Trincomalee Bits
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Wed 6 Mar 2019 23:57
|
Trincomalee Station, Deer, Beach, Bits and
Bobs   We called Loka, our go-to tuktuk man
and late afternoon we set off to buy first-class train tickets and then for a
swim at the local tourist beach.........well that was plan....... At the end of
the road you would expect to see a peacock float with
a gang of cows next to it, sadly, the bus photo-bombed.......At the train
station I had the time to take in the inside of our
steed.
  I took in my
surroundings as Bear and Loka got in to
booking tickets.
  Ten
minutes ticked by so I thought I may as well bimble a bit. A third class booked carriage - doesn’t look too
bad, oooo and a fish tank
???. A bit shabby
but still a first for me.
    I took in the
signs, no way could we ever hope to learn Sinhala or Tamil. Years since I
saw ‘Resting Rooms’ advertised. Bear and Loka were still in the same positions. Time to do
some stomping methinks.
  The Station
from the outside and the inside of the
roundabout.
  Looking at the luggage allowance it’s just as well we have a lift to
Colombo.......A pretty girl.
  Our trusty
steed. The plaque on the station wall. We hope
to visit the stupa behind the elephant – pegged as the biggest man-made
structure in the world that was not a pyramid (at that time). This is the new
Trincomalee station opened on the 8th of March 1970.
  Forty minutes and Bear presented me
with two sets of tickets. (These
are the updated ones)....
 Fifteen minutes into our journey to the tourist beach, cossies on under our
shorts and the lycra is beginning to baste us nicely, and I study the tickets.
They are both for the 18th........ We need to go from Ella to Nuwara Eliya on
the 18th and Nuwara Eliya to Kandy on the 21st, thus completing what is voted by
many as the ‘Most Beautiful Train Journey in the World’. Back we go to
the station.
   So getting used to the freedom of the
city that bovine of the creatures have here. This
chap went to the water tub provided and called his
laaaayyyydddeeees and we left with a bit of a meeting
going on. Now Bear is armed with two cancelled tickets and two current tickets,
half an hour as mid-booking the ticket chaps computer went on the blink.
Clutching them to me (two real, two cancelled and I wonder what the difference
between a male and female seat looks like....... but I have and odd and an even
and so does Bear........) in the back of our steed, I no longer fancy the beach
as time has pressed on. Just down the road from the station a deer was laying
down next to a cow. Loka had a plan, did we fancy a mini-tour. Great
stuff.
  Passing Our Lady
of Guadalupe and down a shopping
street.......
   ......we popped out the end by a
sign (provided by the London Stock Exchange Group),
after passing a posh roundabout and I jumped out to
my first deer next to a pile of rubbish.
 This chap moaned quite a bit but posed
with his fine headwear.
 Time for me to shudder at a dried fish shop – where Loka had parked.
 A bit further down the road and a
fleet of deer. I like this group for the settled mynah
bird.
 At the end of the road we were at
the seaside – opposite side of the peninsula to
us.
 A local bus
arrived and everyone rushed at the converted ice cream tuktuk, tune playing and
all.
 Fishing
boats at rest on the beach.
  We passed Maritime and Naval Headquarters, resplendent with cannons
and the Command Headquarters Eastern Naval Area.
Enough of this excitement, we went
back to the
anchorage and bade farewell to Loka. Need to get to the bank and gather a
few bits of fruit.
   What we had thought was a chipmunk here is called a palm squirrel.
The chipmunk name originally may have been spelled "chitmunk", from the native
Odawa (Ottawa people of Canada) word jidmoonh,
meaning "red squirrel" but like the squirrel belong to the family of
Sciuridae. The squirrel family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels,
chipmunks, marmots, woodchucks, flying squirrels along with prairie dogs. This
little lady was in the tree above the police station
and chirped, posed, ran and posed.
 On the high
street............
   .......we went into a toy shop to see if
we could buy some jigsaws to take to a boys orphanage in Colombo (our friend
Kerri volunteers there once a week). Plenty of interesting
‘treasures’ for a toy shop but sadly, no jigsaws.
 Back to base and the pretty jasmine at the gate. For Uncle Les (xx xx) - Tabernaemontana divaricate (Apocynaceae), commonly called pinwheelflower, crape jasmine,
East India rosebay
or Nero's crown is an everygreen
shrub native to India and now cultivated throughout South East Asia and the
warmer regions of continental Asia.
ALL IN ALL LOVELY TO SEE MORE OF THE AREA
A GREAT LITTLE
TOUR |