Wednesday, April 10th
For the next 5 weeks or so we will be seeing a big part of the world we have not seen before. The next three days we will be stopping at three Sri Lankan ports beginning with Trincomalee on the northeast side of the island.
Offically, the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, up until 1972 it was known as Ceylon. Because of its deep harbors and strategic location on the "Silk Road" the Portuguese built a fort at Colombo (which we will be touring) in the early 1500's and controlled most of the coastal areas of the island. Then in the mid 1600's the Dutch defeated the Portuguese and controlled the island. At the end of the 1700's Great Britain took control. Ceylon proclaimed its independence in 1948 with a new constitution. The Sri Lankan civil war lasted for 26 years and finally ended just 4 years ago. Up to 100,000 people were killed during this time. The 2004 Asian tsunami killed 35,000 here.
The island consists mostly of flat to rolling coastal plains. In the 1800 and 1900's Sri Lanka had a plantation based economy producing rubber, cinnamon, and Ceylon tea. From 1948 to 1977 socialism took over and the plantations were nationalized and dismantled. Although today they still export tea, sugar, coffee, and rubber, there has been an increased importance in food processing, textiles, telecommunications, and finance. The main economic sectors today are tourism, tea export, clothing, rice production, and other agricultural products. The population of Sri Lanka is now over 20 million.
As I said, today we are visiting the major port city of Trincomalee. The Bay of Trincomalee is renowned for its large size and security. The beaches are used for surfing, scuba diving, fishing, and whale watching. Our 4 hour "Highlights of Trincomalee" tour left the dock at 9am. We drove over some very rough roads once outside of the village for about 40 minutes on our way to the ruins of an ancient temple. The roads were dirt roads and very dusty. The temple dates back to the year 300 BC and not much was left of it. I did find the drive quite interesting. I did not know what to expect here in Sri Lanka but it is definitely a 3rd world country. It reminded me of some of the west African countries. Our guide said because of the 30 years of civil war nothing was done to build up the infrastructure and the country is very poor and relies a lot on foreign aid. The homes were very basic, what I would call, shacks. In most of our ports you could find an area of nice homes but not here. Our other two ports here in Sri Lanka, where we are stopping, are on the west side where the Portuguese, Dutch, then English settled and built up. It will be interesting to see how it looks as compared with Trincomalee. You can tell it is very impoverished as the dogs are skin and bones. The domestic animals of an area tells me a lot about its standard of living. Our next stop was for a refreshment break at one of only two hotels here. Probably not a hotel we would ever stay in. Then we were on to a old Dutch fort where there was also a Buddhist temple. We walked about 500 yards up a street (for lack of better term) to the entrance of the temple. We did not go in as you had to remove your shoes. It was still another 100 yards and pavement (if you can call it one) was dirty and very hot from the sun. We headed back to the bus. I was surprised with how comfortable our bus was. It was even air conditioned!! Our guide spoke English but was difficult to understand. You never knew where you would see cows. Some were just walking along the roads, some were in fields, and some calves were in the downtown streets.
We arrived back at the ship at 1pm. Ship sails at 3:30pm. We called room service and had chicken ceasar salads for our lunch. The internet has been down all day so far. I at least got today's photos downloaded in both laptops and ready to put on blog if internet ever works. We are going to gym now. Tonight we are dining in Prime 7 (steakhouse) with Bert & Lani at 6:30. We want to see the production show, "Just Swing", after dinner.
Last night was the special Indian dinner for the 80 of us who are doing the full 78 day cruise to London. We sat at Connie, the executive concierge's, table with our friends Joe & Allison and Tom & Kathy. Tom & Kathy were on our 2010 world cruise too. I did not care for the food but it was a lot of fun.
I will put today's photos on a separate posting as internet now if very slow, but working.
