In a previous post, I mentioned that Western tourists in Sri Lanka are almost universally better off than those that live there, and so it's hard to blame them for the fact that almost every interaction we had was clearly supposed to involve money. But that's obviously not a comfortable situation. Our most difficult experience was here:




This is Sigiriya, one of the ancient cities of Sri Lanka. We decided to visit it at the last minute on our second to last day in the country, so we already had experience visiting other tourist sites, but this was by far the most touristy of them all. The entrance fee was a whopping $25, compared to $10 for entrance to an overpriced temple that claims to be the "cradle of Buddhism" and houses a purported tooth of the Buddha. Even before we got to the ticket counter, a man had joined us and started showing us around, and we knew from previous experience that if we didn't say anything, he would guide us through the entire several hours' visit before either asking for a tip or standing around awkwardly until we offered one. We didn't mind so much giving him the money, though we were near our budget for the day, but we preferred to go through the ruins at our own pace.

This proved not so easy. When we told the would-be guide that we'd prefer to go alone, he argued with us: we don't know the place, we will miss all sorts of things, not everything is in the guidebook, you can't go in without a guide (clearly not true), they will check to make sure you have a guide. We ended up feeling a bit rude, but did manage to insist, only to have him follow us at a distance for a few meters before approaching us again and starting to point out features that we had presumably been missing. We managed to finally convince him that we were serious only after feeling rude once again.

At that point, we had to run the gauntlet of people selling stuff: books on the history of the site, carved elephants, water, etc. A little side trip to see the so-called "Cobra-hood Cave" was cut short when we saw a man standing near it, entertaining some tourists with a large snake wrapped around him.



Just as we were starting to get some pretty good views, yet another man took it upon himself to start helping and guiding us. When we told him that we didn't need a guide, he explained that he wasn't a guide, but rather a "tourist facilitator," showing us his title on his badge. Not needing facilitation, we managed to get past him only to find another ticket counter: apparently, we would need to show our tickets yet again, for no apparent reason. This would simply be annoying bureaucracy, were it not for the fact that our tickets had somehow disappeared by this point.

I could describe our negotiations with the guard, the apparent schadenfreude of the tourist facilitator, who came up behind us and smiled a lot the whole time, and our frustration, but suffice it to say that another tour guide came through during the negotiations and essentially hinted that we pay a bribe, which we proceeded to do. (It wasn't entirely clear, but it seemed that the tourist facilitator and the new tour guide also wanted bribes, which we didn't pay.) Then on the way down, we needed to ask for directions several times; each time, regardless of the simplicity of the directions, the person we asked would see a money-making opportunity: "Oh yes, come with me." "No, we can find it, just which way?" "No no, I show you, only 100 rupees."

This trip to an otherwise incredible site was also marred by intense heat and untrustworthy stairs with dizzying drop-offs, but the elements above are emblematic of the uncomfortableness we sometimes felt as rich tourists in a poor country.

As I mentioned, this was the worst day for this sort of thing, and most of our other activities were much more satisfying. Many of the other cultural sites we visited were interesting not just for the history but for the way that history was blended with modern practice. The Buddha sticking out of the jungle in the above picture from Sigiriya had been completed in the past couple of years, and such massive, modern, concrete Buddhas were pretty common. At temples we visited, the distinction between secular and sacred functions that you see in western cathedrals was essentially absent: whereas in most European cathedrals you can take tours that tell you all about history, art, architecture, and social context, often treating the religious oddities of other ages with humor, it was clear that the religious traditions in temples such as the Temple of the Tooth were more continuous. Much of the architecture, for example, had been either restored or even built in the past 100 to 200 years, often in a style that we would find Romantic and old-fashioned.





The hall with the golden Buddha pictured above had highly romanticized paintings around the room depicting the progress of the tooth relic. Incidentally, these paintings all proudly proclaimed that they were sponsored by the Bank of Ceylon. They also demonstrated the particularly Sri Lankan use of English. One sign described the "hair-apparent" to the throne, while another pointed out that the English returned the tooth to the Sri Lankans with all due "plomp and splendour." A school we passed promised, ominously, that they had "better lerners." It's easy to make fun of people who misuse such an "easy" language, but of course if we all had a little more plomp in our lives, the world might be a better place.

Actually, most people's English was not all that bad: most people could speak at least a few words, though they often had trouble understanding us, perhaps because they were more used to Australian and British accents. Nearly everyone we talked to for more than 2 seconds asked us where we were from, which was a little bit strange: I'm not sure why this was so curious to everyone. Very often greetings would go something like, "good morning where you from?" or "good morning your country?" Most seemed to find Canada, the US, or both to be satisfactory answers.

These conversations were particularly common as we ascended Adam's Peak, where interactions had less reason to be commercial (most of our fellow hikers were Sri Lankan Buddhists, on pilgrimage). Our experiences on this mountain also gave us a picture of religious views in Sri Lanka, which were a bit hard to figure out. At the top, the sunrise service was going on, and the praying faithful, when they looked at us, seemed disapproving of our rather secular enjoyment of the view, despite our attempts to be respectful and quiet.




(More pictures of this spectacular place in a future post.)

At the same time, two Buddhist monks were also not participating in the service, and also left halfway through, snapping pictures left and right. We walked with them for some of the way down and seemed to get a little more respect and a few more smiles simply by association. (The monks themselves were very friendly: one of them mentioned a Miley Cyrus song that apparently was an apt description of our punished knees at that point in the descent.)



One more cultural element was consistent with other tropical countries: houses are much smaller, and there's much more emphasis on being outside. Stores were often open to the air, despite the rains that descended most afternoons, and lines of stalls selling everything from fresh fruit to backpacks to pictures of the Buddha lined everything from the path up Adam's Peak:




to streets:



to bus stops:



You might think, "what a wonderful way to get into a truly Sri Lankan life, shopping with simple store-owners who sell locally-grown produce." But nothing is as simple as at seems. One of our most shocking moments came when we bought an orange to see how much better Sri Lankan oranges were than the ones we get at home. Only to find, when we went to eat it:



Sunkist, USA!