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a form of curry leaves I like
Friday, July 11 2025
location: room 327, Hotel Suisse, Kandy, Sri Lanka
The coffee was a little better at breakfast this morning in the huge colonial dining hall, though the food was about the same. I think this might've been the morning that there were patties of deep-fried hashbrowned potatoes, which is never a bad thing to have at breakfast.
At some point in the breakfast, Gretchen had John and Danielle, the nice Australian couple from Cambodia, tell us (and most of the rest of the table) their love story, something they'd promised they'd tell us "when there's enough time" after we'd told them our love story back in Colombo. They're both teachers who had been working in the same school back in Australia. They'd known each other for years and then something, I think it was chaperoning a school dance, got them together, and their students were apparently aware of the easy chemistry between them even before they were. Then Gretchen managed to extract Carly's love story; she'd met her future wife doing roller derby in Rochester. Finally, we heard Nicole from Ann Arbor's long complicated love story. Like Gretchen's, it started with her in a relationship with another woman, but that ended badly (as I recall) and she ended up married to a gentleman.
There were no items on the itinerary today, so we were free to do whatever we wanted in Kandy. Gretchen went off with some of the others to check out the Kandy Botanical Gardens, though not me. As is my preference, I opted to spend most of the day both in the room (taking more than one shower as I recall) and then down at the pool. The gaggle of European teenagers who'd been degrading the poolside experience yesterday had gone and now almost nobody was using the pool. When I went down there this afternoon, the only people I found there were Gretchen's parents. At some point Gretchen's mother asked if I had any money but of course I didn't. She apparently was unfamiliar with the procedure of charging things to the room, something Gretchen and I don't normally do but had been doing a fair amount of this trip.
When Gretchen returned from her adventures in Kandy, I was the only one at the pool. She and I ordered french fries and drinks. Gretchen has been loving Sri Lankan lime juice, so that was what she had. I went with my perennial favorite when I'm letting my colonialist freak flag fly, a gin and tonic, though when I ordered it I followed the Sri Lankan custom of eliding the word "and." Periodically I'd do a little actual swimming in the pool or take my camera over to the bird and bat trees to see if I could get good pictures.
This evening Zach and Jiva arranged for a big send off meal in the courtyard just outside the huge colonial dining hall. The Hotel Suisse had been expropriated as the military command center for Lord Mountbatten back during World War II, so various things in the hotel had been named after him, including the courtyard where we'd be having tonight's dinner. (The windows from our room also looked out into this courtyard.)
When Gretchen and I arrived at the meal, I was happy to see a well-stocked bar with all our favorite Sri Lankan liquors and beers (wine is apparently less of a thing). I had at least two glasses of whiskey before taking my seat near the middle of the long table, with Zach at might right, Gretchen at my left, and Jiva across the table from me. I was pleased that Jiva was very much participating in the drinking of the hard liquor; he'd been working hard and deserved it. Even Zach, who famously only eats one meal a day, had a beer. We haven't talked much on this trip, but it turns out we have some things in common. When we eat (and I like to eat more than he does), we both like our food spicy. And we don't particularly care for dessert. He went and got some extra chillis so I could put some in my vodka (yes, I'd switched to vodka), which was kind of fun. As for the food, it featured basmati rice and various curries, some better than others. But, since it was served family style, it was possible for me (if not Gretchen) to have a good meal. I even found a form of curry leaves that I liked: ones that had been deep-fried, rendering them crispy.
During the meal, we all received our end-of-journey schwag, which included a Sri Lankan flag (I like it; it features a medeival-style lion), a Buddhist flag (I'm feeling meh about that) and framed print depicting various ancient religous figures (Gretchen would find a way to leave both of those in our hotel room). We also got little sculptures that looked like something from the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest.
This bird near the Hotel Suisse pool turned out to be a magpie-robin. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen swimming in the Hotel Suisse pool. Click to enlarge.
A roosting fruit bat wrapped in his or her own wings near the Hotel Suisse pool. Click to enlarge.
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