To the Middle Earth

"And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, 

and the sun shone upon her"

- J.R.R. Tolkien

I read Lord of the Rings years before the movie franchise started and until today it remained one of the more memorable books that I have read - not least because of the thickness of the book (all 3 parts crammed into a 1,000+-paged tome). I am a bigger fan of the book than the movie, but still a trip to New Zealand without seeing the Hobbiton movie set would be scandalous. 

I put the eye-watering price of ticket aside and booked ourselves a Hobbiton tour for our first day in the North Island. After sorting out car rental, we drove towards Matamata at around 11am, past endless pastures of various shades of green and countless grazing cows. From Matamata, the "Hobbiton Movie Set Tourist Farm" was well signposted, although I couldn't help getting a different image of a farm of tourists for us to see.

Soon, after around 2 hours on the road, we found ourselves among the rolling hills that were part of the 1,200-acre Alexander family sheep farm. Our first stop was the Shire's Rest Cafe, housed in a converted woolshed. But we got ourselves a prime outdoor seat and had sandwiches and hot drinks with spectacular views of sheep grazing on undulating farmland.

Irf enjoying his first hot chocolate in New Zealand

At 1.50pm, 10 minutes before the scheduled start of the tour, we waited outside the gift shop for a coach to take us on the short ride right to the heart of The Shire. Joining one of the tours is compulsory since you can't simply walk into the Hobbiton set. Hence, that was why we found ourselves being escorted and given briefings by a tour guide. But Dan was not a stuffy tour guide. He was cheerful and enthusiastic - in fact, were it not for his "normal" physical appearance, he would fit in in Hobbiton.

The start of the walking tour

He took us on a leisurely trek through the Hobbiton set, stopping at various places to show and explain how they showed in the movies. I was always the last in the group - that way I could take pictures without having other people in the frame. Irf, on the other hand, insisted to be in front just behind Dan, saying that he was on an adventure. I had to call him back many times just so that I could take pictures of him.

I learned that most of the hobbit holes were just facades - you could only step into one hobbit hole, that the the giant oak tree on top of Bag End was fake with painted silk leaves and all and that you could possibly turn a pumpkin into a carriage, judging by the size of those that we saw.

Above: Bag End, home of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins
Below: Visiting time in Hobbiton

Samwise Gamgee lived here

Hobbiton was too pretty for words. It was also the small details that made everything so magical - the hobbit-sized clothing pegged to the clothes line, the mini jars of honey outside a hobbit hole, the cabbage patches, the well-tended vegetable gardens complete with real pumpkins and squash displayed on a rustic table. It was all so surreal. Big respect to the props team and those who work to maintain the site.

Laundry day hobbit-style

  "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit"

And then it was time to make our way to the Green Dragon Inn. We walked through a small wooded area, on to the double arched bridge across The Water, past Sandyman's Old Mill to the courtyard of the Inn strung with garlands of buntings and lanterns.

The Old Mill of Hobbiton

In the Inn, there were 2 choices of complimentary drinks that came with the ticket price - ale/cider or non-alcoholic ginger beer. We claimed the latter and had our break within the cosy, dimly-lit timber structure. There were hobbit clothes hung on a hook if you ever feel the need to dress like one.

The day Irf fell in love with ginger beer

The tour ended after approximately 2 hours. Did an obligatory browse at the gift shop and then it was the eastward 50-minutes drive towards Tauranga at Bay of Plenty where our lodging for the night await. Alas, it was not a hobbit hole.

Note:

Hobbiton address: 501 Buckland Rd, Hinuera, Matamata 3472

Entrance fees: NZD79, free for children below 9 years

Accommodation in New Zealand

Here's a list of accommodation that we stayed in whilst in the North Island. All of the accommodations were booked via booking.com except for the one in Auckland booked via Air B&B.

1) Auckland Airport - Silver Oaks Inn – Silverpoint  
(138 Mckenzie Road, Auckland, 1010) 

This apartment is rated only 2 1/2 star on Tripadvisor. I normally would not touch such low-rated places with a bargepole but desperate times called for desperate measures. We arrived at Auckland past midnight and would need a place to crash for only a few hours until we leave Auckland the next morning so would not want to spend more than necessary.

At NZD190 per night for a 4-bed studio, this was the cheapest I could get. With experience, all I could say is that the rating is well-deserved. The only saving grace was the free (and fairly prompt) airport shuttle for the 10-minutes drive to the motel, even when it was already past 1 am. The next morning, the same shuttle sent us back to the airport to get our rental car.

  
2) Tauranga @ Bay of Plenty - SURE Harbour View Motel
(7 Fifth Avenue East, Tauranga, 3110)

Located just off Tauranga Harbour, it has great views of the harbour from the living room's bay windows. Our 2-bed apartment was tastefully decorated with nautical colours and comes with a fully equipped kitchen, the latter made it easy for us to have home-cooked food for dinner that night.

Our harbour-view motel in Tauranga

Breakfast with a view

Mount Maunganui is only a 10 minutes drive away and there is a huge Pak N' Save Supermarket just minutes away. The motel is also within walking distance from Tauranga city centre which unfortunately we did not have time to explore.

3) Rotorua - Blue Lake TOP 10 Holiday Park
(723 Tarawera Road, 3076 Rotorua)

Lakeside holiday park 

Top 10 is one of the major holiday parks chain in New Zealand. The one that we stayed in, a Standard 2-bedroom cabin for NZD185, at Rotorua was perhaps just one of your bog-standard cabins but the location was a different story.

I can still remember the drive from Rotorua city centre. After the 10-minutes drive, we were going down a gentle slope towards a sharp bend and then suddenly there was the lake around the bend with the holiday park just across the road. The waning daylight made it impossible to the the blueness of the lake but there was still a magical quality to the place. With the verdant greens of the forest and native bush nearly completely surrounding the lake and the holiday park, it was like being in a giant bowl.

My bowl of tranquility

It only started with toe-dipping but Irf got attracted with the
crystal clear water and soon was drenched from the waist down

4) Lake Taupo - Boulevard Waters Motor Lodge
(215 Lake Terrace, 3330 Taupo)

If we only had to cross a small road to get to Blue Lake from our cabin in Rotorua, we could practically throw a stone into Lake Taupo from our balcony in this motel. The unit that we stayed in was nicely done-up, with a seperate room at the back for 2 more guests. Sitting on the bed, all I could see were water and, in the distance, mountains and hills with Mount Ruapehu and Mount Tongariro as centrepieces. We did not manage to go to Tongariro National Park but having views of Mordor and Mount Doom from our room was a great consolation.

Our room on the water's edge

Another piece de resistance was the "in-room spa", which transalated into a huge circular bathtub in the room itself, with buttons and all to turn it into a jacuzzi/whirlpool.

Irf's mini pool in the room

A toaster, kettle and coffee machine
- and life is complete

5) Auckland - Apartment on Halsey Street booked via AirB&B

Getting an accommodation in Auckland was the single most difficult thing that I had to do on this trip. I trawled the web for days on end, always ending up with exorbitantly-priced hotels and apartments, upwards of RM2,000 per night for the 4 of us. Hostels were out of the question since we had my mother with us.
.
I hold Adele fully responsible for this. I found out later in Auckland that Adele was having a concert the same weekend we were there. Apparently there's a short supply of hotel rooms in Auckland, a problem intensified whenever there is an international event/concert.

So I ended up booking a 2-bedroom apartment through Air B&B. Cheaper than hotel rooms at that time but still the most expensive accommodation I have booked in my entire life. 


One of the 2 bedrooms furnished 
with brilliant colours

A bright and airy apartment very close to
the Viaduct Harbour and Silo Park

A corner of the living room

Planning for New Zealand @ Aotearoa

I was suffering from post travel blues after our return from Sri Lanka and Malaysia Airlines was having its year-end sale. Naturally it was time to plan for our next trip. The tickets for KL-Auckland were selling at a price that I could not resist and although we could get cheaper Air Asia tickets, it was not by much taking into account the meals and baggage allowance and would involve a transit at Gold Coast. Tickets in hand, I had a bit more than 3 months to plan.

1. Itinerary

Planning the itinerary was no easy feat - there were too many things to see in New Zealand. Alas, we could only go for 6 nights due to work commitment and trying to cover both South and North Island in that time-frame would be a travesty.  So which island to choose? With its mountains and fjords, the South Island is usually the more popular choice but the North Island is where Hobbiton is and I really wanted to take Irf there. It is also the geothermal heartland of New Zealand and there would be geysers, volcanoes and bubbling mood pools to see - enough to entertain a 7 year-old boy.

A geographical milestone reached - first time in Oceania

We tried to fit in as many places as possible in a day with a daily cut-off of 5pm to have time to wind down. Here's our North Island itinerary:

21 March - Flight to Auckland
22 March - Auckland to Matamata for Hobbiton (164 km, 2 hours) then onwards to Tauranga, Bay of Plenty (59km, 50 minutes)
23 March - Tauranga to Mount Maui for the beach (9km, 12 minutes) then onwards to Rotorua (60km, 50 minutes)
24 March - Rotorua to Taupo (56km, 50 minutes)
25 March - Taupo to Auckland (279km, 3.5 hours)
26 March - Auckland
27 March - Flight to KL

2.  Transport within NZ

There are bus and coach services to take you around the island but for us self-drive was the better option due to overall costs and flexibility. We rented a Toyota Yaris from Apex Rental Cars for NZD350 for 4 days which included zero access, roadside cover and a booster seat for Irf. Comparing to the costs paid by previous travelers, I thought that was quite expensive but that was still one of the cheapest among all the quotations that we have received for that time.

Sorting the documentation at Apex Car Rentals office.

Getting to the car rental agency office from the airport was easy. We called the freephone number and waited at Gate 11 (near McDonalds, Arrivals) for only a few minutes before the free shuttle arrived for the 5-minutes journey to their office on Verissimo Drive.

Total costs for petrol was around NZD100 for 4 days and we relied solely on Waze for navigation.

3. Accommodation

Our itinerary meant that we had to change accommodation nearly every night. We mostly booked 2-bedroom apartments as my mother was travelling with us, using booking.com and Air B&B. Outside of Auckland, there were many holiday parks and motels to choose from. More on our choices of accommodation in this post.

A popular holiday park chain with 46 locations in NZ - we
stayed at the one in Blue Lake, Rotorua

4. Immigration and customs

New Zealand's border controls are very strict. Whilst Malaysians do not need visa to visit NZ (thus saving us the hassle of appying for one), customs were an entirely different story. The list of food with biosecurity risks to declare is endless, and this includes meat, dairy products, fish and any cooked or uncooked food. I have heard horror stories of long queues and overzealous customs officers.

The declaration on the Arrivals Card was very general and it did not ask you to list down the items, but earlier at home I had prepared a list of food/medicines for my mom that we were bringing in just to be on the safe side. I am not sure whether it was because of the time of the day (we arrived past midnight) or just our luck, but thankfully our customs experience was a breeze. We passed our Arrival Cards to the officer at the x-ray machines and he asked us what type of food that we had in our bags. After scanning our bags at the machine, another officer requested to check one bag of ours. She gave a cursory glance at our packets of maggi, canned sardines and the packet of uncooked rice. All in all, the process including queuing time took less than 10 minutes. A couple of tips - try to put all food in one luggage and ensure that your prescribed medicine has your name on it.

5. Internet

Heavily relying on wifi, we seldom buy local sim cards in countries that we traveled to. But in this case, exception had to be made as we needed to access Waze. Got ourselves a 1 GB sim card for NZD29 from a Vodafone shop just across the Arrivals Hall. The data was just enough for 4 days of driving and web surfing a night to look for info at accommodation where there was no free wifi.

6. Food

We love travelling in Asia but sometimes having to have to be very careful in what we put into our mouths and the water we use to brush Irf's teeth can be very tiring. Traveling in NZ was a nice change in terms meals for Irf. We could buy from any shop without having to worry about Irf catching stomach bugs, although obviously our choices of food were still limited to vegetarian and seafood.

The downside was the prices. A dish at a normal restaurant/cafe usually cost upwards of NZD15 and the exchange rate with MYR was not so great. Even in the UK where the exchange rate was higher, meals were never a problem cost-wise. We stuck mainly to fish and chips takeaways, McDonalds' fillet o' fish (a worldwide saviour) with the odd kebab and cafe food. For dinner, Pak N' Save was our best friend. This is a low cost supermarket with big outlets everywhere we went to. To complement the food that we brought from Malaysia, we bought fresh pasta, raviolis, ready-made pasta sauce and mushroom soups, salmon, breads, fruits and an assortment of crisps and  dinner/snacks for a few nights were sorted.

One thing I could not get my head around was how expensive milk was. I mean, we passed thousands of cows in our roadtrip and I am sure that there were millions of them there. How, then, could a litre of milk cost NZD2.60 to NZD3.50 (the latter for organic)? Again, I was comparing to UK where a litre of milk cost GBP1 and the most it cost for organic milk was perhaps GBP1.50.

So that's the basic elements of our trip to New Zealand covered. It was an easy trip to plan as it's right on the well-trodden path. No extra vaccination to take, no cereal, milk and biscuits to bring for Irf and definitely no language barrier and crazy roads to worry about.

Revisiting Melaka

Recently, we had a wedding to attend on a Saturday afternoon in Melaka @ Malacca. As a Malaysian and especially if you are from the Klang Valley, it’s easy to take Melaka for granted. It’s only 90 miles away from KL and I'm sure that it's been done to death by many. But the fact remains that Malacca is a city steeped in history and heritage. It's a melting pot of cultures from bygone years; of Portuguese, Dutch and Baba and Nyonya. And it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site to boot. So staying a night there was a foregone conclusion.

Accommodation

Choosing a hotel was easy. You are no longer limited to a bog-standard hotel room - recent years have seen an influx of boutique hotels to suit varying levels of budgets. The one that suited our criteria was Estadia Hotel, a Peranakan-style boutique hotel under the same management with the bigger and more popular Hatten Hotel. It’s located within walking distance from Jonker Street (or so they told us) and a 2-bedroom family suite cost RM420 per night (we were travelling with the parents) when booked directly from their website. The room is tastefully decorated with Peranakan elements and I think it is a great value for what we paid.

One of the bedrooms with 2 single beds. The other bedroom
comes with a king bed

The cafe where buffet breakfast
was served

At the lobby of Estadia Hotel

The hotel is in the same building as Hatten Square Mall hence they share the same parking. We wanted to walk to Jonker Street and we were advised by the concierge to walk through the malls and the walk would take 15 minutes. Conveniently, there was a door through to Hatten Square just next to the lobby. However, the time given of 15 minutes did not take into the account that the mall, connected to the bigger Dataran Pahlawan Megamall, was a huge maze. I am not sure whether we sucked at taking directions or the few people that we asked sucked at giving directions but after 15 minutes we were just walking out of one of the exits into the open area parking space.

Trishaw ride

Then Irf saw something that made his eyes open wide. Rows of trishaws or beca, all decked in the brightest and most colourful of lights and all individually themed. Now, I don't have Minions, Hello Kitty and Pokemon in mind when I think of Melaka as a heritage site but if these creatures could take us immediately to Jonker Street without us breaking more sweat, I was all up for it. RM50 changed hands for 2 trishaws and soon we were cruising along in a blaze of neon lights with local pop music blaring in the background. I thought that it was highway robbery to have to pay so much for such a short distance but the trishaw was manually powered and we were no longer living in a feudal era. Tacky and garish aside, I secretly enjoyed the ride. Irf enjoyed it too and that was not a secret.

The trishaws could make up a whole 
new season of Pimp My Ride

Jonker Street

Jonker Street or Jonker Walk or Jalan Hang Jebat as it is currently named comes alive on Friday and Saturday nights with a Night Market. The whole of Melaka tourism industry gravitates towards this 500-metres stretch of beautifully preserved shop houses selling antiques, crafts and food. During the Night Markets, the street is lined up with hawker stalls where Irf went on a Pokemon cards frenzy. Unfortunately, the Night Market is a victim of its own popularity and I couldn't wait to get out from the crowd. I believe the beauty of Jonker Street is walking and exploring its surrounding streets during the day when there are less people, something that we could not do on this trip.

Night Market at Jonker Street

Coffee and ice-cream

No walk is complete without these. We happened to come accross Stolen Cup Cafe on Jonker Street itself, a rustic and retro-looking cafe selling coffee with a local twist. We had the iced Gula Melaka Latte, a delicious and much-needed shot of coffee.

Coffee break to escape the crowd

I was also chuffed to stumble upon Inside Scoop on Jalan Hang Kasturi (just off Jonker Street) especially when I found out that they did have passion fruit sorbet. This flavour is always sold out in the outlet in Bangsar so to be able to have it in Melaka is just lucky. The guy serving us was very friendly and not only did he sell us ice-cream but he gave us an important tip on where to get something that was a specific request by a certain someone.

Kuih keria

My mother has not been to Melaka for many years and naturally I asked her whether she had somewhere specific to go to visit. I expected her to ask us to take her to A'Famosa, The Stadthuys or even go on a river cruise. But no, these were apparently already outdated as far as tourist attractions go. She only wanted to get one thing, she said, which was the kuih keria gula melaka. 

This Kuih Keria Antarabangsa thingy has gone viral in the past few years or so. Apparently people queue up for hours to get their hands on these. Now, I usually try not to queue for more than 5 minutes for food, unless it's absolutely necessary like the country was at war and I had to queue for food rations. So to go to Limbongan for this was an absolute no-no. Here is where the Inside Scoop guy came to the rescue. He mentioned to us that the stall in Batu Berendam would be much less crowded.

The next day, after checking out and before leaving for home, we Waze-d our way to the stall in Batu Berendam. The cosmic alignment must be right at that time for there was no customer and there a was a huge batch of freshly fried kuih keria. Between us, we bought 70 pieces. No that was not a typo, we actually bought RM42 worth of kuih keria. After tasting my first, I am now a covert. The crispy gula melaka combined with the fluffy sweet potato are the stuff of dreams. I can definitely queue up for this in the future - for 10 minutes perhaps.

The queue of 5 people after us

Next to the stall was another one selling coconut shake which was apparently famous too. Irf is into coconuts and ice-cream (as you could tell from previous posts), so this was his stuff of dreams.

Coconuts galore

We ended our Melaka trip high on kuih keria and coconut shake. Time did not allow us to revisit the main attractions in Melaka but it was good enough being there without a fixed itinerary and finding delightful things by accident. We hope to return soon with more time to explore the rest of this historical city.

Last hoorah in Colombo - Galle Face Green

Up until the day before we were to leave Tissa for Colombo, I had no idea where to go in Colombo (except Galle Face Green) with our luggage and how to get to the airport. Our flight to KL from Colombo was only at 11pm. We wanted to leave Tissa early and anyway the car that we rented was only meant to take us to central Colombo. One option was to leave our backpacks at the Left Luggage facility at Fort Railway Station (apparently there is one but I could not vouch for it as we did not get to use it) and then kill time at Galle Face Green before getting a cab. But Rohan came to the rescue. He got the driver to take us to Galle Face Green, wait for us there and then take us to the airport – all for an additional Rs2,000.

The drive from Tissa to Colombo was uneventful, except that Irf was complaining of nausea and was feeling a bit under the weather. The quickest way to Colombo was via the highway which was relatively deserted compared to the coastal road. We stopped at a rest area on the highway for lunch. The toilets were super clean, as was the general common areas. We had lunch there and Irf immediately knew what he wanted when he saw Pizza Hut. He had a mini vegetable pizza (with lots of mushroom). I generally avoid Pizza Hut like the plague but that pizza that I tasted in an obscure Pizza Hut branch on an unknown Sri Lanka highway was on a whole different level. It could be the fresh ingredients used or the fact that it was freshly baked.

After what seemed like years in the van, especially with all the traffic starting from the suburbs of Colombo, we reached Galle Face Green at around 5pm.  This is a half kilometre promenade right at the centre of Colombo.  In the evenings when the sun is no longer at its fiercest, locals and tourists alike flock here to relax, take a stroll and hope to see the perfect sunset. Another famous activity that can be enjoyed here is kite-flying. The sky was full of colourful kites of many shapes and forms and flying them was a breeze (no pun intended) due to the wind in the open space. We bought one for Irf from one of the few vendors for around RM15 - a falcon, no less. A cheap amount to pay for seemingly endless entertainment.

Having a tough time deciding which kite to buy

A kite runner in Colombo

After a while, it got more crowded. The locals were coming in droves, enjoying themselves on the beach or eating from the many food stalls/kiosks. We were getting thirsty and tired and I remembered that the Galle Face Green Hotel was just next to the promenade. We don't usually pop over to 5-star hotels to quench our thirst but this hotel is an iconic landmark built in the colonial era and I really needed to go to the toilet. We sauntered into the lobby, asked around and eventually found ourselves at one of the best seats at The Chequerboard - front row for sunset viewing.

The steps leading from The Chequerboard to the beach

Seated on wicker chairs between the colonial structure of the beautiful hotel and the crashing waves of the Indian Ocean, I thought it was the perfect ending to our Sri Lanka trip. Never mind that we had to pay more than RM100 for 3 mocktails. As if that was not enough, a bagpiper dressed in a kilt appeared out of nowhere, accompanying a uniformed concierge to the flag pole for the flag-lowering ceremony. It was done with such pomp and grandeur, with music from the bagpipe in the background.

Sun going down...

...and down...

It was soon time to leave Colombo for the airport. We bade farewell to the Ceylonese capital and at the airport, Irf had another pizza. So that's Pizza Hut for lunch and dinner in one day.

All in all, we had a great time in Sri Lanka. There were no theme parks and no Disneyland/Legoland but there were animals to sight, lakes to navigate and ruins and forts to explore. Unfortunately Irf brought back an unwanted "souvenir" - his first food poisoning and diarrhea in his life. It could be the pizza at the airport but I was just glad that it started when we had reached Malaysia. I took that as a stroke of bad luck, definitely not something to deter from taking kids to Sri Lanka.

Yala National Park - A game of Spot the Leopard

Like most other people, our stay in Tissa was purely for one reason - a safari at Yala National Park. When we were arranging for our accommodation in Tissa, Rohan of Shangri-Lanka Village offered to arrange a jeep for us for Rs5,500. Adding the price of the entrance fees to the jeep hire, I found that the price was cheaper than full packages quoted on tour agent's websites. So we decided to take up Rohan's offer, and save ourselves the hassle of arranging our own safari package.

You can choose either a half-day safari (morning or afternoon) of a full day one. Ours was a morning half-day safari  but that meant a very early start of 5am in the morning. It was still pitch dark and as I groggily walked towards the gate, I wondered again and again (after other early morning starts for Borobudur, Angkor Wat, Bagan and Luang Prabang) why I kept on putting ourselves in this kind of ordeal. The jeep waiting for us was a 8-seater Toyota, more than comfortable for the 3 of us. Irf continued his sleep in the jeep despite the chilly wind in the open-air jeep - it always pays to bring a jacket/blanket on early morning tours.

We reached the ticket counter for the National Park at 5.45 am. There were already 20 other jeeps parked there, with the drivers/guides queuing up to buy tickets.  There was a basic coffee shop, an information center and toilets but I read that the conditions of the toilets were terrible.

Dawn was breaking by the time we were driven for the 5-minutes journey to the entrance to the Park. Another queue - and soon at 6.am sharp the gate was open and the jeeps went their separate ways along the many dirt tracks in the vast park.

Entrance to Yala National Park

Irf in the open-air Jeep

Many of the more expensive packages offered a guide who could tell you more on what you are seeing but I don't think that it's necessary if you have a driver who knows where to look for things. In our case, Rohan has assured us that ours would be good enough without a guide. In  a way, he was. In fact, I think he has bionic eyes. Here are some of the animals that we saw:

Wild water buffaloes - an endangered species

Elephants and a water buffalo going about their morning wash

Sri Lankan elephant (Elephas maximus maximus) -
another endangered species

Spotted deer - the source of the leopards' lunch
and dinner

One of the many peacocks that we saw

Crocs were in abundance

Wild boars

Indian mongoose

As excited as we were to see the above animals in their natural habitat, the king of the park was undoubtedly the leopards. Yala National Park has one of the highest leopard concentration in the world and it is for this reason that Yala is the most visited national park in Sri Lanka. Alas, the leopards are an elusive animal and sightings of them are not guaranteed. So whenever there is a whiff of a leopard being spotted anywhere in the park, news of this would  travel around amongst the safari jeep drivers/guides through phone calls. This resulted in a mad scramble amongst the jeeps to get to where leopards could be spotted.

We found ourselves in one such situation. Our driver received a phone call on his mobile phone and instantly turned into a race-car driver. The drive became a very fast and bumpy one and soon we were joining throngs of other jeeps waiting in a queue to get to the spot where a leopard has been spotted. I would want to tell people that yes, I did see leopards on the safari in Yala National Park.  But I guess I have to be honest - for I could barely see the form of the leopard, let alone the spots. It was supposedly sleeping on a branch of a tall tree. But A's eyes were better than mine and he managed to capture this shot...

At least I could say that I was there when this shot was taken...

Peak hour at Leopard Central

We couldn't spend a long time at that spot as more jeeps came and were waiting for their turns. It was a bit chaotic and I couldn't wait to get away and to be among peaceful surroundings once again.

Later, we were also brought to a "rest area" by the beach with toilet facilities, the only place where we were allowed to leave the jeep. It was more like an abandoned place than a rest area - and I soon discovered why. During the 2004 tsunami, 47 safari visitors and guides perished on or near the very spot that we were standing on. All that is left now are ruins of a bungalow, with only the foundation and some tiled walls/floors. A steel monument was subsequently built. Amazingly, none of the animals in the park died - evidence of how strong animal instincts are.

Overall, we went on the safari for about 3 hours. By 9 am, even Irf had had enough and I was already visualising the bed in our hotel room. The driver started to head towards the exit and soon we were speeding away towards Shangri- Lanka Village for a proper breakfast and to continue our sleep.

Serendipity in Tissa

From Galle, we moved on further along the coast towards Tissamaharama (i.e. Tissa for short). Our ride, a minivan arranged by Shangri-Lanka Village, was comfortable enough and the driver friendly. After 2 days in Galle Fort with only a short venture outside to the turtle sanctuary, it was fascinating to see more of Sri Lanka. This was a country that was embroiled in a 26-year civil war until only recently and was partly ravaged by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. It was sobering to know that many villages in that part of the country we were travelling in were wiped out. Family members were lost, houses gone in seconds. A train on the very same service that we took from Colombo to Galle was derailed and wrecked by the waves near Hikkaduwa, with a death toll of more than 1,700.

Today, travelling along the costal route past sleepy villages, there was no evidence of the country's past disaster. The only disaster I could see was in the form of a group of tourists taking the term "tourist trap" to a whole new level. Sri Lanka is famous for its stilt fishermen and we had asked the driver to stop us at any beach where we could see the fishermen in action. He did - but the only action taken by the fishermen there was taking Rs2,000 from the gullible tourists just for the latter to sit on the stilts and be a "fisherman" for a few minutes, with pictures taken of course.

Stilt fishermen in Sri Lanka....

...doing a lucrative business

After the coast, we past wide and open grasslands, wind turbines, paddy fields full with egrets, boundaries of Bundala National Park and makeshift stalls selling buffalo milk curd with palm treacle, apparently a specialty in that part of Sri Lanka.

One of the many curd and treacle stalls lining the
road leading to Tissa

After more than 4 hours on the road, we arrived in Tissa. Before taking us to our hotel, the driver made an unplanned detour just before the lake to show us one one of the most amazing spectacles I have seen in my travels. We stopped near a huge rain tree, on which countless equally huge pelicans were nesting. More amazingly, the tree was shared by colonies of roosting bats hanging upside down from the branches. Irf couldn't believe his eyes when he saw the bats. And neither could I.

Nesting pelicans...

....and roosting bats near Tissa Wewa

We were again acquainted with the beauty of (the completely underrated) Lake Tissa or Tissa Wewa the next day. After our safari in Yala National Park, we had a couple hours to spare so decided to walk to the lake. It looked near enough when we were being driven to the hotel and anyway the hotel staff assured us that it would take 10 minutes. So we walked and we walked and obviously it took more than 10 minutes, probably 30 minutes. Despite the busy 2-lane road with tuk-tuks, buses and lorries, it felt like a walk in a village with roadside stalls selling fruits and freshly caught fish and locals hanging out at the roadside. I nearly gave up until, turning around a bend for the umpteenth time, I saw slivers of the lake.

Tissa Dagoba - originally built around 200 BC

An evening in rural Tissa

We had not planned for any activities, only a walk around the lake. That all changed when a boat approached us and we were asked whether we wanted to take a boat trip to "Bird Island". I was not at all keen thinking that it was another tourist trap but Irf, perhaps seeing all the birds flying around the lake, was so excited with the idea. The boatman quoted Rs1,000 per adult (free for kids) for a 1-hour trip and as the boat was clean and came with lifejackets, the 3 of us ended up in the boat.

It turned out to be one of the best things we did in our Sri Lanka trip - minus the crowd. We saw colonies of nesting black-headed ibises and cormorants including their hatchlings peeking out from the nests, egrets chilling out on the back of wading water buffalows, more pelicans and herons. One hour on the lake and I was turning into an expert in birdwatching.

Black-headed ibises

The egrets using the water buffaloes to catch fish

Sunset at Tissa Wewa

The boat ploughing through a vast 
expanse of lotus plants and flowers

Birds and bats changing shifts

Our boat trip ended in the dying light, with orange and pink streaks in the sky. It was Rs2,000 (plus generous tips) well spent, definitely a much better choice than giving it to the "stilt fishermen". The experience proved that the unplanned are often more rewarding. Perhaps it was fitting that we encountered those serendipitous moments in Tissa. After all, serendipity is derived from the word Serendib, an old name for Sri Lanka.