Asia 2023

Time rushes, when having a great time, already spent 2 days here 🤩.
Arriving late I directly stumbled across a typical Party-Hostel, as you could find in Thailand in every city.
Was a rough start here, party went until 4am, but was very nice. Met travel-buddies from Colombo, again, and an Austrian couple who arrived with the same plane 😅 Backpacker's world sometimes seems to be surprisingly small.

Some partying time by time is fine, but looking for a more quite place I found Akki's Hostel. Akki is a very young guy who set up a beautiful tiny Hostel with only three basic equipped rooms and an amazingly planted and decorated garden, some hammocks around, great for hanging around and relaxing.
A very nice and not so busy part of the beach is a 60m walk, listening to the ocean all the times is one of the best parts of travelling shoreside.

So first day here, after changing hostel, I spent relaxing, swimming and recovering from the great but exhausting scooter trip to here. In the evening Julian and I decided to take a look at famous marble beach, which was very nice, but seperated into two parts. One (smaller) public part, being quite crowded as there was a public holiday, and one completely empty part, reserved for army members. 🤷

Second day I decided to explore Trincomalee's surroundings, as I got some recommendations.
First of all I went to Velgam Vehera Archeological Site, where you can see ancient ruins of a 2200 years old Buddhist temple complex asides a new built temple was just beeing extended. As I arrived around noon, nobody was around, archeological site's office looked abandoned.
It's very well kept and a very fascinating place, but do not expect any deeper information for visitors, except one sign, giving basic information.
Once again I was very lucky, as after 5mins a Tuktuk with two Latvia girls and a tourist guide appeared 😬 So I was able to jump in and finally we had a very nice tour on the site. Karem, our guide, had a great knowledge about historical art- and construction-work, but also was perfectly able to explain the Buddhist rituals in a perfect English.
Again and again, ancient people's abilities in building huge structures is so fascinating!

Next stop was Nilaveli beach, going there on a tiny, but well kept dirt road, passing a small lake, seeing fishermen working, going through great landscapes and, of course, uncountable cows crossed my paths.
Nilaveli beach was nice, but where I entered, fishing dominated the beach and only 2 or 3 shadow places around. After a brief jump into the water and having a relaxing break under the trees with some resting fishermen, I went on to the Tirukoneswaram Hindu temple.

This is not only a great place to watch sunset, but a very impressive Hindu temple, as usual filled with loads of colorful and storytelling artworks a huge Vishnu statue in front of it, and several statues of gods around.

Perhaps living in Vienna for such a long time opened up some morbid interest in cemeteries, but I had to stop at a christian church, having one attached. Even if christian cemeteries wherever I've seen have a lot in common, this Sri Lankan one was quite interesting. But so many people seem to die at a very young age here... 😢

Having a nice view on the sunset, enjoying a freshmade coconut water drink was a nice end of a day packed with great impressions.

Nevertheless, the night started with a great dinner, served on ceramic plates, sitting on a bench beside the road, next to the kitchen, one of the best Kotthus I've gotten so far 🥰

Going back to the laughing leopard (party-) hostel for meeting some travel buddies ended up in a birthday party from a local guest there. 🙈

So today another lazy beach day and will check out some snorkeling for tomorrow. With tears on my heart, I cancelled my whale watching trip for tomorrow, as I've now heard several people telling it's very crowded with boats and not really animal friendly. 😢
But I've already gotten a great recommendation for swimming with whales in Indonesia, so hopefully it's just postponed. 🤷Meer informatie