Tamil New Years

On last evening in Trinco Nixon was in town.  He invited me to go out for dinner and drinks to celebrate my time in Sri Lanka.  We met at the Green park hotel and first set about arranging my transport to Columbo for the following day.  Then we went to a local bar that Nixon often visits when he is in Trinco. It was a cute little place that had a “jungle” theme (I say that in quotes, because it was a very poor version of a jungle theme).   We shared a lot of beer and discussed my experiences at the clinic, his family, the differences between Western and Eastern culture, etc.  It was a nice way to finish my time in Sri Lanka. 

The next morning Nixon insisted on bringing me to the bus station.  He wanted to make sure I had someone to wave goodbye to from the bus.  I thought that was very sweet of him. As my backpack was tossed into the back of the bus (I cringed as this was being done, because I saw it was amongst boxes of fish and rice… which would be inevitably tossed about while on the bumpy roads…. Yummy, fish juices… agh), I hugged Nixon goodbye and thanked him for everything. 

I arrived in Columbo dusty, and tired from my 7.5 hour bus ride. It was not the best bus experience, as I was crammed into the back corner seat of the bus. However, I was thankful for actually having a seat.  Some people stood up for the entire ride.  For more than half of the trip I sat next to a man who insisted on sleeping all over the people next to him.  At one point he was almost lying on the man’s lap next to him.  I thought I was safe, but then he changed positions and then started leaning on me.  The next thing I knew his head was on my shoulder, and his hair was on my neck.  I had to constantly shrug my shoulder in an attempt to get him off me.  This did not work and finally I succumbed to having a strange man’s head on my shoulder.   This was the second time I had a man resting his head on my neck while on one of my bus trips.  The last time was on the bus from Jaffna to Trincomalee.  At the time, I thought nothing could be worse, but in fact it was better when he was sleeping than when he woke up.  While awake he tired to get me to buy him a Canadian visa, get my phone number, my email address, facebook, work for me, get me to find him a job in Canada, etc.  He was relentless.  When he finally left he gave me his business card and told me to call him.  

When I arrived in Columbo I was lucky enough to have a place to stay.  My Swedish friends gave me the keys to their apartment, as they had gone home to Sweden to get married, but insisted I use their place.  They live in the downtown core of Columbo, which was very handy.  It was so nice to come to an apartment where I could wash my clothes in a washing machine (7 weeks of hand washing clothes in bathroom sinks is not fun), make my own food, and relax at the roof top pool.

Unfortunately for me, it was Tamil New Years when I was in Columbo.  I thought this would be a fun time to see festivals or parades, but nothing was going on.  They don’t even serve alcohol during this holiday, and all the bars, restaurants, stores, etc are closed.    

A few weeks prior to my arrival in Columbo, I had met an American guy in Trinco.  I met him while staying at the Green park hotel.  We had dinner together one evening and arranged to meet up in Columbo to celebrate New Years. Gabriel was an extremely interesting guy; he went to ACAD (art school in Alberta), where he studied all sorts of very creative and interesting things (so cool).  I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Gabriel and the conversations we had. Gabriel lives in Portland, where he designs and makes puppets for the film industry (soooo cool).  He had come to Sri Lanka and rented a motorcycle to tour around on.  He showed me his trip pictures, talked about what it was like to drive a motorcycle in Sri Lanka and we talked about life as a Westerner in the East.  It was great fun.  Since there wasn’t any alcohol or bars open for New Years we celebrated over fresh mango juice and some yummy street food (I had vegetable kotthu, and he had some noodle dish).  

sorry folks... not really that many pictures from Columbo.