Sunday 15 August 2010

finally the beach...





13th August

Panic over guys, all is well. Woke up feeling a lot better but with slightly shaky knees. The weather had turned properly and was now storming it up. We headed for the Martin Vikramsinghe museum of Folk history where we had a very informative tour from a local guide. The museum plots the history of colonialisation and local traditions.
We went to another batik workshop called Shermila batik with a similar setup to Ena de Silva but not of quite the same standard. I was really interested to hear the woman who runs it – Iranganie – had been on an Export development board run two week workshop on Fair Trade – she does not think that it is worth the cost to become certified. I wonder what the course was like and how it was set out – if the government was running it, were they willing to offer assistance in the accreditation process? Possibly not something they would be willing to answer from an email.

Then we visited another toy place that makes soft toys with hand-woven fabric, the toys they make are mainly for the Western market, but they also make toys for domestic market too. They use the natural kapok fibre for stuffing but they also have the synthetic alternative.

The doctors left us to go back to Colombo so we were able to look around Colombo without boring them with our obsession with lace. We went back to the first lace place we found and purchased a bit more. We then wandered around the old fort and had lunch. We headed back outside the fort and had our first beach hit at Unawatuna – it was rough! It was minutes before we were all thrown into the surf and surfaced grazed with our swimsuits all askew.

We went back to the same place for dinner which Beth and I had been unable to enjoy the night before – their pizza was amazing.

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