what i did on thursday

went down the road to look at dudeface's vesak lanterns. everyone makes lanterns of a sort, although sometimes these are quite lame. the bloke down the road from us who owns a shop made by far the best display last year, and this year it's even better:



it gets lit up in the dark but i don't have a very good pic of that..

also, some elephants walked past while me and coz were on the verandah:



and a baby gecko with an attitude on him walked all over my hand, he wasn't afraid of nothing. nothing to do with my hand anyway.

wazzock part two

on with the post!

there was a beach at kirinda with nobody on apart from some water buffaloes. and these hunky men obv.



we tried walking back from the beach to the bungalow once and got a bit lost, but not before we'd seen elephant footprints in the sand dunes! no pics of them though, gutted.

the coast round there is much more east-facing and also flatter so it got hit a fair bit harder by the tsunami than Unawatuna. everywhere within about 500 feet of the sea got pretty much flattened. this was a hotel, a pretty smart one apparently, near Kirinda:



it's a bit hard, now it's been a while since the tsunami, to tell what is actually destruction and what has been knocked down and taken away since - i suppose this is partly a building site too, or has at least been scavenged for stuff. even so, it's absolutely down to the foundations.

anyway, we did eventually get to the park...it was a bit of a bank-holiday atmosphere, there were tons of sri lankan families in open-top pickups blatting around chasing after leopards etc. we did see an actual crocodile though!



you might have to zoom in :)

about 3 seconds after we spotted it however a sri lankan family turned up in a wheezy jeep and the kids all went AMMMMOHHHHH! very loudly (translates roughly into devon language as BUGGER OI TIS A CROCODILE MY LOVERS)

we brought 20 bottles of arrack, about 50 beers, a bottle of gin and one of rum on this 3 day trip - the effects are as follows:

after wazzock

full of hope and courage we set forth one misty evening and got rinsed up:



we drove and drove

then we stopped a bit and had some fags

then we drove and drove and drove

then another stop

then drove

then a stop

then drove about 100 yards

then another stop

then drove about 5 miles

i have to say at this point that i don't know where we went cos it was dark. and the driver kept demanding i pour more arrack and ginger beer for him

then a long stop waiting for the sun to come up:



then we arsed around a bit more and finally! we got there:



it was a bungalow next to a lake with cactuses! the barbed wire is to keep us in, in case we trample the locals' crops and crap in their water supply:



BORED NOW END OF POST

i am going to do some washing, maybe i'll finish this later. and maybe i won't ahaha you poor fools!

wazzock

there's a special thing in sri lanka called wazzock, where everybody goes home and puts the lights on, and there's no booze (these seem to be important ingredients of sri lankan revelry). so we are going on holiday for it, i will take my camera cos let's face it the only reason we get any hits on this blog at all is cos of the pictures. apropos of which, here is the view from our verandah.



ach you're easily pleased. see you in a few days.

PS some of these pictures are not even mine, they are pinched off sam.

bloody forest again

man it's crap. and i have my supervisor saying "o m8, why you always on internets, no working in forest GUTTED m8 real" and i tell him to bugger off.

ANYWAY



looks ferocious doesn't it? i tell you it took some nerve to get within striking distance of this thing to take the picture.

BUT i found out! it's just a frog! it's actually harmless! oh how i laughed. then i angered it with a twig just to show who was afraid of whom*.

*grammer



and in sinharaja, EVERY evening at about 7 o clock, the sun disappears and everything goes red, and then dark. i tried to find out if this happens everywhere at the same time, but no matter how fast i ran around the field station it was always slightly later when i arrived than when i had left, so i couldn't tell.

cozza back to blog

Well, its been a long time. Its all this technology, joes a bit of an expert and I'm (expert at the odd thing!) but certainly not this!!

Anyway, back off the the Knuckles Monday, for 1-2 weeks, depending on amount of leeches (might sound funny but when you get elephantistis when bitten - not a funny experience- last time the host wife husband who is the local witch/rital chap did a few chants on my fat, disgusting foot and covered it with Mee oil!).

Have to the indepth qualitative interview and participant observation work. Think need to let my assistant go after a week (she can't take it any more than that) and just chill there and appriciate the beautiful scennery and write anthropologist notes and enjoy!! All sounds easy but I start to go mad when I do not have anyone to talk to to. The assistant is very helpful in asking questions that i ask her to ask but hardly have a bit of a laugh with her!!

Right, had a few arracks and Peter has just come online (can only cope with one major thing at a time)!

Love me