Where are the Jays

Colombo, Sri Lanka

This was a late port addition to our itinerary. It was added when Myanmar was dropped. We stopped in Colombo which is the largest city and was the capital until a few years ago. I had no clue until a guide said something that this country had declared bankruptcy in late 2022. It really did not affect us except that it explained some of the half-built construction sites that we saw. The Chinese our helping build/expand the port which is all shipping except for a berth or 2 for cruise ships. They are also financing a new highway around the port. Sri Lanka is another former British colony so driving on the left-hand side of the road and English heavily spoken. The populace is well educated too with the highest literacy rate in the region – 90+% so probably as high as USA if not higher. Tea and cinnamon are two of the major products most will recognize from Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon at one time so if you know Ceylon tea you know Sri Lanka tea.

Tea Plantation

We chose to visit a tea plantation the first day we were in port. It was the Ingiriya Tea Plantation up in the hills of the country. It was a 1 ½ hour drive to the plantation. Along the way our guide told us some about the history of Sri Lanka and taught us about rubber plantations and other agricultural products. We saw lots of small rice fields along the way. We stopped at an old British road house for a rest stop. It was a beautiful setting with large trees (including Bread Fruit) and a few monkeys.

British Road House

Most of the agriculture in this country is small and has not changed in hundreds of years so done in very manual ways. For example, with the tea it is all picked by hand. It is partly done that way because the tea plantation we went to is very high quality tea so only new growth is picked. Apparently in India and some other places it is done by machinery and more of the plant is picked. Back to our tour. They showed us how they tap rubber trees for the sap that becomes latex/rubber. Natural rubber is regaining its popularity over manmade but there is a staffing problem (never heard that problem anywhere else lately have we!).

Click on the Video below to watch a tree being tapped

We then moved on to the tea plantation itself. Tea plants are a relative of camelias. There were fields of the plant with a few trees for shade. The tea plantation is an old-fashioned factory town. The women pick the leaves, the men weed, etc; there is a school for the younger kids, a hospital and housing is provided. There is also a group of people that work inside the plant. They pick the leaves in the morning take a break and then again in the afternoon. The workers are heavily of Indian descent because the Sri Lankans were not willing to work for the English when the plantations were established. It came across as a hard life.

Click below to watch her picking and stuffing leaves in the bag on her head

The ladies pick a kilos worth of leaves at a time dumping the leaves in a bag they wear on their heads. The bags are then put in a trailer that is taken up to the factory where the bags are lifted up to the second floor of the factory. All of the equipment in the factory is pretty much a 100 years old so not a fancy process. The leaves are immediately spread out on tables to dry with hot air blowing on them. I think it was 12 hours that leaves are set to dry and then they are moved on in the process. There was a crushing machine to break up the small stems and leaves there were several lines with sifting sheets to get the small pieces out and then send the larger ones to be crushed/broken again. After being broken up the leaves are again set aside to dry. After drying the one new machine a color sorter was used to sort the leaves by their color. The different colors become different quality/types of tea. They sift and sort and dry the leaves several times before they consider them ready for packaging. This was all loose tea no tea bags here! It was quite interesting but also quite warm in the factory. It smelled wonderful.

Bottom right is new machine with 7 cameras to grade and sort tea leaves

Drying table

After the factory itself, we went to the manager’s house to try some of this tea and of course for the opportunity to buy some. The factory manager’s house was originally built as a cottage by an Englishman so that was part of the allure to see a former Englishman’s /historical house. The house was nice. You could tell that it had been designed with air flow in mind. A couple of walls were actually decorative concrete trellis(?) work so not solid walls. It was quite nice.

100+ year old home

Night tour of Colombo and dance

Jeff and I had planned a full day for our first of 2 days in Colombo because we also signed up for a nighttime tour with dinner and a native dance show. The nighttime tour was nice because you could see the buildings lit up which is really good for their pride and joy the Lotus Tower. The Lotus Tower is a new building that is a communications tower with a restaurant on a top floor. The building has a lotus flower look to the middle floors – it is a nice-looking building. Jeff and I had to smile because our dinner and dance program was at the Colombo Hilton Hotel and while it was indoors it did make us think of the Luau we had at the Hawaii Hilton a few years ago.

Top Left Lotus Tower changes color at night

Click on the Videos below of the Sri Lanka dances

Each video below is 60 sec or less

Pinnawala Elephant Sanctuary

On our second day in Sri Lanka, we started out on another long bus ride this time to see Elephants at a sanctuary. We saw some of the same scenery from the day before. Then all of a sudden, our bus was pulling over to the side of the road and we got off while our guides got us tickets. We were right by a narrow lane with shops on either side of it that went downhill – heading for the river. When our guide came back, we started down the lane only to slide off to the left side at one point so a couple of elephants could walk past us.

Few Asian Elephants have tusks

The Twins

The sanctuary has 2 parts the river area and then the main sheds and pens. I definitely preferred the river area. The view was very pretty, and the elephants seemed happier to me. We watched the elephants at the river and had seats from a balcony area for a buffet lunch. These elephants have been at this sanctuary too long, so they won’t ever be released back into the wild. The fun/interesting thing at this site is that they have a set of twins that were born 2021. They were fun to watch in the water and then to see up close later in the pens. Twins is quite rare for elephants. The second one was born 5 hours after the first and was quite weak, so they think that often in the wild the second one dies. With that lovely thought I will end this entry!

Click below to watch elephants underwater breathing through their trunks

Click below to watch baby elephant

They hurried over when the water came on

Made from Palm Fronds

Thailand and Indonesia

Phuket, Thailand

Our first stop that was not in Malaysia! A place that I had heard had gorgeous beaches and saw pictures of incredible small mountain/islands. We unfortunately only had one day there so we had to choose. We chose to explore the sea – the Andaman Sea to be exact. We went on an excursion that took us to Phang Nga Bay. It was a good choice. There is greenery everywhere. As a tourist destination, it is also rather prosperous area with some resorts nearby and lots of traffic! Once on land we got on tour buses for a 1 ½ hour drive to our destination. Tom was our tour guide for the day, and he was quite good. He talked about the make up of the island’s population – it is a mixture of Chinese, Thai and Indian with a little European who are often retirees. He also explained that the sea water temperature was pretty much 87 degrees year-round so in the summer it was cooler than the air and in the winter warm enough that you could still get in and enjoy it. We passed rubber tree plantations, coconut plantations (all on the small side). Also at one time this was a major tin production area. Tom pointed out that Phuket or Phu to the locals is not that big in distance but we had to go up and over a mountain range to get to our destination. Someone asked about the bad tsunami in 2004. He said that only 157 lives were lost in Phuket because the sea floor quickly drops from the beaches here versus some nearby places where it is a very gentle slope.

Phang Nga Bay

We rode long boats that I am going to call dragon boats just because they were long and narrow with a very tall stern. The driver sat in the back with a car engine and an unusual rudder. The men decided it was because the water we were in was quite shallow.

Note the large car engine with long drive shaft into the water at a shallow angle

Our new friends in the background

Local family with same boat design

Jeff had expectations on the scenery thanks to the James Bond movie “The Man with the Golden Gun” which was filmed in the area. It is now a national park and very much a popular site to see. Let’s just say I kept saying to myself wow. You see pictures of these little islands that are quite tall on movies or TV shows set in Asia and you think oh that is nice. What you don’t realize is the sheer quantity of them- they go on forever. The mountain islands are all made from limestone, so the wind and water have shaped them some. Our first site on the boat tour was the “big, long cave”. It was not that big but it was interesting. It had stalagmites in it just like an underground cave but we floated through it from one side of the island to the other. Tom also pointed out other islands that the locals have decided look like things like the one that looked like a dog – kind of a poodle. While all of the islands are covered in vegetation, the write up says all of these plants have evolved to grow with basically no dirt, just loose limestone.

Cave we traveled through, top another tour boat, bottom view inside cave

Looks like small dog

Mangrove, Tom says he saw a large monitor lizard

First glimpse of what is to come

Steep rock jutting out of the ocean

On our way to “ 007 island” we were surprised to see men walking in the water. Seems they were clam hunting/digging. This area is a major fishing spot for the locals.

I have to confess I don’t remember this scene in the movie, but the Bond island is impressive. The base area which is a sandy beach was actually quite small – Bond’s sea plane would have taken up a significant chunk of it. I’m guessing the cameras were on the other beach while filming which hint, hint is quite close! In addition to the Bond memories, the island has a portion of it at ground level that is leaning against the main part which locals believe you should kiss in front of when you are getting married for good luck. That was one popular island.

Bond and Scaramanga Duel in 1974 Man with a Golden Gun

Replica of Bond’s float plane

Background, Beach where the duel took place

In addition to the Bond island, we saw a couple of fishing villages – the little one and the big one. These villages were built and are still inhabited by Muslims from India. The men are heavily fishermen, and the houses are built over the water. We stopped at the big island and some of their buildings were impressive. The island had been chosen because it had enough dry land to build a mosque and a cemetery. Everything else is built on stilts over the sea. While we were there the tide was out so some of it was over mud. This is a town that people live in full time so there is a school, etc there. We ate at a very nice restaurant that they have for the tourists. We also saw their 2 soccer fields. The new one is concrete and up high, the old one is down low and floating. According to Tom, the floating soccer field was highlighted in a major soccer magazine a few years back as the most beautiful soccer field in the world. After the fishing village, it was time to take the boat back to the starting point and return to our ship. Just like an amusement park, there is often the mandatory stop and a souvenir store of some sort. This time we got the “world’s largest gem store”. Somehow Jeff and I managed to leave without buying or even considering any purchases!

Small Local Village

Large village with Mosque on left

Floating football/soccer

Our Restaurant for lunch

Sabang, Indonesia

Ok I will publicly admit, I was downright leery of this stop! It was a late addition when we dropped Myanmar. Between the shore excursions recommending leach proof socks, to the temperature checks for 2 days before the arrival and the mandatory customs statement. I was sure this was going to turn into one of those ports where you wonder why am I here? While there is not a lot here, I am really glad we stopped. Jeff hit it spot on when he said this may be the best representation of the local countries we see. It started with a welcoming committee of elected officials and a rather nice banner as I believe it was the first time Oceania had visited the port

We did not do a ship’s excursion here rather we walked around town some and then did a tuk tuk ride around the island. After shopping at the market set up at the pier for us. The town was a short walk away. Along the way we were stopped a couple of times asking if people could take their or their children’s picture with us. (They’re camera not ours) Yeah tourists are not exactly common here although I did see a billboard from the tourism board with a picture of a Seaborn cruise ship so we aren’t the first. We walked to the waterfront and saw an observation tower, so we climbed up it and enjoyed the view.

After walking the town some more, I talked Jeff into the tuk tuk ride. (Tuk Tuk here is a motorbike with side car or tricycle with a raised wagon attached).

Top us on a ride, Tok Toks on bottom, Gas station with a single pump

A tourism official had given me a list of sites and said it should cost $20 (US). It was a great idea. Yes maybe not the safest way to see the island, but it was fun. Our driver stopped or slowed down at all of the sites on the list so we could take pictures. (We had no idea what the sites on the list were, so trusted the driver.). The water around the island is gorgeous but there are serious waves and rocks close to shore so not great swimming from the shore. The sites on my list: