Travel update 2: In which Elizabeth ventures alone (sort of) into the central highlands of Sri Lanka

After a little time in Colombo, Zack had to head to Chennai in southern India for a few days. I was dead set on getting some good hiking in on this trip, so I hopped on a train bound for the central highlands, planning to spend a few days wandering around Nuwara Eliya and Ella.

Getting to Nuwara Eliya

I rarely travel alone, and while I do like being by myself, I always worry that traveling alone will make me feel really lonely. Imagine my delight, then, when I ended up on the train to Nuwara Eliya sitting next to Stephanie, a lovely lady from Hong Kong. We were in the observation carriage at the back of the train, a great spot for stunning mountain views on the seven-hour train ride. We got to talking and found that we were both headed to the same area for the sole purpose of hiking our faces off and drowning ourselves in Ceylon tea. I hadn’t booked a hotel yet, so Stephanie invited me to stay with her. As the train snaked its way slowly into the mountains, we began formulating plans for our time in Nuwara Eliya (and taking an absurd number of pictures from the train window). Here’s a little train view collage:

We got into Nuwara Eliya in the late afternoon. As the sun went down it started to get COLD! I haven’t been in cold weather in like two years, so I was wholly unprepared for how chilly it got overnight up in the Sri Lankan mountains, although I guess I should have known considering the elevation is 1868 m, or 6128 ft. When Stephanie and I went into town to grab dinner, I stopped off in a little shop to get a sweater as well. This proved to be a very important purchase the following morning.

Also, here's the view of Lake Gregory from our hotel (sorry, I procrastinated too long and now can't remember the name of it) and a picture of Stephanie pouring us a tasty cup of Ceylon tea:

Horton Plains National Park

I was only in Nuwara Eliya for one day, and I knew I wanted to hike to World’s End in Horton Plains National Park. It’s over an hour’s drive to Horton Plains, so Stephanie and I arranged for the man who drove us from the train station to our hotel to take us to the park as well. He picked us up super early in the morning (it was freezing, and I was very glad for the sweater I’d bought the night before). The hike wasn’t super challenging or anything, but it was incredibly beautiful. World’s End had a fantastic view, and the trek back out to the park entrance was through a really interesting alpine plain. We also stopped off at lovely Baker’s Falls on our way out.

Sunrise over the cloud forest

Panoramic view of World's End

A little deer friend

Also Baker's Falls

That afternoon, we went to two tea plantations and I spent an ungodly amount of money buying every kind of tea that looked interesting to me. We went to Mackwoods for a tour of their tea factory and then to Bluefield to buy tea. 

On to Ella

Stephanie stuck around in Nuwara Eliya for another day, but I had only a short time in the central highlands so I was keen to get to my next destination, a charming mountain town called Ella. I took the train from Nuwara Eliya to Ella, which took about four hours and featured even more stunning views than the trip from Colombo to Nuwara Eliya. 

I’m kind of a plan-as-you-go traveler, so I booked my hotel in Ella the night before I left (on trusty agoda.com). I got super lucky - Ella’s Edge has an incredible view of the surrounding mountains, the breakfast is gigantic and fabulous and it’s located in a quiet spot just a short walk from the city center.  Here's the afternoon and sunrise view:

There are a couple of good hikes around Ella that I wanted to check out. I decided to start with Ella Rock. Looking on tripadvisor, I found that the trek up to Ella Rock is not particularly well-marked, and that if you go alone guides will try to get you to hire them along the way. A guy at my hotel made me a fairly hilarious hand-drawn “map”, and I’m pretty comfortable getting lost so I figured I would be fine, but I didn’t count on the fact that a woman hiking alone is a super easy target for aggressively “helpful” guides. They do this thing where they talk you into going the wrong way, and then follow you for a while and tell you they’ll “help” you get back on track - for a small fee, of course. I am very embarrassed to say that this happened to me twice (in my defense, the second one was incredibly persuasive, convincing and difficult to shake), and by the time I got to Ella Rock I was feeling disempowered, frustrated and cranky. I shook off the second guide and wandered through a lovely forest over to a cliffside shrine next to this pretty overlook far away from the other tourists. And that’s when the real adventure started. But first, here are some pictures.

Don’t go chasin’ waterfalls, y’all

I was just about to walk back over to the main trail to get back to Ella when I ran into these two super lovely Czech guys, Petr and Karel. They were planning to try to hike down to the bottom of Ravana Falls to go for a swim. I was feeling a little cheated of my own hiking adventure for the day, and definitely not keen to get waylaid by yet another overly solicitous guide, so I asked if I could tag along. Petr told me we would likely be going pretty far off the trail and that there was a chance we wouldn’t even make it to the waterfall. Feeling reckless, I was like, “Awesome let’s go.”

Thus began an epic, hours-long trek down a steep mountainside, first through dense brush and eventually through dusty, ashy, burned-out fields. All three of us scrambled along, occasionally tripping and sliding. A rock hit the back of Karel’s ankle and he started bleeding profusely. Petr cut his hand. We were totally covered in thick, black ash. Ultimately, we realized that we just weren’t going to make it to that waterfall without breaking ourselves and we had to climb all the way back up again. Nevertheless, this was seriously the most fun and memorable day of my trip.

I’d planned to be out for about four hours. With our failed waterfall detour, we ended up being out for about seven hours. Needless to say, I didn’t feel so bad about skipping runs that week, and I had like 32,000 steps on my Fitbit that day.

Gross.

Other things in Ella

After our big day, Petr invited me to join him and Karel for dinner at a guesthouse he had stayed at previously. This lovely old Sri Lankan lady fixed us an epic feast and we ate our faces off. Then we headed down to a little bar around the corner and drank FAR too much Arrack, a local liquor, and Tiger Black (which, incidentally, I would recommend that no one else ever drink EVER… you’ve been warned). The bar itself was hilarious, particularly the majestic lion mural on the wall.

The next morning I was supposed to meet up with Stephanie, who had since made it from Nuwara Eliya to Ella, to hike Little Adam’s Peak for sunrise, but I overslept :/ (possibly due to the aforementioned tragic Tiger Black and Arrack combo). Luckily, we were able to meet up later to walk down the train tracks a few kilometers to Nine Arches and a cute little tea shop.

That afternoon, I hired a car and driver to take me down to Galle to meet up with Zack. There is a bus, but I would have had to leave quite early that morning and I didn’t want to miss my last day in Ella. The private car cost about LRK 10,000 (~USD 65) and only took about five hours - totally worth it to me for the flexibility and napping potential. And thus ended my Sri Lankan mountain adventures! I’ll be back soon with a post on lovely Galle and the reunification of Zack and Elizabeth!

Travel update 1: Colombo; also, I hate Air Asia; also, an apology

My dear friends and readers, I am terribly sorry to have gotten so behind (again) on my posts! I have at least three planned for Sri Lanka, plus several weeks worth of weekly updates, plus a few other ideas I’ve been playing around with, like distance running in Vietnam, or thoughts on the election as viewed from abroad, or community theatre in Saigon. Alas, ever since I got back to Vietnam from my October break, I have hardly had a single quiet moment to write. So now I have loads to tell you, but I also don’t want to overload you with like 10 posts all at once. #bloggerstruggles #thestruggleisreal

Anyway, let’s at least get started today with beautiful Sri Lanka. Zack and I were SO ready for this vacation. We were seriously emotionally run down and trying to hide our bad attitudes from our students by the end of the quarter. Here is a picture of us (Zack looks beautiful and I look tired, as usual) drinking terrible Vietnamese beers in the airport.

Often when I travel, I try to project myself into the city or country I’m visiting, wondering if it’s the kind of place I could live. Almost as soon as we stepped our of our charming B&B into the relaxed quiet of Colombo on a Sunday, Zack and I both said we felt like it was the kind of place we could live. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the walkable city center, or the delicious curry, or the fact that we could interact so naturally with Sri Lankan people because of their English proficiency, but something about Colombo felt like it would be such a lovely place to live for a while. And now, a Colombo collage:

Before I get into what we got up to in Colombo, I have to say something about the amazing B&B we stayed in, Colpetty House. We loved it there so much we booked another night for our last night in town. Colpetty House was fabulous for many reasons. It’s spacious, quiet and clean and the breakfast is divine, but the real draws for us were the owner, a completely delightful woman named Anushika, and Emma, an Australian woman who was working there when we visited. They both went out of their way to make us feel welcome and at home, and Anushika sat with us for over an hour during breakfast helping us plan our first day in Colombo. At the end of our trip when our return flight was canceled (more on that later), Anushika let us come back and use our room for the rest of the day until they had to clean in preparation for the next guest. Seriously, if you’re headed to Colombo, I cannot recommend Colpetty House highly enough.

Our first day in Colombo, we wandered through a very charming park full of canoodling teenagers, then headed to a super tasty restaurant called Upali’s where we ate hathmaaluwa (mixed vegetable curry, advertised as a 2000-year-old recipe), ala sudata uyala (potato curry in coconut milk), and paan (hearty Sri Lankan bread). Photos to come (after I steal them from Zack).

We wanted to catch the sunset from The Kingsbury, but we had quite a lot of time to kill so, in typical Zack and Elizabeth fashion, we wandered from restaurant to cafe to restaurant, eating and drinking our way through Colombo. Our first stop was Whight & Co, where we obviously had to try some beautiful Ceylon Sapphire tea (by “some” I really mean “three pots of”). Whight & Co. has a great view of the ocean and very classic, clean, nautical-themed decor. Here’s Zack gazing pensively out of the window:

After Whight & Co., we wandered over towards the train station to snag something tasty for dinner. We kind of stumbled upon a roti shop called Pillawoods Hotel, where Zack absolutely lost his mind with excitement:

Finally, as the sun was beginning to set, we wandered over to The Kingsbury, a super fancy-looking hotel with a nice rooftop bar. We sat up there and sipped gin (naturally) and watch the sun set over the ocean. It was a magical first day.

We also inadvertently spent another day in Colombo at the end of our trip because our AirAsia flight was canceled. AirAsia can look super attractive because it’s a discount airline with really cheap tickets, but as with many discount airlines, their service is absolutely terrible (definitely worse than some others I’ve been on like Southwest or EasyJet or RyanAir). They canceled our flight after we’d already arrived at the airport, put us on another flight very late that night (so we missed work the following day), wouldn’t even give us taxi fare back to the city center, and were completely and utterly remorseless when we went to the office to complain. They were basically like, we are under no obligation to run all of the flights we schedule, we are under no obligation to help you in any way when we cancel a flight, and also we don’t care that you are missing work tomorrow. Oh and by the way the reason we didn’t contact you to let you know the flight was canceled was because you booked through a travel website rather than the AirAsia site. Sorry not sorry.

So basically, if you aren’t on a specific timeline I guess taking a gamble with AirAsia would be worth it because it’s so cheap, but if a canceled flight would really mess up your schedule and make you miss work or something, you might want to go with a legit airline.

After our shouting match with AirAsia at the airport, Zack and I dejectedly headed back to Colombo and Colpetty House, where we were so happy to be able to lay down for a little rest. Finally we did get back out for a little wander - we headed over to a store/cafe called Barefoot. They had some really lovely textiles and handicrafts and other souvenir-type things. The other thing they had was live Jazz in their outdoor restaurant (apparently this is an every Sunday thing).

This trip kind of had three parts for me - the city, the mountains and the beach - so it seems logical to split it into three blog posts. So I’ll leave Sri Lanka here for now, and hopefully get back to you in less than 9 weeks with the next installment :)

Weekly update 3: In which David and Elizabeth achieve bò kho paradise

Last week was a little crazy because we got hit with the biggest storms I’ve ever seen. We’ve been calling it stormageddon, because of course. But I can’t really explain to you how crazy it was. Like, all of the roads flooded and motorbikes were getting abandoned and washed away and highways turned into rivers, and it was just complete bedlam. Also, I got stuck riding my motorbike in one of the storms and the rain was coming down so hard it was painful, and my rain jacket just wasn’t up to the task of keeping me dry :( The rain kinda derailed a lot of my plans for the week, and I ended up spending a lot of time watching Outlander in my bed. It was kind of like the hibernation I used to do in the winter in Europe and America, except this time it was caused by a monsoon and only lasted a week.

On Thursday the storms broke for long enough that I was able to attend an event hosted by Network Girls at Stoker Woodfired Grill. The wine and snacks were really nice, and Stoker felt like the kind of place that would be great for small events and parties. I probably wouldn’t go there on the regular, but it would be perfect for a special occasion. I’d never been to a Network Girls event before, but I’m so glad that I did because I had a great time catching up with some of the awesome ladies I know here (even though I ended up drinking far too much wine for a Thursday night).

I mentioned in my last weekly update that David and I had tried and failed to get some yummy breakfast bò kho last weekend. What I didn’t say was that this was the third weekend in a row that we had a failed bò kho attempt. Usually bò kho is the main thing I want to eat post-run, and I’d been craving it for like three weeks. Unfortunately, every time I went to one of the bò kho spots in my neighborhood, they had either stopped serving it or run out. So, dear readers, you should be able to imagine my immense joy at finally having a successful bò kho breakfast on Saturday. Here’s a photo:



Bò kho has to be in my top three favorite Vietnamese dishes. It’s basically a beef stew with carrots and onions and a baguette on the side. As with many dishes here, it comes with a huge pile of herbs, chillies and limes so you can adjust everything to your own taste. My mouth is literally watering while I write this, that’s how badly I want to eat bò kho every day of my life. Mmmmmmmm.

Later on Saturday, David and I headed over to Càfê RuNam to meet up with Missy and have a coffee (or five). Càfê RuNam is pretty ornate on the inside. I actually found it quite charming, although Zack thought it was a bit tacky. What followed was truly extravagant consumption of beverages and pastries, at least on my end. Pretty sure Missy and David ordered a reasonable number of things. Meanwhile, I ordered pretty much everything on the menu (whatever, I was really hungry after my morning run).

Next up: Weekly update 4 in which Elizabeth has anxiety dreams about her leftovers, and Travel update 1 in which Elizabeth and Zack go to Sri Lankaaahhhhhh! See y’all soon :)

Weekly Update 2: In which Elizabeth finally visits Gin House

I really set myself up for failure by calling this a “weekly” update… Clearly I’m already getting behind, so, sorry.  But that just means that I have two weekly updates to post in the next couple of days!

Last Friday a group of teachers from my school had a Big Night Out.  We went to Warda, a Lebanese restaurant on Mạc Thị Bưởi.  I would highly recommend it if you’re craving Middle Eastern food.  The mezze were really nice, especially the baba ganoush.  I’ve also heard that they have really nice shisha.  I’d go into more detail, but alas, I again forgot to take pictures because I was feasting exuberantly. 

After Warda, we went to Gin House (where I did remember to take pictures!).  I’ve been wanting to go here for a while.  Any of you who know me well know how much I, as a 90-year-old WASPy lady, love my gin.  Gin House definitely delivered.  They have a huge list of different house-infused gins.  I tried the rose and hibiscus one and the vanilla and orchid one.  Oh my heavens, y’all.  I think I found my new favorite bar. 

Saturday morning I got up early for my weekly long run.  I don’t have a lot that is noteworthy to say about this, but I do want to share some really lovely pictures I took!  Five miles into my run I got to the top of a bridge (bridges are the only “hills” to train on here) and stopped for some water, and to my right was this beautiful view.  Behind me was a giant divided highway, but in front of me was miles and miles of jungle and river.  Sometimes southern Vietnam is such a magical place.  Moments like that just catch you off guard.  Also, here is a picture of me looking like a sweaty monster.  You're welcome.

After my run I was in serious need of some food and some R&R (as you can see in that photo), so David and I walked down our alley to try out a new bò kho place I had run by earlier.  Unfortunately, that was closed, but right next door was a phở spot that we hadn’t tried before.  It was for sure the best phở I’ve gotten near my house – the broth was really flavorful and the beef was super nice.  Now, I’m not going to be like that Bon Appétit guy and try to tell you how to eat phở, but I’m personally a fan of loading up the herbs, pickled garlic and lime, with a few chilies to give it some kick, like this:

After some much-needed phở and cà phê đá, David and I headed to the salon in my building to get our hair washed, along with a 45-minute scalp massage.  If you ever come visit me out here, this is the first thing I am taking you to do.  Scalp massages are more or less the best thing in my life.

 Saturday night I had two birthday parties to attend, both with a costume theme (James Bond and heroes and villains).  I definitely had to stop off for some mì xào at my favorite alley spot for a pre-drinking dinner.  Mì xào is one of my favorite dishes.  It's basically noodles stir-fried with veggies (usually morning glory, carrot and green onion), either eggs or meat, and a super yummy sweet/salty sauce.  This lovely lady makes it just how I like it, with lots of greens and two eggs:

 Zack and I did a couples costume (naturally) for the heroes and villains party.  Zack was Rachel Roy aka Becky with the good hair and I was Rachael Ray aka a thick Sicilian woman who is a blessing.  Here are some pictures from the night:

Naturally I stayed out too late and, for some reason, took a video of myself on the back of my Grab bike (motorbike taxi service, kind of like Uber) explaining why I had taken a motorbike taxi instead of a real taxi.  What a way to end the week.  

Next up: Weekly Update 3: In which Elizabeth actually posts on time like a responsible human who keeps to her commitments.  See y'all soon!

The start of a great tinventure

Dear Internet,

I would like to take a little trip down memory lane, back to December 28, 2014, when I made this very bold statement:

As I promised many of you, I am starting a blog about my time in Vietnam. I also promise that I will try my VERY best to update this one more than I did when I was living in Paris :)

I think I updated this blog exactly two times after that post because I am responsible and have my life together.

Since that time, I have traveled through Vietnam and to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. I have run trail races and road races. I have learned how to ride a motorbike.  I have performed in three plays. I have taught students I cherish and students who drive me crazy (and students I cherish who drive me crazy). I have finished an M.Ed. I have learned a little Vietnamese and read a lot of books. And, looking back over the last 18 months, I really wish I’d been writing about all of this as it was happening.

(clockwise from top left: Dad and me in Saigon; Jess, Liam and me in Inle Lake (Myanmar); Kate and me practicing yoga in Kerala (India); me hiking in Cat Tien National Park (Vietnam); Allison, Jess, Perry and me at Mirissa Beach (Sri Lanka); Dad, Katie and me in Thailand)

(photos from Lysistrata, Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged)

I am inspired to rectify this sad state of affairs. Also, when I was home this summer Carrie demanded that I start writing my blog again. And, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, DAVID TINNON MOVED TO VIETNAM!

So, I have rechristened this blog “Tinventures,” because, you know, we are Tinnons having adventures, and I hope to write about the fun and crazy things David and I do here in Vietnam, both together and apart. David even said he’d blog with me as long as I set it up for him. So, David, here is me setting it up. Let the Tinventures begin!

XO E