Kevin's First Impression

I am going to start a bit further back in time than Nancy.  So far our story has been one that has taken us from order to chaos.
Taiwan is, of course, the order that I speak of.  Everything there seemed like it was full of order, despite the seeming chaos of the streets and the train and MRT stations.  I'm sure there is an order to things in Sri Lanka too, but we have yet to find it.  I don't want to seem as though I am obsessed with order, after all what you are about to read is anything but orderly, but it has been more than a little disconcerting to leave Taiwan and come to Sri Lanka.  I am not sure if this is why I have felt so poor since we left Taiwan, less charitable towards people and places, not to mention myself, so angry and under confident.  Perhaps it is or perhaps there is more to it than that, I don't know.  What I write will probably be unfair to the people that I observed and I am ready to admit that my perceptions of them was a result of the way I was feeling and probably doesn't really reflect what happened.  So with that in mind, read on.
When I woke up in the hotel that we were staying in in Kuala Lumpur (well on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, as close as we could get to the airport and still pay not so much), I felt awful, like we were making a big mistake in the plane ride we were about to take.  I also felt groggy, as with not enough sleep.  In this gloomy mood I helped Nancy pack our stuff, while secretly hoping that there would be a terrorist attack at the airport and all flights would be grounded.  The hotel provided "breakfast" which was coffee or tea and toast.  This is a common breakfast throughout Malaysia, we often had such a breakfast in many guesthouses during our last trip to Malaysia.  We did not have enough time to finish our breakfast as the shuttle bus miraculously arrived on time (we had booked our shuttle for 8, expecting, like most things in Malaysia, that it would be late).  I took my last sip of my Malaysian coffee and followed Nancy to the shuttle.  As I approached the trunk, Nancy was already loading her guitar and talking about music with the driver.  He frowned at me as I handed him our heavy bag and Nancy hopped into the shuttle; I guess I interrupted his conversation.
In the bus with us were two girls, either from Australia or England, who carried on an inane, insipid conversation the entire way to the international airport, where they mercifully got out.  There was also a Chinese guy who said nothing the entire way.  Nancy and I had a sporadic conversation about our past travels, though I mostly sulked.  We were to go to the LCCT, or Low Cost Carrier Terminal, where Air Asia flies from in KL.  The name seems fitting, not only for the airlines but for everything there, it all seems pretty cheap.
We checked our bag and got our tickets.  Nancy then went and got herself a McDonalds breakfast, while I guarded our table and sulked a bit more.  Nancy came back with the food (I drank the coffee, as caffeine is the last thing a nervous flier like Nancy needed before a flight).  She then did her best to cheer me up a little, as she was a little exasperated at how I was less than cheerful.  It helped to talk for a bit and I was cheered for the next while.
As we sat waiting for the plane I did some observing of the people around us, who were also, presumably, on their way to Sri Lanka.  There was a large group of older Japanese people who were chattering happily to each other.  Nancy and I agreed that if older Japanese people were going somewhere it probably wasn't half bad.  Of course, older Japanese people also have a lot more money than us…
Near the check-in there were two young men wearing those Muslim hats, I knew they were Muslim because with them was an older woman, by her shape (was she their mother or sister?) wearing a burka.  She was taking care of a child.  Even through the burka she seemed to radiate authority and the young men were clearly listening to her every order.  It was an interesting sight.
Closer to us was an Eastern European, or perhaps Southern European, woman with her child.  She was nervous, looking around constantly and she only seemed to relax when her husband returned, a squat well built man who appeared somewhat older than her.
A child behind us dropped a purple skittle and it rolled and bounce and then sat spinning right in front of us.  I sat mesmerized until it slowed and came to a shaky stop.  The humming biomass around us seemed insignificant and perfectly approachable as I watched it; the feeling did not last long.
The plane was an old Airbus A320-300 the same sort that I used to fly on back and forth between Yellowknife and Edmonton during my uni days.  It stirred memories both good and bad that I will not get into here.  Overall the ride was pleasant as Nancy mentioned and we did make our first Sri Lankan friend.  Well Nancy did, if it were up to me, we probably would not have.
As we began our final approach I began to feel that same as when I woke up.  The only lightening I felt was when we walked by the big sign in the airport that proclaimed: "Welcome to Malaria Free Sri Lanka" and went on to detail the ways which we could get a free check up if we had just come from a malaria ridden country.  It was a very proud sign.  And it was also relieving, as while we had read that Sri Lanka was malaria free and not bought any anti-malarial stuff (besides bug spray), it was nice to have it confirmed.
I coasted through the rest of the day doing my best to attempt sociability when I really was not in the mood.  I slept a bit in our nameless guesthouse, while Nancy got to know the people we were staying with, well the women that ran the place.
The twos things that I noticed while walked along the beach on that first day.  One was that the men almost always seemed to approach Nancy first when they were trying to sell us stuff.  I think this may have been because I had a permanent frown on my face though.  The other was that every person that came to talk to us were only interested in selling us something.  Some of them took a lot longer to get to their sales pitch, but they were always interested in selling something.  And they were persistent, they did not take no for an answer.  A simple "no thank you," did not always cut it with them, whether they were selling bracelets and other jewellery, clothes, a ride on a catamaran, a picture with their pet monkey or weed, we would be forced to talk to these moving vendors for a while if we wanted to politely get rid of them.  I hated it.  With a passion.  And I don't think this was just the mood I was in talking.  We could barely walk five feet without a "miss, sir, you want to buy…".  I was glad when we were off the beach and eating dinner.
Oh, I suppose the other thing that I noticed while we were in Negombo was the proliferation of Jesus.  According to the Lonely Planet the Negombo are was so thoroughly converted to Catholicism by the Portuguese that it is sometimes called "little Rome".  As I understand it, the Portuguese were very good at gunpoint conversions.  Still they seem to be pretty taken with Jesus in Negombo.  Many Negombans are even interested in moving to Italy so that they will be closer to the Holy See (I'm guessing that's why so many people mentioned Italy as place that they were interested in anyway).  There were a great many expensive and nice looking churches that we walked by on the way to the train station on the following day.  Jesus was also present on our (not working) clock in our room at the guesthouse.
For dinner on our first night we had curry at a restaurant.  I order beef, but got fish instead, which was fine, really, since it turned out to be quite tasty.  Nancy got a vegetable curry that may have resulted in her feeling sick.  Also attempting to eat in the restaurant were a portly couple who I originally took to be American until they spoke and it was revealed that they were Russian.  Whose English was apparently not up to the task of ordering.  As Nancy mentioned, we are very luck to have English as our native tongue, as, at least for now, everyone is using it as a lingua-franca.  Unlucky for older people from Russia though.  Also in the restaurant was a Sri Lankan guy about my age who looked like a Bollywood star.  He helped us get to the train station the next day and also told us that there were many Russian tourists in Sri Lanka and that he was trying to learn Russian.  Also, while the older people seemed pretty prickly and rude, the younger Russians were mostly very friendly (he was learning Russian from those who came to the restaurant).  We taught him how to say hello in Chinese (since there are many Chinese tourists in Sri Lanka too).
We slept poorly that night and morning found us staring at the largest cockroach we had ever seen, which was sitting high on our wall, and trying to go back to sleep.
We spent that day wandering about Negombo town and of course being touted more wares every five feet (but at least we were walking, so a firm "no thank you" usually won through.
That night Nancy was still not feeling well and slept early and I stayed up listening to Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson on my iPod, a great story, though not really having much relation to our travels.  The main character has the best name ever: Hiro Protagonist.  I felt better after listening to it and slept a bit easier for it.
The next morning we took a 3 wheel, driven by the lady who owned our guesthouse's son, to the train station.  I think its appropriate to say that our train ride from Negombo to Mt Lavinia is the worst I have ever had.  It is probably the same for Nancy too.  We arrived at the train station at about 6:30 in the morning and our train was scheduled to leave at 7:12.  It seemed pretty empty when we bought our ticket, but by the time 7 rolled around the station was packed with people.  We knew we were in trouble when the train pulled up, already full of people.  We forced our way on and ended up standing in the connection between two carts with our bags.  We were squeezed in on all sides by people, presumably commuting to work.  Mostly men people.  They were all mostly minding their own business, though some of the younger people gave us some pretty haughty stares.  I enjoyed this less than the touts at the beach.  Another thing that worried me, though there was no need for it on this train, was the fact that the Lonely Planet had a big section for women travelling alone.  It mostly detailed how detailed how women travelling on public transit could avoid getting groped  by less than sexually sensitive Sri Lankan men.  Of which there are purportedly many.  Nancy was pretty much out of the way of people in her little corner across from me and the only people who were too close to her were other women.  I was entirely ready to hit someone during this annoying train ride and I'm not sure that my regular self restraint would have stopped me if anyone had tried to something on Nancy.
On this particular subject and probably the reason that I have felt so irritable since arriving in Sri Lanka, I have noticed that men will happily talk more quickly to Nancy than to me (even when I'm in a good mood), which in general I have no problem with.  This happened fairly often in Taiwan and it never bothered me.  I did notice the appreciative glances that Taiwanese men gave Nancy (as Nancy often noticed the appreciative glances that Taiwanese women gave me, apparently), this also did not bother me, because, at least as I saw it, they were just that: appreciative.  Nothing more than that, not seedy, or sleazy or lusty (at least very rarely were they any of those in Taiwan; there are of course sleazes everywhere).  But in Sri Lanka I've found that almost all of the male gazes that I've noticed Nancy receiving have been of the latter kind.  I've never been jealous or possessive, but being here has perhaps made me a bit like that.  In the book "The Wise Man Fears" by Patrick Rothfuss, one of the female characters explains to her boyfriend and the main character the difference between appreciative glances and sleazy gazes and how a woman might appreciate the former (makes a woman feel good and is respectful), but never the latter (makes a woman feel like an object and is obviously not respectful).  I've taken that explanation to heart a bit that is essentially how I see the difference.  The thing is I can't be sure that I'm not falling victim to a cognitive bias.  After all, I did read about this sort of behaviour before arriving in Sri Lanka so I was primed to expect it.  I'm not sure.  For now though I'm spending our public transport time being rather wary.  Perhaps my views will change as time goes on, I will try to really interrogate myself before I come to too many snap judgements on the matter.  We will see.  So far though…
So after our packed hour and a half train ride (the last 10 minutes were not so crowded and we even managed to sit down for a bit) we got off the train and made our way to The Blue Seas Guesthouse which is a great place.  Nancy will tell you more about it.
We took a nap in the afternoon after a tasty lunch at a place called Casserole and watched the sunset, which was magnificent.  We followed this up by eating a meal on the beach and sampling a bottle of Lion Lager (its good).  By this point I was feeling pretty good, so even when the wandering band came along, played us a song and stood awkwardly waiting for us to give them some money, I did not mind (yes we did give them some money).  The evening seemed almost perfect except for our walk home, which was interrupted by a turtle.
Its not a bad thing to see a turtle, especially one laying eggs.  But surrounded by people smoking and taking pictures she seemed a sad sight.  She would wander around in front if the beach fronted guesthouse and try digging.  Her mouth would open and close in what appeared to be pain whenever she stopped.  Perhaps this was normal, we were told further up the beach that there were people collecting the eggs and putting them safely in hatcheries all along the beach, so we knew that turtles did come to Mt Lavinia.  Whatever the case, we did not watch long.