March 6 – At Sea-Malacca Strait, Andaman Sea, Gulf of Bengal. Again I forgot to mention last night's entertainers, and that was a big oversight. Too much touring I guess.
The group was named Ukebox and it was as unique as its name. Five young British men playing various forms of Ukulele. There were two standard ukuleles, one bass ukulele he calls a Bassulele, one slightly larger ukulele and one kazooulele, a standard ukulele with a kazoo taped to the end. They met at Liverpool University and decided to form a ukulele band to perform in various venues at the university. They posted signs and ads giving a time and date for their first meeting. Only the five planners showed up. So they formed this group and started performing at weddings and parties around town. They grew in popularity and not their on ships. The bassulele player dances while he's playing. The kazooulele acts like you would expect a kazooulele player to act. Everyone has his own little eccentricity except the leader. His thing is that he has no 'thing'. They play all sorts of music and it was a fun and very entertaining show. I hope they do another.
More or less a regular sea day. Trying to catch up on my writing and naming my jpg files.
We did eat in the Pinnacle Grill as we have another free one. We were joined by Al and Jan. Al's the Protestant clergyman on board. It was a nice evening of good conversation.
March 7 – At Sea-Gulf of Bengal, Indian Ocean. Almost caught up with my writing and my file naming. Spent today mopping up and getting organized for our next port. I guess things are heating up in Egypt because they just told us we will not be stopping in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. We'll skip that port and go to Corsica instead a few days later. We've been to Corsica and it's an interesting place, lots of Napoleon Bonaparte sites and memorabilia.
Our entertainer was Claudia Tesorino. You'd expect her to be Italian with that name but she's German. She plays three saxophones, soprano, tenor and a tiny one that I can't remember the name of. It's straight like a soprano sax but much shorter. I'm not sure I've ever seen one before. She's very good but her dress was criminal. Wrong color, wrong fabric and wrong design. Other than that it was fine. The color was easy to identify as bad, as was the design. The reason I say that it was made from the wrong fabric is that the drape was awful. It did absolutely nothing for her. That said, I hope she performs again. She was really that good.
March 8 – At Sea-Indian Ocean. Completely caught up with my writing and every one of the 4,639 photo files is titled. Yea!!
Had to laugh this morning when, at breakfast, I overheard a table of ladies talking about how awful Claudia's dress was. I guess it wasn't just me. It looked like it might have been expensive but it just wasn't right for her. She's an attractive lady and her clothing shouldn't obscure that.
March 9 – Colombo, Sri Lanka (Ceylon) – Day 1. When we were here in 2005 the civil war with the Tamil Tigers was still going on. The ground fighting was mainly in the north, Tamil area. The south was safe except for the city of Colombo. There the rebel terrorists were setting of bombs with a nasty frequency. We avoided that by getting out of town, first day on an elephant sanctuary, second day to the old royal capital of Kandi. Kandi is a sacred city to both sides of the conflict and is high up in the mountains so it was seen as safe. These days I don't think HAL ships would visit like they did then.
So with the war being over we decided to stay in Colombo this time and see the city. Today might be the hottest one yet, not temperature wise but exposure. We are going on a 4.5 hour walking tour of Old Colombo. It will be led by Mark and Ruvi Forbes, a married couple that have been doing walking tours in Colombo for three years and have lived here for a long time.
In order not to kill us completely the ship is transferring us across and out of the port to the edge of Pettah in the old city. The Pettah District is one of the oldest areas in the city. It's located just east of the current city center. This old marketplace is still functioning. The streets are narrow and trucks can't get in so the goods are moved about on long but narrow two-wheeled vehicles that look like a section of scaffolding set on an axle with small tires. They have two posts to keep the thing almost level when standing but are short enough so the device doesn't have to be lifted very high to get it rolling. Like a wheelbarrow but with a flat 8 foot by 20 inch slab instead of a large bucket. They load them with goods until you can't believe they won't topple off when the hit a bump. Mark told us that if we hear, "Sied, sied, sied!" shouted to move to the edge of the street because a very heavy load is coming at you controlled by only one small man and it has no brakes.
At first we did not experience this as we entered an old market building where vegetables, fruit, spices and dried seafood were for sale. It's an open air structure so it was no hotter than outside. Lots of great pictures in here but there are so many people and the aisles are so narrow that it's difficult to get any perspective. Everyone in the market was very friendly, wishing us good morning as we added an extra level of lookie-loo snarl to the normal knot of customers trying to buy their wares. Smiles all around. That's quite a change from the reception we sometimes receive in souks. In many of them the hostility is quite palpable. Just to be perfectly clear, the Muslims in Indonesia and Malaysia don't call their markets souks, and the reception there is very friendly as well.
When we left the market building we entered the domain of the push carts and tuk-tuks. Lots of hectic activity as the cart-men are paid by the load and they want to move as many kilos as they can. They move their enormous loads quickly both up hill and down. Fortunately the grade is not very steep anywhere in the market. Uphill they are working hard to keep load moving because if they have to stop there's a lot of inertia to overcome to get it moving again. Downhill they are struggling to keep control because if they lose it there's going to be a lot of damage done before the thing stops. Cries of "Sied, sied, sied!" are ringing out very often and you don't look around to see if they mean you, you just step to the side.
This area is a market also, with stalls that open onto the narrow street. There are textiles and tailors, side by side. Electronics, shoes, clothing, spices, pasta, anything you need can be found here. As one of HAL's port lecturers used to say, "The place is a demented ant hill!" He wasn't far from wrong. The sounds and smells, mostly pleasant, wash over you in waves. They are an ever changing reflection of the activity around you. Sometimes we'd stop in a little cove-like area out of the ebb and flow of the streets around us. You can just close your eyes and let your mind create images to go with the sound. I like to listen to classical music with my eyes closed (No, I'm not sleeping!) and let the music, like the sounds in this place, become an almost tangible presence in your mind's eye. And no I haven't been drinking. Try it sometime.
Just load up some baroque or romantic classical music and sit comfortably with your eye's closed and stop thinking. Just let your mind go. This does not work with pop music, or rock and roll or anything with lyrics, at least not for me. Peruvian flute music and some ethnic music works. Nothing jarring.
Slowly we are leaving the Pettah and entering the colonial district. There are remnants of the Dutch and English in Colombo. The Dutch period was in the 1600s and the British followed them in the 1700s so anything from the colonial period is old. In the transition zone we saw the red and white striped Jami Ul-Alfar Mosque. On the same street we passed a Hindu temple, a Buddhist temple and a Christian church. They all seem to get along here. We passed the Khan Clock Tower, built by and Indian family from Mumbai, but then Bombay.
We have been walking for only about an hour and a half but it's very hot and there hasn't been much shade. Our guide has arranged for us to take a break at the Grand Oriental Hotel. It's been a hotel since colonial times and used to be the place for the rich and famous to stay when they visited Sri Lanka. I was a bit worried that it might be a bit like the Best Exotic Magnolia Hotel from the movie of the same name. My fears proved unfounded. The building may be old but it has been well maintained and is very well air conditioned. The old colonial aura has not been lost. It has been maintained but changed as little as possible. It is the sort of place where any minute you expect to see Humphry Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet or Peter Lorrie come down the stairs babbling something about a Maltese falcon. Atmosphere, almost worth as much as air conditioning, but not quite.
They had a tea set up for us on the fourth floor. The stairs were dark wood and the stairwell dimly lit, a very dangerous thing with D's eyesight so we opted for the elevator. I'm sure they were added after the 1700s but still during the colonial period. They were the oldest elevators I've seen in a long time. They were both small and slow.
The fourth floor tea room has large windows facing the old port and there was the ms Rotterdam. Best view I've had of her this cruise. It was a nice cool place to have some tea and let our core temperatures drop a few degrees. They put out some really good shortbread cookies that were a hit with everyone.
Most of the colonial buildings we've seen so far had been British. When we departed the hotel and headed back into the heat we went down several very small streets to look at some Dutch colonial buildings. We same upon a fairly well preserved former Dutch mansion, now being used by the Sri Lankan army. Just half a block away where the small street intersected a larger one was the original building of the Bank of Ceylon. It was decorated with tasteful elephant heads above the archways of its veranda. There were circular plaques up high on the side to Australia, China and Great Britain. Not sure why Australia is there but the original trade was between here and China. The ships carried opium to China and silks, porcelain and tea back to Britain.
We turned onto the larger street. To our right was the colonial governor's mansion. The prime minister of Sri Lanka still lives there but the newly elected one says he wants a simpler home. They are currently discussing making it into a museum. After turning left and continuing a short way we came to a lighthouse-clock tower. When first constructed it was at the edge of the city along the waterfront. Now, thanks to land reclamation it's a long way inland and the lighthouse has been turned off, but since it's in the middle of the financial district now the clock is still functional. The works for the clock were made by the same man who designed and installed the clock at the British Parliament, the so called 'Big Ben'.
In another very attractive older building, this one from 1911 they have installed the Economic History Museum of Sri Lanka. The building's most striking features are the Corinthian columns that form a circle around the atrium. The chandelier that hangs in the atrium has a pole that's 5 stories tall. The circular atrium is open all the way up to the glass dome atop the building. That's a long way because the first floor is twice a tall as a regular floor. The pole it hangs from is intersected on each floor to insert another chandelier for that level of the atrium. A very cool design. The exhibits are mainly historical and current coins and bills of the country. Of course the old currency had the name Ceylon on it.
Our last stop was the Dutch Hospital. It hasn't been a hospital for a long time. It has been restored and is now an upscale mall with restaurants and shops. One place in here I would like to eat but it's only open for dinner and reservations are hard to get. It's named The Ministry of Crab and that's all they serve. Of course they cook it 20 different ways but it's a crab only menu.
The owner was there and brought out a 5 pound blue crab for us to look at. I asked how much it would be if I ordered it for dinner and he said about $65US. That's not bad when you consider how much a 1.5 pound lobster costs in the US.
The little café was open just across the courtyard so we sat in the shade and had a Lion beer, the local brew of Colombo. It was crisp, cold and refreshing.
Then it was back to the ship for a shower, lunch and some well-earned air conditioning.
Our entertainment for the evening was a Sri Lankan folkloric group. They performed several dances from each of the three main areas of the island, the north, the highlands and the lowlands. The dances were high energy and the costumes colorful. It was a great evening.
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