Sun sea sand and sleep
Could this be the laziest holiday ever? I hope so. A few years back the idea of spending a week at the beach every day would have been anathema. But somehow it becomes more and more attractive, with the bus pass years rapidly approaching.
To be fair, I did spend a week in Bangkok, but this was bookended by weeks at Jomtien in Thailand and Negombo in Sri Lanka.
So a blow by blow account of this holiday won’t make much of a blog. Instead I’ll mention a few highlights and give you a link to the best of the pictures.
New Year’s Eve in Bangkok’s Silom Soi 4. Always good fun but I’m in danger of becoming a cliché!
Going out with the fishermen in Negombo, on a traditional wooden catamaran, entirely wind powered – and these things can move fast! Probably this will be the last generation to use them – motor boats are already appearing on this beach. It was amazing to see the way the boat twisted and moved with the waves, the outrigger having lots of give – a level of sophistication that probably goes back a thousand years or more.
The elephant orphanage at Kandy. Every day the elephants come down to the river to bathe, in family groups that they have built largely themselves – mostly they are young who have lost their parents through illness or poaching. There were over a hundred elephants there, and you get a sense of the different personalities and great variation in appearance – tall and short, skinny and fat, spotty trunks and plain. And a general sense of benign tolerance of the tourists flashing away around them.
Assiduous readers will remember my entry on weird signs that I have seen on my travels. I’m afraid my favourite sign at Wat Arun in Bangkok has been updated, although it’s not much clearer!
To be fair, I did spend a week in Bangkok, but this was bookended by weeks at Jomtien in Thailand and Negombo in Sri Lanka.
So a blow by blow account of this holiday won’t make much of a blog. Instead I’ll mention a few highlights and give you a link to the best of the pictures.
New Year’s Eve in Bangkok’s Silom Soi 4. Always good fun but I’m in danger of becoming a cliché!
Going out with the fishermen in Negombo, on a traditional wooden catamaran, entirely wind powered – and these things can move fast! Probably this will be the last generation to use them – motor boats are already appearing on this beach. It was amazing to see the way the boat twisted and moved with the waves, the outrigger having lots of give – a level of sophistication that probably goes back a thousand years or more.
The elephant orphanage at Kandy. Every day the elephants come down to the river to bathe, in family groups that they have built largely themselves – mostly they are young who have lost their parents through illness or poaching. There were over a hundred elephants there, and you get a sense of the different personalities and great variation in appearance – tall and short, skinny and fat, spotty trunks and plain. And a general sense of benign tolerance of the tourists flashing away around them.
Assiduous readers will remember my entry on weird signs that I have seen on my travels. I’m afraid my favourite sign at Wat Arun in Bangkok has been updated, although it’s not much clearer!
posted by Keith at 5:15 pm
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