of the air sickness bags from our Gulf Air flight. Our first morning we were up early to visit a major Buddhist shrine, the Temple of the Tooth which is supposed to house an actual tooth of the Buddha that was rescued from his funeral pyre and passed down through the ages. There were few tourists and Chandarasiri guided us into areas of the Temple that we never would have gone if we weren’t being led. Even with a guide some of the areas were a little touch and go especially with the kids. They open the tooth relic shrine which houses the gold dome which houses the tooth (you can’t actually see the tooth) only briefly twice a day and there was a mad crush of pilgrims making offerings. Chandrasiri took us right through the middle of it. It was pretty amazing to see but most of my attention was focused on not letting Nora get separated or trampled.
Throughout the trip each of us carried hand sanitizer everywhere we went and even the kids were good about washing and hygine. Aside from the colds that Kai and Nora brought with them we didn’t come down with any illnesses. Even after the unexpected New Years celebration eating lake fish and “village pork” on the shore of lake Uda Wallawe while downing coconut arrak. More on that in a later post.
