Temple Wedding, Anyone?

Yippee. It’s our 11th anniversary. Eleven years since Anu and I got together. Guess where we celebrated it? …In the bushes, camping overnight with the kids!

It’s a long story. At the end of the day, we were exhausted and covered in dust, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. Pictures of this however will have to wait. (What? When have you seen me posting right after a trip? Haven’t even had time to catch up on sleep, let alone download photos from the phone, camera).

Meanwhile, here’re some unexpected temple wedding photos taken during our 2013 trip to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Colombo would’ve been a lot less interesting had we not bumped into these weddings. (Two weddings, in the same day!) See for yourself!




A wedding in progress, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo, Sri Lanka






No, we don’t know the couple. We’re just gate crashers. Too bad they didn’t give out door gifts. Then we’d have some cool Sri Lankan wedding souvenirs haha!

Gangaramaya Temple (but I could swear that our driver called it simply Gangarama) is a Sri Lankan Buddhist temple filled with odd stuff from all over the Buddhist world, such as Chinese deities like Guan Yin (the Goddess of Mercy) and Guan Yu, and Tibetan Bodhisattvas embraced in sex. (Yeah, you heard right! The Yab-Yum pose showing deities embraced in sex is common in Tibetan temples!) The architecture is a mix of Sri Lankan, Indian, Thai and Chinese (according to Wikipedia), but I see features of Burmese and Indonesian architecture as well (but what do I know?). It reminds me of the Buddhist temples back home in Malaysia! (For example, the Kek Lok Si Temple in Penang!)


Another wedding! In Gangaramaya Park, near the Gangaramaya Temple. Behind the trees, you can see glimpses of a fabulous little Buddhist shrine in the lake called the Seema Malaka. Unfortunately, all our photos of Seema Malaka came out overexposed, …thanks to yours truly, who was fidgeting with the camera settings right before, and forgot to set it back!


A humongous Bodhi tree in the Gangarama Temple – Buddhists are obsessed with Bodhi trees because Lord Buddha gained enlightenment meditating under a Bodhi tree. Now Bodhi tree temples are all over the Buddhist world as in Bodhgaya, India (where Buddha gained enlightenment) and Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka


Copied straight out of the stupas of Borobudur, Indonesia!


This temple is as much a museum as it is a temple, look at the vintage cars! On the right is Guan Yu, a historical Chinese general, who was later (many years after his death), worshipped as a deity till today


3 year old Justin inspecting the “babies” on the temple wall


An elephant and its mahout in the temple compound – how can posts on Sri Lanka not feature elephants?!


The inner sanctum, Gangaramaya Temple, Colombo


And here’s a view of Colombo that’s not in the vicinity of the Gangarama Temple – It’s taken from the road in front of Colombo’s World Trade Centre

Ayubowan!

Temple of the Sacred Tooth

Kandy Lake, and the Temple of the Tooth Relic (the pitched roof buildings at the back), Sri Lanka

I love festivals. Religious festivals or whatever. It gives me a reason to celebrate, and I don’t have to crack my mind for ideas on what to write about in the blog, hehe!

It’s Wesak Day! (OK, it WAS Wesak Day …when I started writing, ahem). Wesak (or Vesak) is a day commemorating the birth, enlightenment and death of Lord Buddha (…I wiki’ed it, OK?) In India, it’s called Buddha Purnima. I dunno what people do on Wesak Day, I just remember that every year in Malaysia, I’ll get a day off from school, (which is always good news for a student, …especially a lazy student, …like me). I guess devout Buddhists will pray at temples, and that’s about it.

And since it is (was) Wesak, here’re some pictures of a famous Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, the Temple of the Tooth Relic. If you’re god, even your teeth are sacred.

And if I’m god, I’ll give my cracked tooth and half-decayed teeth to the followers I like least, and save the best teeth for my favourite disciples. And I’ll still have a whole load of other bodily parts and personal items to bestow! I’ll probably make a catalogue of my body parts and personal items, listing them according to how valuable I think they are, and who they’d be given to. I’d probably give 1MDB (and its bosses) a piece of my poo. It’d be called holy shit! …Maybe that’s why I’ll never be god.

Enough of that nonsense! Here’re photos of the temple.




Temple of the Tooth Relic, Kandy, Sri Lanka – the last time I visited in 2004, the place was teeming with soldiers carrying machine-guns!


Temple of the Tooth, first floor – lotus flowers placed outside the tooth relic chamber – that’s probably the closest you will get to seeing the actual holy tooth. I heard that it’s quite rare that people are allowed to see it, and… nope, I dunno when we can do that. Besides, it’ll probably look like any other tooth except that it’s really ancient, and holy, and placed in the nicest of containers, or whatever they use to keep a tooth




Views of the Tooth Relic Chamber – this holy temple lies in the compound of the royal palace of Kandy. (Yup, Sri Lanka used to have kings. Then the British came and did what they did best i.e. friggin conquered the country.) Another view can be seen in this post. Note: DO NOT TAKE A PHOTO OF THIS CHAMBER BY POSING IN FRONT OF IT, WITH YOUR BACKS FACING THE BUILDING, or …that’ll probably be the last you see of your camera or phone. I helped a local couple to take a photo of them in front of the building, and before I could walk off, the temple officials were already there, giving the locals what must have been the lecture of their life. I dunno what happened after that, I snuck away as fast as I could!


Temple of the Tooth Museum


Temple / Palace grounds, Kandy, Sri Lanka


The streets of Kandy, Sri Lanka

The Gemsters of Sri Lanka

Continuing on scams, here’s another scam, on another tropical island – Sri Lanka. But this one’s not as bad as the money-changer thieves of Bali. Not even close to half as bad!


Sapphire mine, Sri Lanka – OK, OK, it’s a replica. So what?

Sri Lanka is famous for its sapphires. And I’m the type of tourist who likes to see famous things, whatever they are, be it sapphires or animal-poop coffee (Indonesia) or Dead Sea mud (Jordan), and so on and so forth. And so, on our tour of Sri Lanka in 2013, when we were in between Polonnaruwa and Sigiriya (two tourist attractions in Central Sri Lanka), our trusty tourist car driver brought us to a sapphire processing place. Even better, it was a ‘government-approved’ place! So far so good, except that I didn’t know that ‘government-approved’ in Sri Lanka also means ‘highly over-priced’!


Gemstone showroom, somewhere between Polonnaruwa and Sigiriya, Sri Lanka – At the time of visit, there were only 3 customers, 2 adults (us) and a kid (Justin). And that’s Justin, in the picture, going wild, having the whole friggin hall to himself!

Anyway, the place was a lavish building in …err, the middle of nowhere (no, I have no idea where it is, except that it’s about an hour before you reach Sigiriya from Polonnaruwa). The entrance was like the concierge of a 5-star hotel (…umm, OK, 4-star), with valet services (but hey, we had a driver of our own!) There were life-sized replicas of sapphire mines in the building (ya, inside the building, with air-con, not outside). We were shown how craftsmen, cut, polished, etc (how the heck could I remember? this was 2013, OK?) basically made sapphires out of err… stones. Yeah, they looked like stones to me, but nicer and harder looking ones!

And finally (no surprises here), we were taken to the shop! That’s where you’re supposed to buy something to make it worthwhile for the place to make all those life-sized replicas, and have such a nice building, and employ all those professional looking people. (Government-approved doesn’t mean government-sponsored, OK?)

Sapphires aren’t the cheapest of things (they’re not called precious stones for nothing, OK?) and are beyond our means (told you we’re cheapskates!) Besides, we know next to nothing about the value of gemstones. Of course, if your skin is thick enough, you don’t really need to buy anything. Never mind the free tea, or free tour that they give you. After all, they’ve done a good job of showcasing their country to the rest of the world. That should be a good enough reward for them already, right?

But we’re not the type who go for free rides, and so settled for a semi-precious stone, an amethyst (a purple gemstone). We managed to knock the offered price down by half. Not a bad buy we thought. And that was the end of it until we had some time to shop around in the town of Kandy and found out that ‘hey… we could get it for a lot cheaper than what we’ve paid for, those friggin government-approved cheats!’ (And there went the tips of the driver for the day. ‘Sorry driver, you’ve had your commission!’)

We went to the extent of visiting another ‘government-approved’ gemstone place in Kandy just to check. And came out feeling a little better. (The friggin place was selling stones at higher prices than the shop we visited!! OK, driver, you’re not so bad after all).

But it’s OK overall. The little shops in Kandy and the shops at the airport might sell the stones cheaper, but they didn’t have a lavish building, or exhibits of sapphire mines, or free tours (and tea), or a whole contingent of staff to chaperone you around. Who’ll pay the salaries and fund the establishment (and pay the government for approval)? That’s where we come in. And that’s how I justify paying higher prices for the gemstone we bought, which is definitely worth it, when compared to the scumbags who conned us of our money in Bali!


How an air-conditioned sapphire mine looks like, Sri Lanka

A Story of Monkeys

Whoa! Is this the entrance to a Haunted House in a Carnival? Nope, it’s actually the entrance to the Golden Temple of Dambulla, in Sri Lanka

It’s gonna be the Monkey Year in exactly a week's time! Excited!! For reunion dinner, we’ll probably have a lovely home-cooked meal of rice, curry chicken or mutton (hope it ain’t fish), some fabulous sambal, maybe steamed eggs Chinese-style, some green vegetables, etc …just like any other day of the year! (What? It ain’t even a holiday here in the UAE, OK?) We’ll dig up some new clothes to wear (I’m sure we have some hidden away somewhere), or we’ll find some clothes we’ve not worn for ages and pretend they’re new clothes. I’ll pack some money into red packets to give to the kids. (I think I still have some red packets left over from the Year of the Horse! Who’ll care? Justin doesn’t even know what animal year it is! Besides, it’ll be thrown away as soon as he gets his hands into that cash…)

OK kidding aside, the missus and I are thinking of catching a movie in the cinemas, minus Justin (he’ll be schooling hehe!) Me? Well, that’s the beauty of working for a Chinese Company! I think (judging from past year practices) our Company will give us at least one day off, despite it being a working day in the entire friggin Middle East, and the regions beyond. That’s the only time we can catch an 18/adult-rated movie, but …with Jayden around now, I doubt we’ll have that liberty… (yeah, the cinemas here apply movie ratings to even infants whose only knowledge are the teats of their mommy!) And that’s our CNY plan! Nice huh?


Dambulla Cave Temple, Sri Lanka

For the blog, I’ve decided to do a story on monkeys (it’s the Monkey Year after all). Here are pictures of Dambulla, in Sri Lanka. Dambulla is the site of a famous Buddhist cave temple. The pictures are from my second visit with Anu and Justin. On my first visit in 2004, this place was teeming with monkeys. On that particular visit, I, my brother and my friend, Wai Yen had the total of 2 days and a night to see the entire friggin country of Sri Lanka. It was a stopover for their return flight to Malaysia from India via SriLankan Airlines. They had visited me in India. I decided to join them for a visit to Sri Lanka (heck, I was single, and ready to see any country on a whim!)

Anyway, to cut the story short, we hired a car from Bandaranaike Airport (Colombo’s International Airport) to take us to as many places as possible within that limited time. We arrived at the airport at 4 friggin am, and Jason and Wai Yen had to fly out to Malaysia on the next evening. (I had an extra night in Colombo). The driver we engaged through a tourist booth at the airport was an ‘expert’ tourist guide. Expert or not, he also happened to be the only driver around at that time. Hell, what choice do you think we have, at 4am? (OK, there may be more if you wait, and visit a few more tourist booths with bleary-eyed staff). Sri Lanka was still technically at war, so it felt like the soldiers with machine guns outnumber tourist arrivals.

Our first stop in our whirlwind tour was Dambulla. A few hours after we started, our expert driver suddenly stopped at a road side by a hill and said, “there up that staircase”. Huh? “Yeah that staircase, and no shoes!” So we kept our shoes in the car, and started walking barefoot up the stone steps. It was a really peaceful walk, through rocks and trees, and stepping on sharp bloody stones and twigs, and monkey poo, (must have been that, coz monkeys were all over the place). Didn’t strike us strange that we were about the only ones on the steps. Not long after, we reached a clearing and there it was, the temple. Now, here were a lot more people than we thought there’d be, and they had shoes on! (It turned out that our ‘expert’ driver dropped us at a side entrance). The main entrance is a much shorter walk, and shoes could be worn right up to the entrance of the temple area! (Maybe the driver did that to save us the entrance fee… Was there an entrance fee?? …Honestly, you think I’d remember?) And we had to walk all the way down again!! But it sure saved us some money (in the form of reduced tips for our brilliant driver).

One of the most memorable things of our 2004 visit, was the antics of two monkeys in the courtyard in front of the main temple. We and a lot of visitors – families, kids, old folks, camera-toting tourists, etc were hanging around, in front of a fish pond, when two amorous monkeys went at it, doggy-style, with full expression and sound, in the middle of the friggin courtyard. The adults laughed (most of us anyway), the kids just looked on and wondered what the heck the monkeys were doing. The male monkey looked at us, bared his teeth and shrieked while banging his partner for the world to see. What a sight!


This was where the monkeys went at it in 2004 – Courtyard in front of the Dambulla Cave Temple. Here’s a view of the pond by the courtyard.

But I liked the temple on the whole. That’s why I brought Anu and Justin here. There were a lot less monkeys in 2013, and none inside the temple compound. 9 years, and the end of war meant a lot of difference I guess, or the temple officials must’ve finally gotten enough of the daily X-rated drama unfolding at their doorsteps!


Anu, on the frangipani-lined stone path / steps leading up to the cave temple


Another view of the Golden Temple’s entrance


The Golden Buddha at the temple


Monks (or more like statues of monks) lining up to pay homage to the Buddha


A small stupa in the temple. And here's a view of a golden stupa in Dambulla






Pictures of the cave temple interior, Dambulla, Sri Lanka

Happy New Year everyone! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Koung Hey Faat Choi! Have a blast!!!

The Lion Rock

Sigiriya, Sri Lanka

How can I do a story about Sri Lanka without posting something on this??

Sigiriya is one of the most well-known sights of Sri Lanka. It used to be a rock citadel, with a city on top, yeah, no kidding. It was built by a renegade king of Anuradhapura. The renegade king killed his father, and usurped the throne of Anuradhapura from the rightful heir which was his half-brother. He then moved the capital to Sigiriya for better defence. (Yeah, just look at the rock, and you can understand his reasoning). Nevertheless, he was eventually defeated by his half-brother and he committed suicide (what’s meant to be, was meant to be, I guess). And Sigiriya was abandoned.

This is one story anyway.

But the renegade king sure built some pretty impressive things on and around this rock for the short time that he was king! Thanks to him (…and to nature), Sri Lanka is now getting USD 30 per tourist per visit, and there’s no other way around this (due to it being on a friggin high rock, unlike Polonnaruwa haha).

Here’re the pictures.








On the way up, with lush green scenery all the way


A view of the middle tier


The countryside, from halfway up




Getting difficult to climb, …don’t get me wrong, the steps are good. It’s Anu’s fear of heights that’s keeping us from going faster


The Lion’s Paws - this is the highest point we reached (and it took quite a lot of prompting from me to get us here…). According to records, there used to be a huge lion gate here (of which only the paws are left now). It’ll be like the Sphinx I guess, if it was still intact.


No way we’re doing that! But I’ve gone up before, in 2004, so it’s alright. Besides, I don’t really remember anything of note up there apart from more ruins and a fantastic view of the countryside.




Views of The Rock on our way down


Some odd rock formations




The beautiful park surrounding Sigiriya, Sri Lanka