the artful dodgers.

We have come to our last two days in Asia (indefinitely) so I thought, in the spirit of all things Asian, I would share some of the scams we've fallen victim to, and also some of the ones we were savvy enough to avoid, in the last 5 months in and around the subcontinent. Perhaps for the benefit of others, or just for your amusement...

First, the gem scam. This is the scam where you stand to lose the most and it is prolific in big cities. We were in Colombo only 15 hours and we had two versions of this scam pulled on us. The first was a man sidling up to us in a dirty alleyway, holding out his hand containing some tissue paper and a shiny thing that Will and I both first thought was some type of drug (dingy alleyway and all that). After a second we realised it was a 'gem' and this man, who had not said anything, was trying to sell it to us. We looked at him bemused for a minute, shook our heads and walked off smiling at how clumsy this attempt to rob us was. This was an easy scam to dodge- I am doubtful even the stupidest tourist would ever buy a 'gem' on a whim, from a shifty guy, in an alleyway.
The second attempt was a little more polished. A tuk-tuk driver drove up to us as we sat at the fort, looking out at the darkening ocean, and said "Oh, my friends, I can take you to the gem convention/festival/whatever for only 50 rupees, no problem!" Had we said, "great, fantastic, just what we needed!" we would have been driven to a gem shop somewhere in the middle of nowhere, forced to look at fake and expensive 'jewels' for ages before we could somehow find a way to escape. Luckily we just laughed at him and said we knew he was full of shite. And this is what you must do, without fail, everytime you are approached in Asia by anybody connected to gems. Otherwise it will end with you wasting time at best or spending vast amounts of money on shiny glass at worst. There is no version of the scam where you spend money and come out on top- the best you can do is make the scammer feel like a right git.

And with that, I'll move onto tuk-tuk drivers. After all of our time in Asia these are still the people I would be least likely to trust ever. With anything, for anything, we avoid them at all costs. We would rather walk two kilometres with our backpacks on than get into a tuk-tuk. In fact, after 5 months I think we have used their services less than 20 times, which is quite a remarkable achievement on our part considering they are everywhere, they hound you like crazy and we have moved around a lot.
The reason we have no time for them is that they seem to have a complete aversion to honesty. They will routinely try to charge insane prices for tiny distances, they will try to confuse you when you are figuring out which bus to catch- say, for example, you are checking information in your trusty guidebook they will dance around you clicking, clapping, repeating 'yes! where you go! you need tuktuk!', just anything to get you into their vehicle before you find the bus you are looking for, they will lie and say there is no bus/train/whatever and the only way is tuk-tuk, they will tell you your hotel is too expensive and to come to theirs and at night, if all else fails, they will try to sell you drugs. They are basically distrust personified. Just say no and get on a bus!

Another scam that has been present all over Asia is the 'no money, I just need milk' trick. This is basically any person, mother with child, dodgy toothless man, teenage boy coming up and saying "I don't want any money but buy me milk for my child/sister/etc.". If you agree, as we did the first time this happened to us, they then lead you to a shop and point to powdered milk that is incredibly expensive (think $20-30- in Asia that is heaps) whereupon you have to buy it for them. After you have left they return the milk and get the cash (the shop owner, of course, gets a cut of the profit). A waiter at a restaurant tried this on us the other night (it was a local restaurant, it would never happen in a tourist one)...he spent all evening buttering us up, piling food on the table, being very chatty and giving us discounts, then told us he had to go to a spice market and we could come and see where locals shop. Right then we both knew that we were going to have to escape from him at some stage but for some reason, perhaps inexplicable politeness or a weird urge to see the scam through, we followed him. He, of course, bought nothing, and we, of course, bought nothing (much to the annoyance of the shop owner- he clearly thought his friend had brought a gold mine to his shop), then as we were walking to the bus stop he said "my friend, I don't need money but my daughter needs some milk..." And upon hearing the punchline we both burst into laughter, told him the game was up and left him to his embarrassment in the dark.

The other, lesser and more ubiqitous scams are your basic 'oh you have white skin? Well let me just up the price of this product or service by a few hundred rupees'; the "here let me help you, give me the money and I'll buy that brandy/beer/anything for you...oh no there was no change from that 1000 rupees you gave me" (hint: there was indeed a wad of change, only it is in the scoundrels pocket); there's your "surprise guide attack" whereupon you are brought into a conversation with a 'friendly' local who then leads you around to sights and then demands that you buy something from their shop or just plain give them money (it was to this tune that Will parted with $30 on his first day in Kathmandu). This was tried on us when we were walking up Ella Rock and came to a fork in the path. 'Luckily' for us there was an old man there who told us not to go the way we were, there were dangerous honeybees that way, we should go with him and he'd show us. We told him we had no money and didn't want a guide, he said he was just an old farmer, not guide, no problem...we decided to ignore him though, went our way and surprisingly saw not a hint of a honeybee. What we did see, at the top of the rock, was several other tourists, in the company of 'trusty' old farmers. Hmmm...
Again, this also happens with tuk-tuk drivers..."my friend, only 50 rupees for a tour of the sights" roughly translates to "hey sucker, give me 50 rupees and I'll drive you to a bunch of shops where you'll be bullied into paying too much for stuff you don't want".
And lastly there's the drunken maniacs who come and up grab you, spilling some nonsense about how they remember you from somewhere you've never been before.


We have fallen victim to most of these scams before, it's a bit like an initiation into Asia. But after 3 months in India I think we have become so cynically hardened to anyone who appears even a little untrustworthy that we can now travel through the continent safe in the knowledge that no fool is going to rob us of our dollars. Although, this may be inviting trouble...

'bini flashbacks

As we only have three weeks here, this is a bit of a whirlwind tour of Sri Lanka and a completely different style of travelling to what we did in India. In that vein we are now on the south coast, having left Ella several days ago and then spent few days in Arugam Bay, the surfing heart of the country.

We would have stayed in lovely Ella longer but our time limits constrained us and once we had conquered all the peaks and climbs- which we did- we thought we should move on. Will had been keen to try surfing ever since we decided to come to Sri Lanka so the obvious next stop was Arugam Bay. It's the best time to be there now, sunny, warm and beautiful blue water and the town full of very tanned people with dreadlocks and sun-bleached hair (that's surfers...) So we stayed there some time, ate some delicious muesli, swam and got burnt and Will managed to teach himself to stand up on a surfboard and even ride the odd wave (there were also a lot of crashes). I, on the other hand, could see what tremendous effort it was learning to surf- you have to battle out over the crashing waves to even get to the point where you try to catch a wave in, then you either miss it and sit around waiting for the next one or catch it then invariably fall down and have to battle your way out there all over again- and decided I probably wouldn't be too upset if I gave it a miss this time...lazy? Very, but I'm ok with it.

After a few days of this (in keeping with our lightning tour) we decided to head south to a beach called Unawatuna, a place the trusty (though this I'm beginning to doubt) Lonely Planet said was a tropical paradise. Tropical paradise I'm sure it would be, if it weren't for the gently monsoonal weather of right now...we even checked the rainfall at this time of year in our treacherous guide book and it is supposed to be the second driest time to come, but this morning we awoke to a thunder storm and torrential rain and the sky is very defiantly remaining gray and cloudy.

It is also, as our luck would have it, Buddhist festival time. I'm not sure if anyone remembers my post about Lumbini, where we also stumbled on a festival- in fact, I can't even remember exactly what I wrote- but the constant wailing and "singing" being broadcast over the loudspeaker is, as Will said, as if his ears had taste-buds and somebody was squeezing lemon juice into them. Quite a neat analogy and perfectly apt. It's quite horrible. It isn't as bad as Lumbini because our room is pretty well soundproof and we can escape to the other end of the beach when it gets too much, but it beggars belief that the quietest and most peaceful of all the religions would celebrate festivals in this way.

All in all though, it's ok here. We probably won't be able to go snorkelling but we can go swimming and, if we are feeling cliched, for long walks along the beach. We are also staying in a room with hot water and internet that works which is about as luxurious as it gets for us. And it is only $12 a night. (In comparison, our $18 a night room in Arugam Bay came with its own set of frogs that lived in the bathroom and a mosquito net that allowed the mosquitoes inside to feast on our flesh whenever they chose).

So that's the lesson from today's post everybody- it's all a balance. Yin and Yang and all that (I knew I got my tattoo for a reason...)

Now, a few days after this post, I'd just like to add a postscript- the weather cheered up a bit and it's been perfectly sunny and tropical and I've taken some pictures that would make everyone at home, in the cold, very jealous (if only I could figure out how to upload them). 

tea drinking and view hunting

Welcome to Sri Lanka us. After being in India for the last 3 months we have not been able to get over how clean it is here, how much empty space there is and how much more pride the people seem to take in their surroundings. Also how nice and helpful the people are (this, as always, does not include tuk-tuk drivers). We were on a train the other day and as we were going through a station we noticed the car park was completely empty...something we hadn't seen ever in India. Also instead of beggars and half-dead dogs, the train stations here have fish tanks and hanging pot plants...

The travellers here are also a different breed to what we got used to in India. There we were with our own kind- the smelly, sweaty, thrifty kind of backpackers who don't mind a bit of an upset tummy from that street-stall dinner because it saved them $3. Once we arrived in Sri Lanka our smelly dirty clothes suddenly seemed to stand out a lot more...here it is all families with young kids or young couples on a no expenses spared 3 week tour around the country. To put it plainly, everyone dresses up in the morning, puts on their make-up before they leave their fancy air-conditioned hotel for a day of sightseeing in the hired car.

It's a lovely country though. Certainly not as interesting as India but a lovely relaxing wind-down from the sub-continent. Tea is big business here. It brings in close to US$1 billion per year and provides employment to a huge number of Sri Lankans. We have duly visited a tea museum and a tea factory and walked 7km's through tea plantations to 'Lipton's Seat', where Thomas Lipton (the man who began the company who now produce the iced tea everybody loves so much) used to sit and entertain his fancy guests and survey his growing tea empire. We learnt the process through which fresh tea leaves are turned into the little black things that go into our teapots- it's a lot of rolling and sifting and blowing with hot air but it actually only takes about 10 hours for fresh leaves to become tea-pot ready. We learnt about James Taylor who, along with Thomas Lipton, made the Sri Lankan tea industry what it is today...he came from Scotland and grew and produced his own tea, never married and only left his plantation once, to go to Darjeeling to study tea. So he was a  little tea obssessed. Thomas Lipton, another Scotsman, ensured the rest of the world grew to appreciate tea as much as the folks in England did...he marketed very cleverly and grew his own tea which he sold in his own supermarkets at a lower price, to entice the working classes. So these men are much lauded here. We have also done our bit by drinking as many pots of tea as we can- very difficult job, someone's got to do it.

The other main thing to do here seems to be climbing things, view-searching you could say. So far we have climbed a big old rock, atop of which there are the remains of a monastery. That was quite a lovely view. We could also admire the very old frescoes of colourful women painted into a niche in the boulder, and scratch our heads as to how the artists didn't fall to their deaths whilst painting.

We also (very misguidedly) climbed a mountain called 'Adam's Peak'. It is a pilgrimage site for Buddhists who begin the climb at 2am so they can make it to the top in time for the sunrise, which is supposed to be spectacular...I think the reason we saw no pilgrims as we were lumbering up the 5000 steps in the middle of the pitch black, raining, fog-laden night was that they knew there was no chance of seeing the sunrise at this time of year. And hey, turns out they were right. We did get a killer view of heaps of fog though, and probably came quite close to catching pneumonia...but we did it, despite everything, so now we can gloat over all those lazy souls who decided the warmth of their beds was preferable to the storm clouds and cold. Anyway, bad view.

As I said, we also climbed to Lipton's Seat which I'm sure would have been a simply splendid view had the blanket of fog decided to lift at any stage...didn't though. It was a nice walk however so it scores points on Adam's Peak.

We have hit the view jackpot now though. We are in a little town called Ella in the hill country. It's very much set up for tourists but it has some amazing views of mountains, hills covered with tea plantations and forest and waterfalls dotted about the place. And best of all, no fog obscuring any part of it! So we have finally found the view we've been searching for and can reward ourselves with cake and coffee at the relaxing cafes after spending the morning wandering amongst it.

out of India.

Oops. I accidently haven't written on here for ages. We are in Sri Lanka now. But, to recap...

We stayed in Pondicherry for about a week, just generally reveling in the French food, swimming and taking long walks along Marine Drive in the evening, watching lightning over the ocean and families out for a meander, munching on ice-creams and pop-corn.

We left Pondicherry with just over a week to go in India and headed a little further north to a town called Mamallapuram. It was indeed another beach town. A very small town, with a main street full of cheap Indian food 'hotels', juice bars and sweet shops. In between that and the beach there was, as LP said, 'Backpackistan'. Loads of more expensive westaurants (that's western restaurants- Will and I were very proud when we coined this), shops selling baggy clothes in bright colours, carvings of Hindu gods, toilet paper and bottles of water.

There was a bit of a local surf scene here; Will rented a board and tried his luck a couple of times. I think the first time was not so successful but then he decided to get the learner's best friend, the long board, and was much happier with his progress. Now he just has to teach me...

We spent a lot of time relaxing here aswell, walking along the beach, drinking tea, reading and playing Yahtzee. This was, in fact, the very town in which I got 5 Yahtzees in one game and, with a score of 690, became the Yahtzee champion of the world. Anyway, after seeing us lolling about for a few days the man who ran the guesthouse (and was very educated and well-traveled- our favourite type of Indian) subtly encouraged us to visit some of the surrounding sights, enthusing about the crocodile farm, a tiger cave and a temple atop a hill. So we duly rented pushbikes and decided to pedal out to see some modern-day dinosaurs. It was very interesting...I learned that crocodiles are the only reptilian species in which the offspring are shown parental love and care. Also I learnt some other things. It was a long ride- 15km's- to get here, and on the way back we both learned that riding for 15 km's along a freeway into a headwind is fairly exhausting and takes quite a long time. Luckily there was a Cafe Coffee Day in which to reward ourselves upon our return. We stopped at the tiger 'cave' on the way back aswell...it wasn't so much a cave as a big rock with tigers carved into it but it was worth an appreciative glance or two (entrance was free, luckily).

The next day we caught a bus out to the temple, climbed the five hundred steps to the top and watched Indian visitors feed the resident monkeys then shriek away from them when the monkeys came back for more.

My favourite memory of Mamallapuram is the afternoon we were sitting on a big boulder in a park of big boulders and we heard the familiar sound of lots of fireworks all going off at once- a street procession! We jumped off the rock and left the park in order to stalk the procession and find out whether it was mournful or celebratory but we were too slow and by the time we got to the road it was far ahead of us. But the road was, customarily, strewn with roses and marigolds and other bright flowers and it smelt, instead of sewage and urine, of fresh roses. So we wandered up the road on this colourful carpet of flowers, breathing in the rarely perfumed air with relish. A few hours later the flowers were no more than a squished brown sludge on the street.

And then it came time to leave Mamallapuram, and India as well. Our last day was spent in Chennai, walking around in dust and noise until we found a mall and escaped into its air-conditioned quiet. Then we watched Monsters University, the hilarious prequel to Monsters Inc. Then we headed to the airport, to await our midnight flight.

I'll finish this post with our last, incredibly apt, vision of India...we were on the train, watching the stations fly by, and as we stopped at one we saw a homeless man asleep on the platform, oblivious to the stray dog who had crept up and was carefully stealing the man's rice and curry from his bag and gobbling it up. India.