Right now it’s 10:32am and we’re waiting to board our train…
Inside the station…
Waiting…
110rupee (~sgd1.10) for my ticket hehe
Our plan is to travel from Colombo Fort to Aluthgama to experience and enjoy the view, then our driver will pick us up from the station and drive us to our next destination.
We bought tickets for 2nd class but turns out…. second class is not anything like we expected.
How it’s like inside the train….
Quite crowded, and we were all standing.
Then there’ll be peddlers selling fruits, drinks and fried snacks walking up and down the aisle like that.
It’s kinda annoying coz the train is really crowded and we have to make space for them to cross. But I guess they have to make a living too.
The doors of the train are open and people are just standing like that. Quite cool eh hahaha doubt I’ll ever dare…
A bit of the scenery… but after a while it’s meh haha. You’ll see people’s houses, cemeteries / tombstone, their way of life.
The second part of the trip was better.
My sis and I moved to another carriage where the rest of the family are at, and I made friends with this 5 year old girl there ☺️
Say Hi to Charuni!
She’s travelling with her parents and two brothers, her being the middle child.
It’s so easy to play with her actually, just little games like scissors paper stone and even tapping of my feet is enough to make her laugh and excited hehe.
There were other entertainments on the train, like a group of uni students singing and drumming to raise funds, and an old man playing the wooden flute. We had fun dancing again, or at least, I tried to get Charuni to dance with me ha!
I finally relented and bought snacks from the peddler, coz if not now then when right?
It’s some fried dhal which I shared with my family and hers. Food is really the way to someone’s heart haha!
At the end, her dad suggested for us to exchange address. I was quite wary coz I’m so kiasi dunno what would they do with my address hahaha.
But I rmb my Sri Lanka friend in Singapore who told me that the people in his country are very warm and welcoming.
They would usually hug when they meet each other, unlike in Singapore which he wasn’t used to the “unfriendliness”.
I decided to just write down my name and address for them, no harm right?
Alas, after writing down my name, we have arrived at our station and I had to get down hurriedly.
All I left for her was my name and perhaps the good fun we had. And a blurry lousily taken photo with her younger Brother who was squirming away haha.
All I got from her was her name and this photo. I also rmb how her Mother taught me some of their language too, like how to address Brother, Sister, Father and Mother.
I could only rmb Sister, which is ah ka 😅
Our next stop at a sea turtle conservation center.
A sea turtle egg! It’s quite heavy but looks like a ping pong ball.
One of their sea turtles, probably only 3 years old?
Me with a baby turtle. Probably only 1-2 day old. So cute!
And when you lift them up, they really wriggle like an awkward turtle. 🐢
A very rare half albino turtle.
An even more rare full albino turtle. Apparently it’s like one in 40,000.
After lunch, we went on another tour.
When we got onto the boat of the mangrove river tour… hahahah no life Guards for us when other tourists all had.
Into the groves….
The breeze and the rhythmic bobbing of the boat up and down was perfect for an afternoon nap.
There are 21 islands in the mangrove river, and we alighted at one of them to visit a cinnamon farm.
We watched how from the fresh cinnamon tree bark, they scrap off the first layer and discard it, then thinly cut the second layer to be dried afterwards and become this cinnamon we commonly see.
They also showed us how coconut husk is dried and be shredded to make these ropes. They’re very very tough!! We tried making these ropes the way they do – by kneading the shreds together between your two palms – but we just couldn’t do it like the locals do.
After the tour, we continued on to Galle, where our airbnb is at too.
On our way, we past by the sea, for which the land facing it had been devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
We stopped by the tsunami monument in remembrance of all the lives lost, of which 18 belonged to the family of my driver.
I felt so sad just hearing him retell the story, when he happened to visit Colombo with his Wife and mother, leaving behind his 59 year old Father at home.
Who knew that would be his last goodbye?
He pointed to his primary school too, just beside where his house once stood.
Today, it’s just a patch of empty land with trees, and remnants of the brick houses.
Sigh it’s so sad, I could only tell him “I’m sorry..” I could never imagine the pain.
Sunset at the Galle Fort…
We were a little late so the sun has already set.
When you Brother feels left out and here’s how to incorporate him into the heart hahahah!
We drove to our airbnb, and we saw some fish market along the road!
We got down and shopped for some seafood for tonight’s dinner.
Long story short, my mum and her pattern strike again hahaha.
This time round, it’s super epic.
So she chose the snapper fish she wanted and the fishmonger started cleaning it and what not.
Suddenly she shouted !!
And we were like what happened?
Turned out he wasn’t cutting the way she wants. So being the capable and a bit OCD mum… she went forward and…..
(Tbc tmr goodnight!)
innerchan 