Olde Empire Hotel Kandy

... je vois des groupes de touristes a l'interieur, des vieux europeens, en short. Decide, je retourne a l'entree, pret afaire valoir mes droits. Et la ce sont deux autres militaires, grand sourire, qui me font rentrer sans probleme. Cool. L'interieur est tres beau, tres riche, et beaucoup de gens viennent ici faire des offrandes et prier. Il y meme un musee avec l'elephant qui servait aux processions, empaille pour passer a la posterite. Avait un audio guide qui m'expliquait le ...

... Lanka&#8217;s chief river) flowing on 2 sides, the gardens occupy 147 acres, with over 4,000 plant species.<br><br>The Orchid House contained some beautiful flowers, including the largest orchid in the world, producing flower spikes of 2.5m long! The flowering trees and arboretum were stunning. The Pride of Burma is particularly beautiful, with a row of them at the main entrance. The 20 ha arboretum contains more than 10,000 lovely trees! There were also more than ...

... I used couch surfing and found myself a place to stay in downtown Colombo. I hung out with this Pakistani guy who showed me around the clubs. He was a new guy in town too and was trying to get a business going in Sri Lanka. I was convinced that Pakistan was my next destination until I read the news about the Taliban taking over there.... Oh well next time! Oh ...

... hit open water we turned off the engine and were really sailing... but due to the lack of wind we were actually more drifting than sailing. After a tropical early evening shower the wind picked up big time and we had the wind in our sails. Inge likes to sail at night for various reasons, but at night it is a little bit more difficult to spot fishing boats or to be more precise, the location and direction of the fishing boats. In the early night I slept a little bit and after that ...

... restaurant above a supermarket - lovely mulligatawny soup for me. We did a little supermarket shopping and spotted our first penguin - penguin rice. The next stop was the Premadasas jewellery shop. It's quite upmarket. We get shown a rather blurry video about Gem mining and processing, get shown the workshop, they clean Maxines rings and then we browse. We eventually get a couple of pieces chosen and the haggling begins - Andy excels at this and ...

... has two shops and the lights are only turned on in these if a customer turns up. The auditorium attached hosts the much vaunted cultural show but it contains none of the fire-walking and other esoteric acts claimed in the publicity; now it is no more than a regular, if unchanging programme of folk dancing. Apparently the tooth kept in the great Kandy Temple is the only authenticated relic of Buddha in existence today which would be the reason it is a pilgrim destination. The ...

... when the policemen look younger -- something else when theyre armed with fully automatic weapons -- even the three wheeler drivers dont seem quite as rapacious as their Indian cousins, plenty of good mornings and happy new years and friendly offers of advice on places to stay (and presumably of commissions to be earnt) Headed inland to the green heart of Sri lanka today by way of the observation car of the train -- and well worth observing it was -- spotted bats ...

... we didnt realise was that we were hittin sri lanka at the **** end of monsoon season so we arrived to torrential rains and about 50 shitbags tryin to rip us off wi dodgy taxi rides.we got one for 15 quid to takes us 4 hours out to a town called kandy in the hill country of sri lanka so didnt do too bad price wise. kandy used to be the capital a few hundred years ago and its a pretty wierd place. i dunno why i found it so strange, it just wasnt wat i expected. it was ...

... elephants and small animals, an outside elephant examination area (you would need a flipping big table if we tried to put it inside!) a library and research area, on site laboratory an office. All off the buildings are separate but interlinked and have a balcony outside but the most amazing part is that they are all to be made of natural materials not an ounce of concrete or bricks in sight. The base will be made of local rubble, the walls by traditional clay materials. All ...