A two bus, six hour journey landed us in the city of Kandy, the last capital of the ancient Sri Lankan kings. It is also home to one the most holy sites in Buddhism, the Temple of the Tooth Relic, which possesses one of the Buddha's teeth. The city is Western style as a result of the city being used as a command post in South East Asia during World War II. The city surrounds a beautiful man-made lake. For the first time in Sri Lanka, we saw dozens of other tourists around.
One of the biggest turnoffs we have been regularly exposed to is the locals hawking their cheap goods. Kandy was no exception. The streets are filled with flowers to present at the Temple, popcorn to feed the fish in the lake, and sorts of fruits and other edibles. The issue isn't that they are selling their product, but the fluctuation of prices for foreigners compared to locals. Often times the price is doubled or even tripled. Tuk tuk driver will often quote even higher. For this reason we decided not to enter the Temple. Even though the price was $10 per person, it is free to enter for the locals. It feels discriminatory to operate this way and leaves a bitter taste in our mouth. On top of this, the Buddhists at the Temple, and all over Sri Lanka, are well-known for cruelty towards the elephants they dress up and parade around for entertainment. We refuse to contribute to this. Instead we chose to take a gander from the outside
We realized that we had been on the constant move for the past eight weeks. With the exception of Cape Town, we hadn't spent more than two nights in a single place. A break was desperately needed. A bus in the morning took us back to Negombo, back to the Michael Jackson themed hotel, back to familiarity.
Three days of resting, exercising, watching movies, working, studying Spanish, and resting so more were exactly what we needed to catch our breath.
Here we are now, in Negombo, relaxing and mentally preparing ourselves for our flight tomorrow morning to the destination we have looked forward to the most: Southeast Asia.
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