sri lanka pt.II

i managed to grab a shot over maldives out of the cabin window. i reckon in the future, we’d have airplanes with massive viewing windows just so everyone could gap in awe with such beauty.

Now what comes into mind when one speaks of sri lanka? the tropics? coconut tress and sweet pineapples? buddhist temples? succulent seafood? ceylon tea? we practically touched base on all of them.

Once we landed in colombo, we rushed out to King Coconut restaurant in Negombo. Its a favourite among the crew; not only because its close enough to the hotel, but also because it has great seafood at low prices by the beach. Prices start at about Rs800/6USD for a main course of seafood choice (prawns, fish, etc) with rice. How cheap is that! Considering this was proper al fresco dining by the beach! We however opted to eat in style and went for the fresh seafood platter; costing Rs2780 / USD21. Prices differ everyday depending on the day’s catch, but its generally within that price range.

The platter was huge, depending on your appetite, it was enough to feed 2 with more to spare. The seafood was really really fresh; it had king prawns and shrimps, a whole crab, cray fish, calamari and other random pieces of fish. on the side of fried rice, salad and a sweet chilli dipping sauce. It was divine! Alot of restaurants in Malaysia import seafood from Sri Lanka; after tasting this, i now knew how different fresh seafood could be.

What better to accompany the food with their local beer; Lion (Rs500 / USD3.80 a bottle). I’m not particularly a big beer drinker but it certainly went well with the seafood. However after a few bottles, everyone got really happy drunk and started ordering more ‘Tiger’ beer. tiger.. lion.. elephants… the animals people name after their beer.

anyways dessert was banana fritters (Rs350 / USD2.70) which everyone loved except me. maybe it was because i’d much prefer the ones from malaysia that had sweeter bananas and a lighter and fluffier batter. this one was dense but still very crispy.

We could not be bothered to take a cab to the city the next day, so we decided to look around the neighbourhood. We got honked by the cars, trucks, tricycles. Peered into people’s houses. And then we came across a lovely catholic church within the lush greens. It was a nice change to view a modest church compared to the large dominating ones in europe.

Then came my next favourite thing to do on every trip; scavenging for unknown groceries. The area still had a lot of little vegetable stores like these; and it was fun to discover new vegetables in different colours and sizes.

 a bread tricycle! it zipped past me before i could stop and get my fluffy soft bread.

 old school soft drinks. i used to drink from these bottles with a straw when i was little and kept the bottlecaps. seeing them again brought back many childhood memories.

a friend once laughed at me for being so amazed at international grocery shopping. but let me show you my haul from colombo. clockwise from top right; colombo red raw rice (healthy much!); bananas (wasn’t as sweet as the Pisang Mas that i love from Malaysia); cute tiny watermelons!; colombo pineapples (after having these, nothing else will compare to its juiciness and sweetness); large avocado (it took forever to ripen) and papaya. ALL FOR Rs300 / USD2.30! what a steal!