Kandy tooth temple

Visited the famous tooth temple today, it is where a couple of Buddhas teeth are, poor guy bits of him are spread everywhere, anyway had a guide, who wasn't too bad, actually easy to understand, explained the entrance, was a replacement as the Tamil Tigers, had used 3 try bombs to attempt to blow up the temple, I believe 18+ people died, which is a surprise as it was so soon busy...

Temple itself, was the standard Buddhist makeup, a little smaller than I expected, tourist get priority here... by passing the long long queues, to get a glimpse, (is only opened 5 minutes) a few times a day, there were hundreds maybe thousand + crammed in.. to see... westerns clicking photos, locals with there hands together..

Also visited a bazaar.. now have a Sri Lankan cricket T-shirt.

Have been able to use my visa here, my driver has run out of money for fuel, even tho I paid for the last bit, have an IOU for 13 bucks, bet he will forget that one haha.

On the way to Kandy

Near miss by a large truck Tata, set the pace.... honestly thought we were dead, pretty sure the truck got on to 3 wheels as it dovetailed towards us... single lane road... we had stopped to let him pass by...

Had another near miss 10 minutes later this time a smaller truck...

Anyway made it to Kandy... is a hill country city, population 1/2 a million...

Is famous for the tooth temple.. contains a couple of Buddhas teeth.

Anyway enjoy the pictures

Batticaloc

For the last couple of days I stayed at a home stay in Batticaloc, family and kids were amazing, mosquito's & bed..however needed some work...

Got lots of interesting bits of information about the area, how it was hit by the boxing day tsunami, and the problems with the late civil war with the Tamil tigers.

This was another part of Sri Lanka, that has just done nothing for me, the people are all friendly, but.... they seem to just have a one tracked mind...'money'... this was yet another place, where you get no bang... for your buck... more like highway robbery and guilt tripping money out of you.. at least this time it didn't go to the government... but still feel...  robbed... but, that has been this trip since the start...

Today... I was very tempted to end the tour... go back to Colombo, find a cheap flight back to India...and at least see something that will give me the wow factor...

Anyway here are some of the pictures, the tsunami effected areas were vast, with an estimated 400k dead in Sri Lanka alone...

Koneswaram Temple

Visited this interesting temple tonight very colourful, amazing outlook towards the sea, sorry about the lack of photos, is a no photo zone.

We're several spotted deer & peacocks in the grounds... also on the way there... there was a herd of say, 30-40 deer small spotted few stags, crossing the road, we had to move into the other lane... there were seriously not scared, and behaved like cows... and just ignored the car.... crazy.

Kanniya hot spring wells

First time I actually enjoyed something in Sri Lanka, and it only cost 50 cents..went in with the locals, shirt off...and got drowned!.... water, was a nice 35-40 degrees I guess, was very refreshing....

Sorry no photos with me and my shirt off 😉

Polonnaruva

Yet another over priced tourist spot, 25usd or 36.50nzd hell, I would be embarrassed to charge for it.... it's big, if your into seeing lots of old bricks.... this is the place for you.... I'm pretty sure it would have been amazing before it became a wreak... museum was interesting, but oooh no.. couldn't take photos...ffs, they had a really interesting model of one of the stupors with it being covered with another roof (wooden) would have been unreal... as the big ones a couple of days ago were 160feet high..

Irrigation seems to be a key thing here with the lake being man made, with thousands of channels directing water to the northern planes...

Another point of interest was the toilet system they had in use... basically filtered out the bad stuff from urine.. not sure what they did with the number twos...

Anyway... enjoy the photos, probably the highlight for the day was seeing the deer/elephants... rest of the day was hot expensive and painful (walking barefoot on shape stones)