April 8, 2025
Rest day 2 in Jaffna
We had another rest day here in Jaffna (as we had planned) but didn't do much except go in towards the Fort and Jaffna city center hoping to wander through the markets there. So things didn't really go as planned!
It is another hot day here in Jaffna but unlike yesterday the sun is out shining and it is a cloudless day. It is around lunctime before we get to the fort and I thought it was 60 rupees to get into the fort but once we got there – that is the local price (so if you are Sri Lankan you pay 60 rupees) the foreign price is $5 USD which is around $10 AUD or 1800 rupees –and that is each – we were not enthused to see the fort from the inside. The photos on Google show that it doesn't have the detail like at Galle or Trincomalee forts that we went to. So we just cycled the road around it and took pictures of the wall from the outside!
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
From there it is a very short ride before you get to the city center
Again, like any city, this is generally the busiest part of the city. However, unlike yesterday, there is not much cars, tuk tuks, trucks, etc can do except go slowly, they cannot overtake as the oncoming traffic is just as heavy. So we just tailed behind the slowest bicyclist we could find and enjoyed hearing the minds of the traffic behind us fuming as there is no way they could overtake! This part of the city would only be about 500m long of this sort of traffic and then it opens up and everyone can overtake everyone! The shops are busy and in amongst all the vehicle traffic is the foot traffic too!
We turn around and come back before we get too far north of the city. There is 1 set of lights we have to go through and if I haven't described it to you about what happens had traffic lights before (as they are extremely rare!) I will do my best – bearing in mind Neil absolutely loves lining up at the traffic lights. As a comparison, in Australia, at a major set of lights we may have 3 lanes, some for turning and some for straight and there will only ever be 3 vehicles at most across those 3 lanes. In Sri Lanka you can have 2 or 3 lanes and you can have, at times, 15 vehicles lined up across as the front row in those 2-3 lanes. Those vehicles could be a combo of any of the following – buses, trucks, motorbikes, moped, bicycles and tuk tuks. And to make matters worst those in the turning lane could be going straight and those in the straight lane could be turning. To add to that there is nothing to say that the vehicle to your left of you is actually turning right and vice versa. So this is universal for Sri Lanka. And Neils pet love is he is lined up at the front and motorbikes, tuk tuks and mopeds line up either side of him and there is a countdown on the traffic signal and at 5 seconds to go you start to hearing the revving so Neil pretends to start revving his bicycle (you know how a kid does it with their tricycle/bike!) meanwhile the people either side of him have no idea what he is doing while I am behind him laughing my head off as they just don't get that sort of sense of humour! They just look at him weirdly!
So we find the market and it is just off a very busy street and we can't see an obvious place to park the bike safely so we flag going into the market – probably would be ripped of any way as that seems to be the thing to do up here. So we find a place to eat.
Before we find a place we see something Jayden would like – Burger King and a Dominos Pizza place plus there was a Pizza Hut directly opposite these 2!
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Nobody can speak English and they do their best to describe it so we each have a rice dish with sambal onion, piece of chicken and some veges and a boiled egg. It was delicious. Not to salty or spicy so it was a lovely lunch which will double up as a dinner (we will just have a sweet bun and fruit for dinner). However the price was exorbitant for what we normally pay – clearly they put the Jaffna tax on us. It was 2500 rupees which is nearly $14 for this meal. Which in Australia that is a great price for 2 lunch meals but here in Sri Lanka for a lunch meal in a roadside cafe that is a restaurant cost. So not wanting to wash dishes we paid but I have to say I didn't mind paying the extra because it was such a deliciousmeal!
So tomorrow we go back to Kilinochchi as there is no accommodation until Manner for the north west side of Sri Lanka and that is about 115km away. So we opted, for our next leg of this trip, to take the center road down to Anuradhapura and then onto Kandy.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 3 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |