Eye Kandy

Despite receiving a typically bad first impression of taxi drivers in Sri Lanka when a driver charged me 100 rupees to retrieve my own bag from his vehicle (to be fair, I had left it on the seat and he'd had to drive back around the corner again to find me, but still - prick), and generally having to shoo away more relentless taxi touts than mosquitoes in this country, I gave them a second chance by arranging a tour of Kandy and the surrounding area with a more reputable driver.

I was hesitant because I don't feel comfortable having my own dedicated driver, the same way I don't like people serving me in restaurants (you can cook the food, but at least let me do the washing up). But I wanted to see as much as I could in as short a time as possible, so as with Siem Reap and Jeju Island I ticked off a week's worth of blog material in one day, giving myself plenty of free time to lie around in my pants reading novels about Benedictine monks and eating ginger nuts. Makes you wonder why I complain so much, doesn't it?

This was supposed to be a day tour, but because I'm an efficient, unfeeling android with no interest in lingering in places beyond the time it takes to collect sufficient photos to document their existence in this blog (and because I passed up the factory visits after experience in Egypt taught me most of this time would be spent politely declining samples in the stores) we were finished by lunchtime.

Live and unplugged in Kandy

It was live for me, anyway. You know, at the time

It won't have escaped your attention that I'm not exactly in the best place at the moment, both mentally and geographically speaking. It was tougher than I expected to get used to poor countries again, even though I'm far from being a luxury traveller and have spent most of the last two years in what could be arrogantly described as the Third World.

Most of the time I'm happy to assimilate - taking the local bus, eating at humble restaurants and staying at places that are not called things like 'Sri Lancashire Guesthouse' (it's like someone won a competition to come up with the hotel name that would appeal to me the least).

But when I arrive at a remote hotel that promises Wi-Fi access on its website and turns out not even to have a phone line, I tend to forget where I am and slide back into righteously indignant consumer mode. I'd considered taking some time off work and blogs and going unplugged, but didn't appreciate this being forced upon me.