Dirty South

Pt. 1

The south coast of Sri Lanka is not a large place. It's about 200 kilometers long, and the southern plains are only a few kilometers deep. In this space are quite a few towns, some of which you may feel the desire to visit, particularly if you have been subjected to enormous heaps of disinformation telling you that southern Sri Lanka is a good place to go to the beach. I will comment on these towns in turn.

But first, however, I will take a brief digression to describe what lies between the towns so that you might have a feel for the coast as a whole. The space between towns on the south coast of Sri Lanka consists of:

• Palm trees, and other miscellaneous fruits
• Tsunami graves
• Rice, one imagines, though it's surprisingly hard to find
• Fish kiosks
• Fish carts
• People on bicycles selling fish
• Piles of drying fish

There is really very little open rural land, because the spaces between market towns are almost completely filled with villages, which are almost identical to towns except they can support only one mobile phone store per square kilometer.

We begin our discussion of southern towns on the eastern end of the coast.

Kataragama
Covered in the previous post

Tissamaharama
Hardly worth the effort to spell, and even less worth spending an afternoon in.

Hambantota
Getting a sunburn here would count as one of the town's most exciting recreational possibilities. Honorary suck points for being the hometown of President Doucheface Rajapakse, whose eminently slapworthy mug I am tired of looking at.

Tangalla
Finally, a town with some potential. Conveniently located for a number of nearby attractions, and said to have a pleasant, low-key beach atmosphere. What is the truth? In reality Tangalle contains about 80 hotels and 5 tourists, possibly because there are 0 restaurants. OK, well there are places that say "restaurant" on their signs, but they suffer from the common Sri Lankan confusion about serving food. In a single night I walked into no less than four so-called eateries which were unable to conjure even a plateful of rice. "Can I have a kilo of cocaine then?", I finally asked. The proprietor looked at me in bewilderment, and reported that he did not have any cocaine either. I was expecting this, and bellowed "THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR SO-CALLED RESTAURANT A FRONT FOR?!?!... If your darkened kitchen isn't full of hookers, blow, or fake passports -any of which I would consider accepting- then you'd better turn on a stove and cook some rice pronto if you don't want me to tell the world never to come to Tangalla!"

This failed to produce rice. Don't go to Tangalla.

Mulkirigala
South Sri Lanka's main ancient historical attraction is... *drumroll* a big-ass rock with Buddhist cave temples! Now, as a big-ass rock it isn't as good as Sigiriya, and as a collection of cave temples it isn't as good as Dambulla, but it's definitely worth a visit for its own unique charms. Chief among these is the utterly ridiculous Kandyan art that covers so many of the caves' random surfaces. The caves rather look like someone kidnapped a wagon full of second-rate baroque painters from a sheep-herding provincial village in central Europe, then forced them to paint every square inch of the Mulkirigala caves at gunpoint, substituting the standard subject matter of European art of the day (cherubs), for more Buddhist-specific material. The result, which never fails to bring a smile to my face, was Buddhist cherubs. This theme is epitomized in one cave where a statue of the dying Buddha is praised by the myriad Buddhist and Hindu gods in heaven, painted on the ceiling in plump glee with billowing robes, fluffy clouds, and goofy faces that make you want to punch them back into some Bavarian granny's tea-cupboard where they belong. There are also paintings from earlier periods, which look more typically Sri Lankan and have a great attention to detail and a profusion of demons and elephants, but really it's the wafting ribbons and Asian gods in neoclassical robes that stick in your mind.


Well, well, look at that. I actually have to be off. Paperwork beckons. I will smite the perpetrators of official obstructionism with my dogged and stubborn perseverance. We shall have to pick this up some other time. Happy travels, and don't let the huge, beetle-like flying things bite. Believe me...