All sorts

This pretty postcard shot is of traditional Sri Lankan fishing boats in Negombo Harbour (about 1 hour north of Colombo on the coast)

One close up..

Beautiful Negombo Beach and Jase doing his Jet Star ad..

Jase chatting with a local guy about fishing..

We witnessed a traditional Sri Lankan drumming ritual in a little town called Wadduwa about 40 mins south of Colombo on the coast. The ritual went all night! It hadn't been held since the 1960s, until now, when Jim (second from the right- a PhD student studying traditional drumming of the central South region of Sri Lanka), organised a grant which allowed the ritual to be performed for the first time in 40 years.

Obviously, this guy is the elder and he was amazingly good. He is still pretty energetic for a guy in his 80s!


The ritual was held on the grounds of a Buddhist temple in the heart of the Sri Lankan jungle..

It was a very mythical setting.

And here are some streetscapes from around Colombo:

Here is our local holy cow, who thinks he is a Pizza hut delivery bike (photo taken at the end of our street).. This crazy cow is in there often. We can't figure out why!

This is the local fish man. He walks down our street every morning shouting "MALU! MALU!" (Malu obviously mean fish). Here he is chatting with our next door neighbour with a nice big hunk of Seer fish..

Our girls, Ranjana and Sunanda..

A typical streetscape in Colombo - policeman with AK47 and a street dog asleep on the side of the road. They are pretty daring with where they fall asleep. We call them Colombo's dead dogs - they will sleep in the middle of a busy road, cars zooming around them, with no qualms at all..

Colombo has been getting some pretty gnarly storms lately. This is the view from our balcony looking northwest.

I love this photo. I pass this newstand everyday. Its so Sri Lankan.. News you COULD trust. not News you CAN trust. Its like the slogan shold read "News you could trust ...But..."