A festivus for the rest of us

at the moment i'm in stockholm catching up with some emails and work. it's the first time i've had a bit of free time for the last couple of weeks to aquaint myself back with what the world has been up to.

last week i spent a week trekking around sri lanka with Alicia. i'd never been fond of hot places, and at the time it felt a bit sticky and uncomfortable but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and spending a few days in berlin and stockholm with the biting winter I can say:

"hellcheese, you were full of shit" and i wouldn't mind spending heaps more time in hot places (putting it in an understated way). i've uploaded some photos of sri lanka to the gallery and there are a few more to come. after orienting myself with colmbo and dropping some of my kitbag off at a local hotel, i boosted off to the highlands and stayed at kandy, which is one of the bigger cities on the island. it's nestled amongst a bunch of tea plantations (and most likely marijuana plantations too) so the ride on the bus for three hours was pretty interesting. i only had a few hours of daylight available when i arrived so just wandered around soaking up the atmosphere and exhaust fumes around the city (CO and heavy metal poisoning is probably the biggest danger on the island). there were a few whities that i bumped in to kandy but not as many as down on the beach a few days later. the local beer - Lion as well was a tasty larger and the local spirit, arak also didn't taste too bad.

i spent a day in colombo charging around on tuktuks and catching up on some kip, but to be honest there's not much to see there. the places of interest are almost all located out of the capital. The following day Alicia arrived back from abu dhabi (she had to head back there for work) and we wandered down to unawatuna for the next three days. It's a really nice beach town about 3Ks down the road from Galle (pronounced Gaul), which is an old Dutch fort from the 1700s. as per expectations, most of the other travellers on the beach were mainly dutch and german eating pseudo-european food. for all that, i couldn't find a nice schnitzel though. we did heaps of buggar-all and a few token activities (100% expectations acheieved).

this is starting to sound like a travel diary, which i'm trying to avoid. Moving right along...once i'd finished with sri lanka, i met ash in berlin last sunday and charged on another walking tour on the coldest day we were there. I'm sure it was character building stuff though....the sauna and massage felt like a just reward for the cold.

We'll head down to amsterdam on the 26th and i'm going to wonder what i'll do with myself for a few days. i might head down to hamburg and strasbourg and visit a few people i haven't seen for a while. emile's keen to come on a travelling mission as much as he's also keen to have some r&r in amsterdam. we'll see.