Kandy vital statistics:

• Population: 125,400
• Latitude & longitude: 7˚ 17′ 47″ N, 80˚ 38′ 6″ E
• January average temperature: High 27˚C (81˚F), low 18˚C (64˚F)
• July average temperature: High 27˚C (81˚F), low 20˚C (68˚F)
• Time zone: GMT+5:30 (9 hours 30 minutes ahead of U.S. EDT)
• Language: Sinhala, Tamil, English
• Currency: Sri Lankan Rupee (LKR)
• Exchange rate: US$1=LKR157
• Average rent of 1-bedroom apartment in city center: $322.56

26 April 2018: My first impression: I hate this place. It’s way too touristy, and everyone here is trying to make a buck off me.

Luckily, it turns out that first impressions can be wrong. Way off, in fact. But that’s a story for my next post.

And please forgive the encyclopedic length of this blog post. This is my first time ever to Sri Lanka, so I have a lot of ground to cover.

I arrived in Kandy 25 April 2018 after the gnarliest travel segment of my trip: Two flights, two trains, three buses, 27 hours.

• A short ride on a subway train from my hotel in Kaohsiung, Taiwan to Kaohsiung Railway Station.
• 4.5 hours on a bus from Kaohsiung to Taoyuan, Taiwan.
• 30 minutes on a local bus from the bus station in Taoyuan to Taiwan’s only international airport of consequence, Taoyuan International Airport (TPE) outside Taipei.
• A four-hour flight from TPE to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• A 3.5-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Bandanaraike International Airport outside Colombo, Sri Lanka.
• An hour-long bus ride from the airport to Colombo bus station.
• A 3.5-hour train ride from Colombo to Kandy.

I checked out of my hotel in Kaohsiung at 11:15am on Tuesday, 24 April. My flight wasn’t until 11:45pm. With all that time to kill, I decided to take the slowest, cheapest route from Kaohsiung in the far south to TPE in the far north of the island. A bus. That worked out well — that was probably the most comfortable bus ride I’ve ever been on.

When I reached Taoyuan, it was raining heavily. (Otherwise, the weather during my three weeks in Taiwan was fantastic. Hot, mostly or partly sunny, dry, and lower-than-normal humidity, other than the first couple and last couple days of the trip.) The rain made my trip across the street to the local bus stop with all of my luggage less than pleasurable, but my Google Maps bus directions once again steered me in the right direction and I made it to the airport without any mishaps and with six hours to spare before my flight.

Per the instructions I received from Orbitz when I booked online, I called my “hotel,” Aronka Homestay in Kandy, to let them know I was on my way, and when to expect me. The person who answered the phone did not seem to understand much of what I was saying and generally did not appear to have a firm grasp of the English language, which I took as a bad sign. But I had paid in full for my five-night stay when I booked my “deluxe double room with balcony” (I love balconies, and Sri Lanka is probably the only place on my itinerary where a balcony room is within my budget, so yeah, I went for it) and I didn’t plan on taking no for an answer when I showed up on their doorstep. I filed that away as a problem to worry about later.

At that moment, I just wanted to get to one of the four Plaza Premium Lounges at TPE. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got a new “jet-setter” rich people credit card specifically for this trip, and one of the perks is free access to airport lounges. Well, not all airport lounges; just those in the “Priority Pass” network. The one at Baltimore Airport (BWI) is fantastic — all-you-can-drink cocktails, plenty of snacks, fast wi-fi, and all free to globetrotting playboys like myself with heavy, metallic credit cards — and I figured that if a middling regional airport like BWI had such a great lounge, a large-ish international airport like TPE would be even better.

These lounges are after you go through security, and lounge access is limited to three hours. So I figured after I called the hotel and Sri Lanka and took care of some other odds and ends online, I’d check in, clear security, and get to the lounge around 7:30pm, three hours ahead of when boarding for my flight began at 10:45. I’d have a nice leisurely time of it, eat and booze up to my heart’s content, use the lounge’s fast wi-fi to book future segments of my trip or crank out a blog post or two, and generally make great use of my time.

Sadly, this was not to be. First off, nobody was manning the check-in counter for Air Asia. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem. I have just a carry-on and a personal bag, after all, so I normally don’t need to check any bags and can just use the automated kiosk to print my boarding pass and move along. But Air Asia is a budget carrier, which means I got a ridiculously cheap fare ($188.81 one-way from Taipei to Colombo, a distance of over 3,500 miles), but with strings attached. One is that carry-ons are limited to 7 kg (15 lbs). Which is absurd, of course. Even my very modest man-purse weighs close to that with my laptop and assorted other precious items in it. And having logged a few miles with my fully loaded Rick Steves’ Europe Through the Back Door suitcase-backpack on my back, I can attest that it definitely weighs more than 15 pounds. So I had to check it, and that required a human being.

The Air Asia staff finally filed in at 8:45, three hours before takeoff and two before boarding. So already I’d lost one of my expected lounge hours. I wasn’t anywhere near first in line, so I had to wait some more, then finally got checked in and cleared security without any trouble.

Lounge or not, my first stop on passing through security is to find my departure gate, so I know where it is and how long it takes to walk from there to anyplace else in the airport I need to go. TPE Terminal 1 is not a nice hub-and-spoke-shaped terminal where the alphabetized gate clusters radiate out from the center. No, to get to G17 or whatever, you have to walk past all 20 D gates, all 20 E gates, all 20 F gates, and so on. The closest lounge that’s open at this hour is of course half a mile away over near gate E-something. Then it takes another 10 minutes to find it amid all of the other airline lounges that I’m not a member of, because Priority Pass lounges apparently aren’t marked on any airport directory maps.

So by the time I finally get to the lounge, it’s 9:45pm and I only have an hour before boarding, plus I know it’s a 15-minute walk from here to my gate. The wi-fi is as good as expected and the food is much better than the offerings at BWI, but there’s no bar. The only alcohol consists of cans of “Premium” Taiwan Beer. (Which, FYI, tastes exactly like regular Taiwan Beer.) I can’t enjoy the lounge, since I’m cramming food and Taiwan Beer into my gullet as fast as I can, frantically logging on to websites, trying to get my money’s worth out of the lounge. And I’m surrounded by other travelers who are doing the exact same thing. It’s stressful! This lounge access is not contributing to my happiness at all; quite the opposite.

• This reminds me of a conversation I had with a classmate in Taiwan back in the day. He had studied a lot of Eastern philosophy and told me about an argument he had with a Buddhist monk. The monk told him, “Desire is the root of all suffering. Eliminate your desires, and you will find happiness.” My classmate responded, “No, expectations are the root of all suffering. I desire to win the lottery and become a rock star, but because I don’t expect either of those things to happen, I feel no sadness when they don’t. Lower your expectations, and you will be constantly pleasantly surprised.”

As I get older, my classmate’s argument makes more and more sense to me. If I’d never expected three blissful and productive hours in the lounge, I would have been perfectly content waiting at my gate playing Words with Friends, or strolling around the terminal to stretch my legs, as I did in my pre-lounge days.

Anyway, the flight to Kuala Lumpur went as well as a red-eye can, and with a four-hour layover, I figured I’d have a go at one of the eight or so lounges there. Unfortunately, another string attached to my budget fare was that I had clear immigration and customs and pick up my bags and then re-check them for the second leg of my flight. By the time I got through all of that, then walked all the way to my departure gate, my desire for the lounge had greatly dissipated. Then I discovered that despite there being eight lounges to choose from, none of them were particularly close by, and all of them were located in different areas of the terminal from mine, requiring me to go through security again. And that is one of my red lines for this trip — I will never go through airport security any more times than are absolutely necessary. So no lounge during my connection.

I caught a few winks during my morning flight to Colombo, but woke in time to see the beautiful Sri Lankan coastline appearing outside my window.

The mountainous interior of the island is spectacular too.

Colombo’s airport is small, which I appreciated after the miles of walking I logged in Taipei and Kuala Lumpur. I zipped right through immigration and the baggage claim and at one of the currency exchange counters outside changed $60 into rupees. (So far, Sri Lanka has the prettiest money of anyplace I’ve been. Photos later.)

Then I walked out (it’s 90˚F with 93% humidity; toasty!) and was immediately approached by several taxi drivers; not an uncommon occurrence at airports all over the place. I asked one of them where the bus to downtown Colombo was, and despite it not being in his best interest, he pointed out to me where it was. I thought, “This is a good sign. These people are honest.”

I got the last seat on the dark, dingy, sweaty bus to Colombo, not sure how you actually pay for buses in Sri Lanka, if they make change, etc. As it turns out, a young man who serves essentially as the bus conductor walks through the bus after it’s underway and collects the fare (LKR130, or $0.83), and does indeed give change. I squint at the unfamiliar bills and coins and arrange them in my wallet.

Once again, I use Google Maps to follow the bus’ progress. Unfortunately Google doesn’t have transit directions for Sri Lanka, but I can still use the GPS to see the bus moving toward its destination, and the direction it’s facing. The bus station in Colombo is predictably loud, crowded, sweaty, and confusing, but the train station is just a short walk away and I find it without making too many wrong turns.

I did my homework before I got here. I expected Sri Lanka to be the most culturally daunting of my destinations, so I made myself a step-by-step blueprint, using my Lonely Planet Sri Lanka guidebook and the wonderful, encyclopedic rail travel website The Man in Seat Sixty-One (which is also great for planning train trips in Europe, as I’m currently finding out) as research material. Sri Lankan trains, I discovered, have cars with reserved seats and other cars with unreserved seats. The reserved seats can be purchased ahead of time (in person or through a travel agency, unfortunately, not online) and can sell out. Unreserved tickets are sold the day of travel in unlimited quantities. Anyone not lucky enough to grab an open seat has to stand.

I hoped to nab a first-class reserved seat for the 3.5-hour train ride to Kandy in the center of the island. The trip gets quite scenic as you head into the hills, my research told me. Barring that, I would buy a 2nd- or 3rd-class seat. Unfortunately, when I got to the ticket counter, the man there informed me that all of the reserved seats on the train I wanted to take were sold out. So, I thought, OK, I’m game for a little adventure. Let’s grab an unreserved ticket and travel Sri Lankan blue-collar style. I went over to the unreserved ticket counter and bought an absurdly inexpensive ticket.

With a little time to kill, I got lunch at the train station cafeteria. Except for the samosas, I didn’t know what any of the stuff was, so I just pointed at the things in the window that looked good.

Later, it occurred to me on the train that eating Sri Lankan railway canteen food might not be the greatest idea ahead of a 3.5-hour journey aboard a train with… perhaps not entirely sanitary toilet facilities, or none at all. But fortunately, as of today (29 April), Delhi belly (the local version would be “Colombo colon,” I suppose?) has yet to strike me.

I knew from my ticket and from the departures board in the station which platform to be on and when my train was leaving. What I didn’t know is when it would arrive on the platform. Sri Lankan trains aren’t labeled with their destinations or route numbers.

Right when the train pulled up at 12:20pm, a bunch of people scrambled aboard. I wasn’t sure if this was my train, since it wasn’t supposed to leave for 20 more minutes. In my experience, when faced with the choice of (1) hopping aboard a train or bus that you’re not sure is the correct one or is going in the right direction, or (2) pausing to determine these details at the risk of missing said train/bus, the latter is usually the better choice. After a couple of minutes, I found a woman in an official-looking uniform and asked her if this was the train to Kandy, and she said it was. So I got on one of the unreserved cars. All of the seats were full of knowledgeable locals who’d swarmed it as soon as it arrived, and even standing room was at a premium. I peeked into a couple of other train cars and the situation was similar. So, resigned to my fate, I elbowed my way into the middle of one of the cars.

It was stifling in there! It’s already 90˚ with 93% humidity, and now I’m crammed in a dark, sweaty railway car. I hoisted my backpack and bag onto the overhead racks, and, hanging on to the rack with one hand and on to my nice cool indeterminate-flavor Fanta soda with the other, dug in for a long stand. The train grew still more crowded as stragglers pushed their way in. Teenage boys crammed into a seat in front of me smirked in my direction. I looked down and saw my shirt was half-drenched with sweat. Oddly, I didn’t see any sweat stains on the Sri Lankans’ shirts, although I took some comfort in the beads of sweat that had formed on the forehead of one of those teenage boys.

At a time like this, I comforted myself with three thoughts:

1. This 70-mile train ride cost me 200 rupees ($1.27). That’s less than it costs to travel four blocks on the D.C. Metro.
2. In a week, I’ll be in Spain.
3. This sure beats being working for a living.

Mercifully, the situation soon improved. Shortly before departure, the overhead fans turned on. That made a huge difference. And when the train finally started moving with a bone-rattling jerk (one that was repeated each time the train got underway after stopping at a station), the air rushing through the open windows cooled things down further, so it was actually quite tolerable. At the third or fourth stop, a little over an hour in, a bunch of people got off the train and a man sitting next to me beckoned to me to sit beside him on a spot that had opened up on one of the benches. I thanked him and sat. When I was standing, my head was well above the windows, so I couldn’t see much outside other than the ground beside the train. Now, I could see the little towns and train stations and farms and cows and tropical plant profusion roll by.

An hour or so after that, someone else sitting on that bench left and the family sitting there let me move over next to the window. Now unfortunately this side of the train wasn’t the one with the killer vistas out over the hills. But, the view from my window was kind of fascinating in its own right. When blasting train tracks out of the hillsides, Sri Lankan engineers (or perhaps British engineers; I’m not sure how old the Colombo-Kandy rail line is) decided that the bare minimum of clearance would do. From my side of the train, rocks and weeds went whizzing by just a couple of inches from the open window. The little boy drinking from a bottle of water in the seat across for me spat a mouthful out the window, and I actually heard it splash against the rocks. That’s how close it was.

Despite my growing impression by this point that Sri Lanka is not the kind of country where the trains run on time, mine did. I got off the train in Kandy. Sometime during my Taipei-Kuala Lumpur flight, the owner of Aronka Homestay where I’d be lodging, a man named Jam, had left me a voicemail and a WhatsApp message in response to my earlier call from Taipei airport. I was relieved that he spoke and wrote English well, and knew I was coming. I texted him back from the train station, and after a short wait, during which several “tuk-tuk” motor tricycle taxi drivers offered me rides, he arrived in a car and drove me the 5-10 minutes to his house, Aronka Homestay.

Aronka is up in the hills south of Kandy Lake, the west end of which abuts the center of town. Jam’s house has three levels plus a basement; Jam lives on the first floor and his guest rooms are on the second and third floors, and possibly in the basement too. The “deluxe double with balcony” that I’d booked was on the second floor. When we got up there, Jam introduced me to his “helper,” a short, barrel-chested man. “He lives here,” Jam said, gesturing in the direction of the balcony that wraps halfway around the second floor. I wasn’t quite sure what Jam meant by “here,” precisely, but I shrugged it off. Then he showed me to my room, which did indeed have a splendid, wide balcony with a view of the hillside where a small waterfall tumbled through the rocks with a soothing noise. I got unpacked and settled in.

That done, I decided to enjoy my balcony for a bit. When I went out there, I noticed that the balcony light wouldn’t turn on, and that there wasn’t any patio furniture out there, and made a mental note to put in requests for those with Jam the next day. Then I heard someone say “hi” off to my left. I looked over. Jam’s helper was sitting in a cushioned swivel office chair on the adjacent balcony. “This is my room,” he said, smiling. Then it occurred to me what Jam meant — the helper lives “here,” as in out here, on the balcony. Right next to my balcony! That definitely put a crimp in my balcony style. I can’t really relax out there when I know I’m invading someone’s privacy by essentially peeping into his bedroom.

I closed the doors to the balcony, shut the curtains, and got in a good 14 hours of recovery sleep.

I woke up feeling revived and got ready to explore Kandy. My first task when arriving in new place is to explore the neighborhood around my lodgings on foot. Kandy is a small city, and there’s a nice walkway all the way around the small, picturesque Kandy Lake near its center.

Unfortunately, there’s a very busy road running right along the walkway on the south side of the lake, and to get to the walkway from Aronka I have to walk 10 minutes down the hill and then cross said busy road. And there isn’t a crosswalk or pedestrian underpass for 3/4 mile. So I wait 10 minutes or so for an opening and then scamper across. Already it’s not looking good for Kandy’s walkability score.

Kandy Lake is bursting with life. There are a truly obscene number of fish in there, packed to the gills. Not unlike a Sri Lankan train or bus, now that I think about it. There are also a few different types of waterfowl, some turtles, and the occasional five-foot-long monitor lizard (!).

My walk along the lake was interrupted several times by tuk-tuk drivers offering me a ride, and by the occasional man passing by and asking me where I was going today, so as to sell me a tour. After not too long, I reached the center of town. It’s a noisy, bustling, colorful place.

My first stop was the railway station. I decided I’d try to buy my ticket back to Colombo a few days early, so as to have a better shot nabbing a reserved seat. No such luck. Once again, all of the reserved seats on the midday train were sold out. I’m beginning to think that reserved seats on Sri Lankan trains are more myth than reality. A chimera.

It was lunchtime, so I located one of the recommended restaurants from my Lonely Planet guidebook, Kandyan Muslim Restaurant. I ordered kottu (or kotthu), which Lonely Planet tells me is “rotti chopped and fried with meat and vegetables.” I still don’t really know what kottu and rotti are, but I can attest that they are delicious. I ordered a pricey (530 rupee [$3.37]) “mega” size mango lassi to go with it, which is like an Indian milkshake. Mango is the best flavor of lassi, and this was the best mango lassi I’ve ever had. You can’t go wrong with a lassi. (Except the “salty lassi.” It is VERY wrong.)

My belly full, I thought maybe I’d stroll over to the old British garrison cemetery to look at the old tombstones of soldiers who died of tropical fevers. Because I like that kind of stuff. Then, I planned to look for a place to buy a postcard, which is something I do in every city I visit. And I thought some Sri Lankan tea would make a good (and, importantly, lightweight) gift.

En route to the cemetery, I was walking along the north shore of Kandy Lake, past Temple of the Tooth Relic. The temple supposedly contains a tooth of the Buddha rescued from his funeral pyre and smuggled into Sri Lanka from India. It’s a major focus of worship for the Buddhists who make up the majority of Kandy’s (and Sri Lanka’s) population, and it’s the city’s major tourist attraction. I’m not interested in the typical touristy stuff on this trip; I want to know what it’s like for people to live their daily lives in the cities I’m visiting. So I planned on giving it a pass.

Near the temple, a wiry 59-year-old man named Sunil came up to me, asked me where I was from and how long I would be in Kandy, and introduced himself. He’s a retired music teacher with two grown children. He said he played the drums and he would be playing that night at a dance performance at the nearby Kandy Cultural Center. Now I wasn’t really planning on seeing a dance performance; again, that’s just a show for tourists. But Sunil seemed like a kind old man, and some of my most memorable travel experiences in East Asia happened when I just sort of let the winds blow me where they will, so I decided, why not?

Sunil took me over the colonial-era Queen’s Hotel across the street, where there’s a small tourism office. I bought my 1,000 rupee ($6.36) ticket for the dance performance there. I had told Sunil I was looking to buy tea, and he took me over to Kandy’s Central Market, a more down-on-its-luck colonial building, where I bought two delightful-smelling plastic bags of tea. Sunil also took me to the next stall over to buy spices, which I was not interested in and refused, and then suggested I look at polo shirts, which, again, good quality and low price though they may be, I was not in the market for. At this point I was beginning to suspect Sunil earns a commission for bringing customers to these businesses.

Sunil next offered to take me to a true “local” bar for a beer. My suspicions notwithstanding, I did feel like a cold one, and I was curious to see what a Sri Lankan bar looks like. It looks like a very tiny, tattered dive bar in the U.S., actually. Sunil ordered two large 600ml bottles of the local swill, Lion Lager, and told me the two of them cost 500 rupees ($3.18). That was an interesting bit of trivia, I thought, and waited for him to fork over the cash. With Sunil and the bartender staring at me, I dawned on me that I was supposed to pay the 500 rupees.

Now, where I come from, the host generally buys on behalf of the guest. But hey, I thought, maybe in Sri Lanka the young pay for their elders as a sign of respect. And even if I’m being taken advantage of, which I increasingly suspect, it’s only 500 rupees. OK fine. I pay for the beers, and we pour ours bit by bit into small glasses, just as the Chinese do with large bottles of beer at group dinners. I try to make conversation with Sunil. (I asked him about the three-decade-long, fairly-recently-ended civil war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels. “Not civil war. ‘Political problems.'” I stand corrected.) But his English is limited, and of course my Sinhala is completely nonexistent. A cadaverous, smiling geezer with both front teeth missing sits across from me, drinking arrak — the local hard stuff of choice, made from fermented palm sap, I think — directly from a small glass flask. His English is really, really limited, but he, again, seems friendly enough.

Then the bartender pulls down the metal awning out front, closing the bar’s storefront. It gets rather dark in there and I give Sunil a quizzical glance. “Don’t worry. All bars here close at 2pm and reopen at 5pm. We can leave when we want.” The old man across from me laughs at my confusion. Things just got weirder, but still, there’s just something about Sri Lankans. They’re so non-threatening, friendly, and open. And soon after, Sunil and I finished our beers and headed out.

Shortly afterward, Sunil and I parted. I promised to go to the dance performance at 5pm (it was now about 2:30) and Sunil promised to meet me there. My introvert batteries were running low after all socializing with a stranger, so I decided to walk back to the homestay and take a nap. On the way home, not far from where I had met Sunil earlier, another Sri Lankan baby boomer asked where I was from and how long I’d be in Kandy, introduced himself, and offered to sell me a tour of some of the surrounding tourist areas nearby. I was now feeling like I’d been played, and I was noncommittal with this guy, finally just walking off with him yelling “OK, I meet you here tomorrow, 10am OK?” behind me.

I took a very quick snooze, and then walked back along Kandy Lake to go to the dance performance. Just as I was about to enter the Cultural Center, a man about Sunil’s age asked me where I was from, how long I’d be in Kandy, and what I was doing now. Finally, I thought, I have a good excuse to stave this guy off. I told him I was going to a dance performance. He told me there was another dance performance, at exactly the same time, at the venue next door. And I should go to the latter because it’s a special one, for the upcoming poya full moon holiday, held only once a month. I told him rather firmly that I had already bought a ticket for the dance at the Cultural Center, and moreover that a friend of mine was performing there. “Where you buy ticket?” he was asking as I walked off.

So I was pretty fed up entering the auditorium at the Cultural Center. The first 18 rows or so were roped off and reserved for tour groups, which didn’t lessen my irritation. The one-hour dance performance was fine — stupid crap served up to gullible tourists, but watchable enough, sure — but what I really enjoyed was just one hour of peace where no one was trying to sell me anything. I thought, maybe this is how you have to do Sri Lanka. You pay for a tuk-tuk ride somewhere not because it’s too far to walk, but rather to earn a few minutes’ respite from the other tuk-tuk drivers. You pay for a tour, because while you’re on the tour, the other tour hucksters don’t bother you.

Sitting in the auditorium before and during the performance, I watched the couples, groups of friends, and, especially, tour bus groups, file in. I felt very lonely. I wondered if maybe I had a travel companion, I wouldn’t get pestered quite so much. (No, on second thought, it wouldn’t make any difference. Two people fit just as easily into a tuk-tuk as one.) At least I’d have someone else to commiserate with. Maybe traveling solo to Sri Lanka was a terrible idea.

I didn’t see any sign of Sunil at the performance, which was just as well with me, and I walked back to Aronka. I was about ready for dinner now. Lonely Planet had warned me that Sri Lankans generally don’t do dinner out; they eat at home, and tourists eat at their hotels. My homestay doesn’t offer dinner, but I’d seen several restaurants down the hill nearby and set off.

Last time I had walked by those restaurants, however, it had been closer to lunch. Lonely Planet was on the mark. They were all dark. I walked a little further, all the way down the hill and a ways along the busy road running by the south side of Kandy Lake. The restaurants were all on the same side of the road as the lane leading up the hill to my homestay, so I figured, rather than risk death and dismemberment crossing the road to the more walkable path along the lake, I’d just walk along the shoulder on my side. The shoulder, however, was poorly lit, narrow in some areas, and nonexistent in others. Buses, cars, and tuk-tuks honked at me as they zoomed past.

Finally, after a bit more walking, I found a restaurant that was lit. There wasn’t a single diner in there and it was 7pm sharp, which did not seem promising, but my stomach wasn’t in a mood to be picky. I sat down. There seemed to be just two people there: the owner (?) who took my order, and the chef. I wondered what on earth they’d do if all of their tables were full instead of just one. I ordered a couple of entrées — chicken curry and a vegetable rotti, which I’d heard was good — and a fresh-squeezed pineapple juice. The owner warned me the rotti would take a long time — “20 minutes.” 50 minutes later (and a Facebook post and a few games of Words With Friends and solitaire later), I was finally served. (I was served papaya juice rather than pineapple juice, but I chose to let that slide.) During that time, a local couple sat down at a table across the way, ordered, ate their entire meal, and left, and I was again alone.

The chicken curry was forgettable, but the rotti was actually (arguably) worth the wait. On the way out, I thought better of walking along the shoulder (I would have had my back to the oncoming traffic this time) and decided to cross and then re-cross the street so I could walk along the lake promenade. Traffic had thinned significantly by now, and I was able to do so easily. I walked up the dark hillside to my lodgings, mentally ticking off the days I have until I leave here.