First day of motorcycle trip: Hanoi to Pu Luong

Today was 11 hours on the road - with lots of breaks. It took over a couple of hours just to get out of Hanoi - it's actually a huge city. As soon as you're out of the city, however, the spectacular  scenery begins. The characteristic steep hills of Northern Vietnam.

We passed through the town of Hoa Binh and then climbed a pass on the way to Mai Chau. At the top of the pass there were many stalls selling food like roasted corn, with spectacular views of the valley below.

After stopping in Mai Chau for a while to have lunch and get out of the heat, we continued on. At one point we were riding through swarms of butterflies. Amazing. I stopped at a spot where they were particularly dense, to take some close pictures.

Then we started climbing again into the Pu Luong Nature reserve. Rough road dotted with simple villages and amazing scenery.

We stayed at the Pu Luong Retreat. It is a combination of cabins and homestay, and we stayed in the homestay part. We had a traditional dinner with the owner and manager of the retreat.

There are a lot of homestays in Mai Chau and Pu Luong. You stay in a tradtional structure which is a large open area upstairs for sleeping, with open the family who runs the homestay in adjacent quarters.  

Arrival in Hanoi

I arrived in Hanoi Sunday night. It was dark by the time I was in the car on the way to the hotel, and just as we left the airport, it started pouring rain like a tap was turned on in the sky. The storm had the strength of a thunderstorm or more, but went on for a couple of hours. Even with the windshield wipers on high they couldn't keep up. Traffic slowed to a crawl. When we arrived, the car parked just outside the hotel door, but even going the few feet from the car to hotel got me totally soaked. I kept thinking "Denis, Denis... what are you thinking, planning a motorcycle trip during monsoon season?"

The next few days were busy with preparations for the trip, dealing with things that came up, and drinking beer with the guys who are on the trip. It turns out there are only four of us, including Denis. The other two, Claude and Luc, are also old friends of Denis'.

Hanoi has a special character, especially the old quarter which was where we were staying: the narrow streets lined with trees, tangles of electrical wire, tall narrow buildings of musty colonial architecture, people eating pho from vendors on the sidewalk, and motorcycles.

I'd been to Hanoi before so I had no urge to go sightseeing, but it was interesting to take in the feeling of the city while we were walking around shopping for things that we needed for the trip. I also got a haircut right on the street.

Something that came up was that a filling in my teeth fell out, so I had to go a dentist. Luc lives in Laos but he comes to Hanoi to go to his dentist, so I went there. Serenity International Dental Clinic. The equipment was completely modern and they did a through job. All for $60.

We picked up the motorbikes from the rental company today and tomorrow we head out first thing in the morning.

Batticaloa to Colombo

Rather than a 10 hour car ride from Batticaloa to Colombo, I booked a flight on a local airline.

Originally it was supposed to go directly to Colombo, but the day before the flight I got an email saying that the departure time had changed, and that it would go through Kandy. It turned out to be quite lucky for me, since the scenery on the flight to Kandy was amazing. I think this is one of the best ways to see the country.

As we approached Colombo it became cloudy and rainy, and the flooding from the recent heavy rain became visible. Once I landed in Colombo a colleague of Celene's who is based there, Timothy, showed me around Colombo for the rest of the day. We went to the museum, the floating market, and a shopping and restaurant area called the Dutch Hospital Precinct. Colombo feels like such a big modern city compared to Batticaloa. There happened to be a street food festival going on when we where there, with live music and lots of people.

I noticed that the young people often spoke English with each other, even when they were obviously locals. I asked a friend of Timothy's about it, and he just shrugged and said it was a Colombo thing.

There is an amazing amount of contruction in Colombo right now, with cranes all over. Lots of foreign investment I think. The city will probably look very different in just a few years.

Batticaloa wrap-up

Waiting for my flight to Colombo, and tomorrow I fly to Vietnam.

Here's a just a few more observations from my stay in Batticaloa. I didn't really search for things to do. After all, it's a pretty small place. But there are some interesting aspects to the place that you see just from staying here.

One thing is the religions. Batticaloa is in the Tamil area of Sri Lanka, which is predominatly Hindu, and there are some amazing Hindu temples.

There is also a sizable Muslim population. In fact one area in the south part of town is almost all Muslim, and it feels like a different plalce. There are several mosques scatterered around all of Batticalao. This is one downtown.

The biggest surprise for me however was the number of Christian churches. There are a lot of them. I don't know what percentage of the population is Christian, but they certainly have a lot of real estate.

The biggest sport here must be cricket.  After school you can see boys playing in a field.

Finally, since this is a mainly Hindu area, you see cows wandering the streets.

Passikudah

Passikudah is a beautiful beach area only about one hour north of Batticaloa. It makes a great weekend trip. We stayed at the wonderful Jetwing resort, and basically spent our time walking on the beach and hanging out at the pool.

More Batticaloa

This week has been spent looking around Batticoloa. It's pretty small and you could really see everything in a day or two. Having a bicycle really helps. Even though Batticaloa is small, walking anywhere in the heat would have been really tough.

I checked out things like the large public market downtown.

There is a little park in the center town called Gandhi Park. From there I got a good shot of someone fishing.

In town, just behind Gandhi Park, there are several blocks of streets filled with shops. This is the typical look of a street in Sri Lanka.

The past couple of days have been cloudy, which lowers the temperature and is much more comfortable. I rode the bicycle a little further from the center of town, to Lagoon Park. On the way there were many mangrove trees in the water.

One evening we went out for dinner with Celene's landlords and their three children. The mother has kind of adopted Celene and has been very helpful.

Batticaloa first full day

In the morning we went to Celene's office. It has air-conditioning!!!

One of the staff there lent me a bicycle so I was able to explore Batticaloa on my own for a while. I first went to Kallady Beach. A nice long beach with light sand. A popular hangout with locals, but the land drops too steeply under the water so it is too dangerous for swimming. There are also a lot of fishing boats lined up along the beach.

This place was hit hard by the tsunami in 2004. There is a temple near the beach that was rebuilt after the tsunami, but some of the damage was retained, as a testament to the power of the tsunami.

By late morning it got extremely hot. I went to Celene's office to cool off for a bit, and we went for lunch. She has a favourite lunch spot around the corner that serves curry and rice. A different thing about restaurants here, is that they sometimes bring other items to your table that you didn't order, but you are only charged if you eat from them. 

I waited for late afternoon and ventured out again. It was still very hot. I rode over to the Dutch Fort. This is an old fort that was originally built by the Portugese in the 1600's, and then taken over by the Dutch. 

Right now it houses government offices, but you can take the stairs up to the top of the old wall and walk around. 

After Celene finished work we went for dinner with a nice couple: Viki, who Celene met through the office since he does some IT work there, and his wife Veena. 

A day off, and travel to Batticaloa

We took a day to just stay at the hotel and enjoy the facilities. It was a very nice place, called Jetwing Lake, just outside Dambulla.

In the morning we used the bicycles there to ride around the lake. We passed some houses on plots of land and the children always waved 'hello' as we rode past. In the afternoon we just hung out at the pool and enjoyed the scenery.

The next day we travelled east for about 4 hours to Batticaloa, where Celene is working. As we travelled east, the weather became hotter and the landscape drier. 

I'm staying in Batticaloa with Celene for the next two weeks. Batticaloa is a small city on the east coast, and there are nice beaches nearby. The city itself is built around a lagoon and you often see someone fishing.

I will be seeing much more of 'Batti' over the next couple of weeks.

Sigiriya Rock Temple

Today was very hot, and stayed hot all day with no rain. Once in a while a cloud covered the sun and provided some relief. We caught a tuk-tuk for the 40 minute ride from the hotel to Sigiriya Rock. This is large rock out-cropping that juts out from the green landscape, and there are ruins in the grounds around it and on the rock itself. The ruins are from when it was a seat of government around 500 CE, and then was used as a temple for several hundred years after that. It was lost to jungle after that for a long time, and then discovered in the 1800's. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and probably the most famous destination in Sri Lanka for tourists.  The entrance fee was scandalous, about 40 dollars Canadian, and we dithered for a while before sucking it up and getting tickets.

We went through the gate and walked through the ruins of the gardens that once surrounded the rock.

To climb the rock you start up some stone steps, and then up an enclosed, circular metal staircase going straight up. You get to a small cave that has paintings dating back to about 600 CE. After the cave you go down another staircase for a bit, and then walk through a passage that traverses the face of the rock. This passage is between the rock face and a smooth wall that was built, called the mirror wall, that is covered in graffiti from hundreds of years ago.

This takes you around the side of the rock, and some more stone steps takes you to a landing, called the lions paw after the remains of what once a large lion statue. From here the last metal staircase takes you to the summit.

As some points along the route there were signs saying 'Wasp Attack Area', which made me quite nervous since the wasps are huge and I am allergic to them. I was anxious to get going. By this time, after the climbing in the heat, both Celene and I are soaked with sweat.

We get to the summit, which has ruins like the remains of a water cistern, and has amazing views of the countryside and the grounds below.

There were several groups of school children, who were happy to come up to us and say 'Hello, how are you', and when we asked someone to take a picture of us we invited them to join us:

We made our way back down to the parking lot, running the gauntlet of vendors, and found our driver. It was still very hot so we just spent the rest of the day at the hotel, hanging out at the pool.

Dambulla Cave Temple

Another couple of hours north of Kandy, first through more tea-growing region, and then into the sprawling flat agricultural area of Dambulla. We arrived at our hotel just outside the city. After settling in we caught a tuk-tuk for a 10 minute ride to the Dambulla Cave Temple. This is a short climb to the entrance to several large caves.

Each cave is full of Buddha statues that are eerily lit up in the dark of the cave.

From the caves we continued on the path downward to the Golden Temple, with a large golden Buddha statue and  a museum. 

This is a picture from behind the statue, with Sigiriya Rock in the distance, which is where we planned to go the next day.

We got to the tuk-tuk just as the rain started. It is same type of weather pattern here as we've seen recently: nice in the morning and heavy rain in the afternoon. But today it really poured, with lots of lightening, for the whole afternoon and evening.