I'm dreaming of my Sri Lankan Christmas

Ok, so before I go into Sri Lanka, is anyone else freaked out by that 2010 in the lower right corner of their screen? It looks so crazy! Ok maybe that’s just me. Anyway, Sri Lanka is absolutely amazing and I would completely recommend it – and at $30 a day for a room on the ocean and 3 meals you really can’t go wrong. It reminds me a lot of Hawaii except without all the development. Oh, some background: so Little Ditty is sadly no more as Diane fell ill in September and went home for some R&R. She is doing well, but decided not to return and we definitely miss her here. As they say, Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone…Okay that actually makes no sense at all but I tried. My other roommates, Aakash and Monisha, visited family over the holiday, but Jack and I both thought it was too far to go all the way back to the States and headed to Sri Lanka instead.
We started in Bentota, a beach on the West Coast, which was literally deserted except for about four people. It was amazing. We bonded with a rickshaw (or Touk Touk, as they are called there) driver, and he took us out on a boat ride and to a waterfall where we could dive in off the rocks. The waterfall was also a bath for about 20 Sri Lankans, who got a huge kick out of me attempting flips off the rocks. Next we spent a day in Galle, which is an old fort that looks straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean. We headed down south to an incredibly beautiful beach, although along the way we could see a lot of destruction from the tsunami. We were actually there for the 5 year anniversary of the tsunami, and although it was clear there had been a lot of development, you could still see concrete houses where the roof and some of the walls had been completely washed away.
Mirissa, the beach in the south, was cool because it was also fairly undeveloped but did have the requisite thatched-roof bars right on the beach and was a great place to celebrate New Years. We brought in 2010 with a random group of Brits, Germans, and South Africans who we had met during our time there, and it was great to be out on the beach in January! The last few days we decided to get off our lazy bums and did some hiking in the interior. We also completed a Buddhist pilgrimage, which consisted of hiking over 5,000 stairs up a mountain to a temple. The craziest part was that in order to do it right you are supposed to be up at the top of the mountain for the sunrise, which means you start the hike at 2am. We thought it seemed slightly crazy, but sure enough there were about 100 Sri Lankans hiking along with us in the middle of the night!
I think for both Jack and me the highlight was definitely when multiple times we got confusing looks from people and they asked if we were Indian. I mean nothing marks the 6 month anniversary of our stay in India better than being mistaken for a local! You basically can’t survive in Delhi unless you get really good at bargaining, and we both tend to adopt Indian accents when we bargain. Apparently we’ve gotten so cheap that several times we would be haggling with a Sri Lankan and they would get a confused look on their face and then say…wait, you from India?
The only thing missing from the whole Sri Lankan experience were the trashy magazines. It was literally painful for me to be on the beach without US Weekly or People – I mean it’s pretty amazing I even survived at all now that I think about it. I got super excited when I found one copy of Cosmo in the Colombo airport, and of course grabbed it and took it up to the register. The price? Twenty two US dollars! Unbelievable! I mean I love my Cosmo but even I have my limits. I settled for a Newsweek instead. Lame.