sasri2016 – Walking to the Wellawaya town

I started to feel, that my back needs some walking. My back needs to get relaxed, after the hard tuk-tuk drive to Ruwana Falls, Ella and Nine Arched Bridge.

So I decided to take a walk from hotel to Wellawaya town. Of course it's hot here... so walking 4 – 5 kilometers isn't actually a walk in the park, when temperature is something between 33 – 35C. Local kids always started to yell “Hello”, “Hi”, “Where are you from?” (the typical sentences, when you have nothing else to say, or you don't know anything else in English). Kids were alright, but dogs and some people weren't as good. Two guys, in about thirties, started to follow me on the other side of street. Then other one asked, if I want to take a photo. I asked about what? His reply was: “take a photo of me!”. I started laughing. Couldn't help it. Soon after this they stopped and went somewhere.

When I did finally get to the Wellawaya town, I immediatelly stopped for a lunch in a local restaurant, full of local people. It just made me smile, when everybody stared me, like I would have landed from outer space (or into the Star Wars Cafe, where a human is the stranger). Food was actually quite good. Sadly one of the curries was spiciest dish I have had here and I simply couldn't eat it. It just was too much and I knew, my stomach would be happy about choosing not to eat it.

Sweat started to flow so badly, when I finally started to cool down in restaurant. And eating a spicy food doesn't actually help, when you are sweating like a pig to be slaughtered. After I had finished and I started to feel better, I moved on to walk inside Wellawaya town. Towns are very different to what you experience in tourist areas. Most people notice you, some smile at you, some give you bad glazes, but it's hard to see anyone, who wouldn't notice you somehow. All children stare at you. Well, maybe I look so strange by looks in general, as some kids back home stare at me too, so maybe it's not totally because of my westerner/white looks.

I walked around the city. Asked for those blades in couple stalls in town, that I saw being used for slicing food for Kottu (see my earlier post about Ella for link to video) - and I found out they were named “Kottu blades” - logical! But none of the stalls had them.

One of my objectives for this town visit was to get into photo studio, to print couple of my photos. When I asked advice from couple of shops, I did get some information and finally one help did able me to find one photo studio. They didn't much talk English, while two ladies were very much trying to help me. But the owner guy, didn't talk to me at all and didn't look too positive about my presence. Some Sri Lankan people are very helpful and kind. This is the most part, but there always seems to be the other side, that either just gives you bad looks - but they still might end up smiling to you - but then there are those whose hate you can easily sense. These last ones you meet only in towns. My experience is limited, as my experience is limited to Colombo, Wellawaya and Badulla.

Back to the story... owner of that photo studio didn't talk to me, but left off. Then I looked to ladies and asked what is going on and they told me to just wait. Owner went to get me a tuk-tuk and told me to go to another shop. So then we went... like 200 meters with tuk-tuk. ;)

There I was now in another photo studio. This one could print my photos, if I donwloaded them to their machine. I did this and then they started to print. Well their big printer machine failed and started giving - just too familiar beebing sound. I waited and there came an annoying guy, who tried to ask me where I am from and what language I speak and sort of stuff. I was already a bit down from waiting those photos and from starting to understand that this wouldn't work and that I had walked into the town for nothing. (Well nothing is not right way to say it, because it did good to my tired back). I gave up and argued with tuk-tuk driver about taking me to my hotel. He was probably the most annoying being that I have met in this island so far. Trying to agree the price for tuk-tuk to my hotel and he just said, “okay” and kept waving his head.

I have came to think, that head waving does mean like “okay”, but to tourist it mostly means trouble. They do that when they don't want to say something or when something is wrong, or they just want to accept thing as it is. Price for way back to hotel wasn't that bad 300 rupies for 4 -5 kilometers is not that bad (I think official tuk-tuk price is like 50 rupies per kilometer). I do tip people a lot, specially concerning that I am travelling with a budget, but this guy just was too annoying for me give any tip. It felt like wasted day.