Samadhi Centre Kandy

The only thing planned for today was attending a wedding of a good friends daughter.<br><br>It was really cool to watch the whole ceremony take place and to meet some more locals, even more entertaining was the drive back to our guesthouse by Uncle Lal, the crazy uncle every family has!<br><br>See me in person for the details! <br>

... total factory working process performed by a scaled working model of the factory.<br><br>The museum also featured many artifacts used by the workers in the offices and there were photographs with detailed memorabilia about the lives of James Taylor (the first tea pioneer here), followed by none other than Thomas Lipton. A cute pair of small wooden shops sold varieties of tea from the different growing areas of SL (Nuwera Eliya, Ova, Fibula, Kandy and Ruvuma &#8211 ...

... legs/put hair on Andrew's bald patches etc...the hair removal cream worked - the guy tested it on a patch of Andrew's leg! Next we visited the Botanic Garden, which was quite spectacular. Lots of monkeys. Public ladies loos had a spider under the seat - now I know why you're supposed to check before you sit down! Back in Kandy ...

... magnificent office towers. Everyday there are limited free tickets for a visit to the Skybridge, the bridge in between the twin towers, and I started queuing up quite early - as did many other people, so I finally got my free ticket for a visit about two hours later. In the meantime I wandered around the huge shopping mall and in a bookshop. The view from the Skybridge was nice although not so spectacular because the bridge is not even halfway up these 452 m high towers ...

... died he was cremated - but before that happened his left canine tooth was removed - and that is the relic that is now housed here - hmmmm. The temple has suffered a few terrorist attacks - including one in 1998 when Prince Charles was visiting. Because of the repeated attacks security is very high - if you visit here take as few items in with you as possible! I got a lengthy search as my pack was quite full that day. Calluna and Hippo were both ...

... station is the stop for Pinnawella. It offers the usual gauntlet of rickshaw drivers and outwardly friendly touts who will help you - for a price. Soldier on, there is a local bus which passes the orphanage. We caught it from the junction with the main Kandy/Colombo road after unfolding ourselves from the crush of the Negombo to Kandy bus. A rickshaw from there asks Rs250 but might accept Rs150. Don't believe the claim that the next bus isn't for an hour and you'll ...

... in Colombo. Like wine, tea comes in an endless variety of forms and flavours. Tea is first categorised by its place of origin (Assam, Darjeeling, Ceylon, etc.) and by its basic type, either fermented (black), unfermented (green), or semi-fermented (oolong) - most tea in Sri Lanka is black. The basic grades of Sri Lankan tea are Orange Pekoe (OP), signifying a tea made with ...

... later the train was rammed, people hangin outa doors and all sorts. i had 3 fellas practically on me, and everytime the train jolted i got a face full of sri lanka cod piece. not nice. im sure one had a ****in semi on too cos it felt fairly robust against my collar bone. im sure if you were of the bottom persuasion it wud be a real treat at 7am, 3 strappin young lads tryin to do the sex dance with your face, but for me whos not quite so keen on man love it was quite a torrid time.

... handmade candles &amp;insense and Odell's own brand clothing line called embark which donates money to stray dog projects) and then at 7pm it was time to make the return journey to MEF. The roads were a total nightmare due to the upcoming public holidays, as we sat at a totally gridlocked junction and listened to every car horn blaring consent I could not help but think the whole thing looked like a scene from a disaster movie when all the residents of a US city are trying ...

... hired three scooters and headed off into the jungle to see if we could get lost and find something different to amuse us. After an hour of riding into rural country, and almost running over a monkey, we came upon a bird lake (the feathered ones). A local took us in his outrigger canoe and across to the other side of the lake where an outcrop of huge boulders lifted up over the jungle and gave an amazing view of the surrounding area. Apparently the locals go there to relax, roll up a ...