Surfing at Weligama

In the weekend Elise and I sometimes go surfing at Weligama beach. Especially when our fellow students come to visit us for the weekend this is one of our favourite activities. I really start to like surfing, although I don't really got the hang of it just yet, but I'll keep practising. 
 
 Ready for our first surf lesson. 
 
Standing up for the first time!
 
  Ohoow... These waves are a bit too high for us beginners! 

Weekend in Kandy

In the beginning of December we got a visit from Kris, our professor in Belgium. She travelled around to meet all the students and talk to the supervisors of the internships. While she was here the whole group of nine students gathered in Kandy for the weekend.  It was great to be all together again and share some stories.
 Buddha statue in the temple of the sacred tooth in Kandy. 
One of Buddha's teeth is supposed to be here. 
 
 The nine of us in the Peradeniya botanical garden, close to Kandy.
From left to right: Zoë, Elise, Milan, Camille, Yacine, Maxime, Joalien, Isis, Kaat

A journey through Sri Lanka with my mother

From the 28th of December 2014 till the 21st of January 2015 my mother is in Sri Lanka to visit me. We are visiting the main tourist attractions together and at the end of her stay I will take her to Matara to show my workplaces. 
 
 

Waikalla 

The first two days we stayed in a lodge close to the airport. My mother needed some time to get used to the climate and the time difference. The Ging Oya lodge is a nice and quiet hotel owned by Myrjam and Leo, a Belgian couple.  
 Good surf weather today!
 
 

Habarana

After two days relaxing in Waikalla we moved to Habarana, a town in the hill country of Sri Lanka. Here we stayed four days to visit different tourist attractions in the region. On the 31st of December we visited the ruins of the ancient city of Polonaruwa. A somewhat expensive bunch of stones, good thing you get the animals for free. 
 A part of the old royal palace.
 A monkey and a monitor lizard having a date on the wall of the king's bedroom.
 A part of the original temple of the sacred tooth, where they kept the relic before it moved to Kandy.
 Taking a bath in the Polonaruwa lake.
 
On New Year's Eve we had dinner with Isis, one of my fellow students, and her parents who are also here to visit their daughter. After a good meal, some wine and the countdown to 2015 we went to bed early so we would be fit for our safari on the first of January. The safari was really nice. We were lucky to see about a hundred elephants. Since the area was flooded the last couple of weeks it was a very bumpy ride and our jeep got stuck in the mud three times, but it was worth it. We had a great time, a very nice adventure to start 2015!
 
 Ready to see some elephants!
 Our driver did all he could to get us out of the mud...
Watch out! There is herd of 45 elephants crossing the path. 
 A stone eagle.
 All right, all right. I do look like my mum sometimes. Nomnomnom
 
On the second of January we did a daytrip from Habarana. In the morning we climbed the temple hill of Mihintale. In the afternoon we had a look at the ruins of the ancient city of Anuradhapura. On the way back we wanted to see a big Buddha statue carved out of the rock. We drove more than an hour to reach it, when we had just two more minutes to go the road was blocked because of floods. We didn't get to see the statue, but it was nice to meet the local people hanging out at the newly created river.
 
 The "stupas" at Mihintale temple. The view from the highest point of Mihintale. Our driver catching some fish for lunch.A part of the ancient ruins of Anuradhapura. Having fun at the flooded street.
 
After four days in a cosy hostel we checked out in Habarana on the third of January. We drove to Kandy and on the way we visited the cave temples of Dambulla and a spice garden in Matale. It was really interesting to hear about all the different spices they grow in Sri Lanka and how they use them. At the end we got a free massage with homemade essential oils, what a nice surprise!
 
 Buddha statues at the Dambulla cave temples. Reclining Buddha in Dambulla cave temple."Reclining" mother at the exit of the dambulla cave temples.Learning all about spices and herbs in Matale.
 
 

Kandy

In Kandy we stayed in a nice hotel for three nights. We took it slow so I had some time to do schoolwork and my mother to relax. We saw a traditional dance performance and we went to the temple of the sacred tooth and Peradeniya botanical garden, two places I visited before already with the rest of the students, so more pictures can be found above.   
 Bats going to bed in the morning, Peradeniya botanical garden
 Kandyan dance performance
 
 

Nuwara Eliya

After Kandy we moved to Nuwara Eliya for 3 days. This is a very cosy town in the Sri Lankan highlands. Because of the altitude it's really cold up there, we enjoyed escaping the heat and lighting the stove. Some of the best ceylon tea is produced in Nuwara Eliya so we had a look at a tea estate and a tea factor. Yet, most of the time we were just enjoying a cup of tea in the beautiful mountains. 
 Tamil people picking tea at Nuwara Eliya Mackwoods tea factory
 
 

Kataragama - Yala national park

Next stop: Kataragama. There is not so much to see in this village, but it's the best place to stay if you want to go to Yala national park. And so we did. 
 Young wild boar Peacock at sunriseLeopard footprint (we didn't find the leopard) Peacock showing offWater buffalosHungry crocodileFishing birdsSambar deerThe only elephant we saw 
 

 

The south coast

The Sri Lankan schoolyear started on the 12th of january so the last week my mother was here I had to work. I put her in a hotel at the coast, not so far from where I work and showed her al my schools. She really enjoyed seeing my workplaces and meeting my colleagues and students. After school we sometimes went to the beach to enjoy ourselves. 
One of my classes in Mirissa.
Most of my students in Mirissa are fishermen. The catch of the day looks good.
Monks at Galle fort.
Turtle at Hikkaduwa beach
Nomnomnom, you're camera will be next.Angry turtle
 Sunset at Hikkaduwa beach
One of my students is captain on a whale watching boat. He's teaching me how to navigate. And so the teacher becomes the student.We saw seven blue whales...Two turtles having fun...And more than forty five dolphins! And so the trip ends, back at Mirissa harbour. 
 
And with that the journey with my mother comes to an end. After three beautiful weeks we say goodbye again. We had a really nice time! I hope she'll always come to visit me when I'm teaching abroad. 
 

Malaysia

In total my internship in Sri Lanka will take 6 months. After three months I got the chance to go to Malaysia for two weeks, a nice break right in the middle of my stay in Sri Lanka. I travelled around a bit, visited beautiful places, met wonderful people, but also took a lot of quiet time to study. In Sri Lanka things often don't go the way I plan them, so I got a bit behind on my schoolwork, in Malaysia I managed to catch up on it. I'm really happy I did this trip, I feel ready for the next three months of internship now I took some me-time to enjoy myself and to study. The pictures of me working for school in the hostel are a bit boring, so I'll post some of the nice things I saw in Malaysia underneath.

Penang

The first four days I went to Penang, a small Island on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia. When I hear "small island in Asia" I think about white sandy beaches and coconut trees. Penang is not like that, it has a little bit of beach, but most people go there to visit Georgetown. A nice little city with loads of heritage, museums and street art. Since it is so centrally located in South East Asia and was colonised a few times there are immigrants from all over the world. A bunch of different cultures meet in Penang, making it an interesting and bustling place. 

 There is a large number of Chinese people living in Penang. Some of the so called "Chinese clans" have built very impressive mansions here. Fort Cornwallis was built by the British East India Company in the late 1700s. The Kek Lok Si temple on the Penang hill is the biggest Buddhist temple in Malaysia. Georgetown is known for its streetart......so we drove around the city with a rikshaw to see all of it. A lot of cultures in one city means a lot of different food to try. I came for the heritage and the museums, but my priorities shifted easily and I started spendig a lot of time eating. This Lebanese food was amazing.  But the first price goes to this street food stall where you can prepare your own Malaysian Satay in the fondue. After all that food I needed some exercise so I went parasailing! One of the most thrilling things I ever did The view up there was amazing!  And of course, I met some great people on the way. Safe travels guys!

 

Langkawi

After Penang I went seven days to Langkawi, an island in the north of Malaysia. More than enough time to study (on the beach sometimes) and do a few trips with some nice girls I met in Penang. 

Ladies on the road... and they trusted me to drive the car :) On Langkwai we saw lots of eagles and a hornbill... ... and many beautiful sunsets.

 

Kuala Lumpur

At the end of the trip I went to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. I was there last year already but I promised my fellow students that I would meet them there for a couple of days. It was great to see them in this lovely city.

 Like all other tourists, we <3 KL ...... with its magic fountains... ... and its crazy birds...... and its nice skyline by night!

On my last evening in Malaysia I went to the Thaipusam Hindu festival at the batu caves. I was very impressed and wrote how I felt about it on facebook: "The last three years I spent more time in Asia than at home, and yet new experiences await me every day. This week about one million hindus climb up to the Batu cave temple near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to sacrifice little buckets of milk to the gods. And so I joined the crowd tonight. Some of them had been fasting for 48 days, were in trance now and carried the buckets attached to fishinghooks that were pierced into their backs. It looked like a terribly hard thing to do, a few collapsed on the way, but the support they got from the others was wonderful. Pure compassion! At the moment I finally reached the top there was a powercut. At first fear took over "I'm stuck in a pitch black huge cave in the middle of the night with thousands of people, if they start to panic this might turn into a very dangerous situation". But they didn't panic. They took out their phones turning the cave into a starlit sky, started to chant harder, show each other the way in the darkness and support the weakest other even more. All of a sudden I got to experience this festival the way it must have felt like back in the old days when people climbed by candlelight while chanting to the gods. ‪#‎onceinalifetime‬"

 Thousands of people climbing the steps to the Batu cave temple, next to the gigantuous statue of Lord Subramaniam