No Fixed Abode: Canoodling in the Park

Sat 23 Apr 2016 - Kandy Royal Botanical Gardens

For the last three days we’d intended to go to the botanical gardens and never got round to it so, as today was our last day in Kandy, we booked a tuk tuk and got on our way.

The gardens are a way out of town so the tuk tuk ride took quite a while but it gave us a glimpse of the good folk of Kandy beginning to enjoy their weekend. When we arrived the entrance was already a mass of brightly coloured bodies. It seemed like everyone had donned their best togs for a day out and we joined the end of a sizeable queue for our tickets. In Asia it is very common in that tourists pay more than locals but this place took it to another a level. We don’t mind paying a little more to allow those much poorer than us to enjoy some of the sites but here, they paid 25p while we paid £5.50. Now that’s taking the mickey!

With Glenn still chewing a wasp over this injustice, we made our way to the Orchid house, something the park is rightly famed for, and they were beautiful. All manner of shapes, sizes and colours glistened in the shaded sun with people snapping away with their cameras. Despite large signs requesting visitors not to touch the plants Yvonne stepped in to to prevent one camera wielding guy from removing a slightly browned leaf from the frame of his floral masterpiece - what a surprise, he was Chinese!

With the sun now high in the sky we went in search of shade and found a walkway beneath some large trees - perfect. The Lonely Planet guide notes that the park is the place for canoodling youngsters to hang out and it’s not wrong. At every bench, tree root, tree trunk, large shrub, in fact anywhere slightly out of sight, were youngsters in varying levels of clinch, from discreet eastern hand holding to full on western style snogging. Hearing “I’m just off to the Botanical park with xxx” from their daughters must put the fear of god (or Buddha or Shiva) into the conservative minds of Kandy parents.

As the path followed the sweep of a small river we came to the bamboo section. We’d seen plenty of this incredible stuff in Vietnam but the grove of Burmese giant bamboo was simply vast. We recalled the thrill of our first encounter with these clattering green stalks on Maui, what now seems a lifetime ago, but they were merely twigs compared to these massive stalks that can grow at over 30 cms a day. After short bit of mental arithmetic we reckoned you could literally watch it grow in front of you.

A little further along we noticed some large bats resting in the top branches of some large trees. The more we looked, the more we saw. Thousands of fruit bats (flying foxes) hanging in clusters, all gently flapping their wings to stay cool. We watched them for a while, fascinated, trying to get some good photos as they flew around majestically, not fluttering as their smaller cousins do.

It was now midday and very hot but help was at hand. Looking across a well manicured lawn with beautifully trimmed borders that would have looked at home in any English park, we noticed another relic from the Empire - the tea rooms. With its shady terrace packed with overheating tourists, we found a spot in the breeze and ordered some cold drinks, which we managed to make last a goodly while to allow us to cool down.

Suitably refreshed we wandered around some more, past smooching couples, botanical specimens and a particularly industrious chipmunk that skilfully stripped some bark from a twig then sped along a particularly tortuous route via the branches of three trees to return to its nest without having to pass us.

Now weary and hot we left the park to haggle with the tuk tuk drivers until we found one who was prepared to return us to our hotel for the same price we’d paid to get here. They all complained how bad the traffic would be but the one who ended up taking us was a master, weaving through the cars, buses and other tuk tuks like someone on the dodgems driving against the flow. At one point, totally out of character, he pulled over to let another vehicle pass. It turned out to be an ambulance, which he immediately tailgated until it turned into the hospital, almost joined by us.

Showered and cooled we had our last tasty dinner at the King of Kandy hotel and watched a couple of EPL matches in readiness for the Everton v United cup semi final. Unfortunately the TV channel didn’t show the game and the internet was so slow it was impossible to stream. And so to sleep then.