During the annual Week Without Walls selection of trips, I ended up getting placed in the brand new, squeaky clean, never done before, art trip. My chaperones, Mrs Eagle the art teacher, Mr Hentz my TOK and homeroom teacher, and finally the elusive Mr Marlon, who teaches instruments to the students. We started in a train station in Colombo, a place that funnily enough I had never been to. We hopped on a train and for the next 2 and a half hours I sat there bored out of my mind, trying to ignore my classmate’s continuous flirting (which happened for the entirety of the trip and proved to be a very eye-opening experience), and craving a grilled cheese sandwich. After a long, long, long, train ride and walk through Kandy we arrived at a temple.
I had been to this temple before but this experience separated itself from the various times I had visited there because of one man. One short man, maybe about 4’9 who was completely pale. He had vitiligo. If you think this is one of those stories where you think I was blessed to see someone with a skin disease praying and it changed my outlook on spirituality, you’re mistaken, buckle up. This man, this evil hobbit, pushed, shouted, and tugged me multiple times, IN A SPIRITUAL PLACE, to pray before me. I do not know what ill intent he harbored towards me, but he was extremely angry, and after praying he ran off, at extreme speed, something I had no idea little folks were capable of. After the ghastly assault in the temple, I got lost, then found, then lost again, and finally, I got to the van which happily drove us to a pizza place.
In this pizza place, I instilled military positioning tactics to selfishly, get more food for my friends and me. Luka and I rushed up the stairs to get to the pizza place first, and I picked the perfect spot for the pizzas. Knowing that the pizzas would be placed in the upper middle end of the table, I explained that the prime positioning would be to sit in the sector I pointed out. Saving seats for Avi and Ben, we had a squad set up ready for the pizzas to deploy. After waiting 10 minutes, lo and behold, the first pizza was placed directly in front of me.
Myself, Dimath (left) and Peter (middle) getting ready to enter the temple, and I cop an orange and red sarong to be allowed inside.
5 pizzas at 7-minute intervals were continuously placed in front of us, and we had the first slices of every single one. It was the ultimate plan, and we continuously hauled pizza slice after pizza slice into our mouths. By the end of the lunch, Ben, Luka, Avi, and I were full, and after making fun of Naomi for not finishing her pizza crusts we headed into the bus towards our first hotel, Helga’s Folley. Helga’s Folley is the weirdest hotel I have ever been to. It was filled with odd skeletons, weird paintings, and unnerving ancient candles that looked like they came out of Van Helsing. Though the place did have an amazing charm to it, and after we checked into our rooms (I was rooming with Ben and Dimath), I attempted to get some shut-eye before the painting.
I awoke, my head dizzy and disoriented, after having some bizarre dreams (and soon learned that Ben had some scary dreams as well) in this wicked hotel, and turned to see Ben waking up at the same time. We jointly realized we had missed the painting session.. as we had taken a 4-hour nap. After gathering our senses, we got up and looked around, to find out that it was dinner time right now and we had awoken ready for dinner. Dinner was served in the dining hall and after a mediocre meal (after the pizza this seemed to be a constant trend throughout the trip), we played a murder mystery game. The murder mystery game was easy, I guessed Avi and was correct and after breezing through it, I went to sleep (I really couldn’t narrate the game better, it was excruciatingly easy and I felt cheated out of a challenge.) I woke up the next morning, and soon after we were on the road to the batik workshop. The batik workshop was fun for two seconds. Those two seconds were when myself and Mr. Marlon were cracking risky jokes towards Avi, but apart from that it wasn’t fun. Although I try to keep an open mind, batik is not for me. There’s a lot of standing around, and playing with wax seems more hazardous than fun for creating tapestries. Overall it was an experience, but I didn’t gain a lot from it.
After the batiks, we ended up going to Laki Senanayake’s hotel/house, and that’s where the magic happened. Although it was a little uncanny, I enjoyed looking at the various animal sculptures and different parts of the manmade jungle. Connecting it back to my studies of Environmental Systems and Sustainability, I found it interesting to see that a man had built an artificial jungle which he could draw art inspiration from. I found it cool that the buildings seemed very modern for a place somehow in the middle of the jungle. The pool did look a bit dodgy, and the food was very mediocre, but the actual vibe of the place seemed to bring creative flow out from inside of me, so in my sketches, I felt very focused and connected to the land around me. After eating a lunch that didn’t taste so good, and dodging a desert that looked atrocious we headed to the next place we stayed at, Back and Beyond near Pidurangula. This new place, which I had stayed at a few times, is a very cozy place located in the middle of Sri Lanka. It was a very nice place, apart from the fact that it was infested with monkeys (more on this later) and I roomed with Avi, Ben, and Luka, which was super fun.
Me drawing in Laki’s bedroom.
Throughout my stay and Back and Beyond it was pretty uneventful. Romance was in the air, and Luka ended up leaving our awesome squad of coolness to become romantically entangled with someone. But hey, we were still 3 strong. On the final day of our stay in Back and Beyond, we were getting ready to leave. Us 4 guys were in the room, packing up and getting ready to go when Ben saw that a singular monkey was downstairs eating Ben’s crackers. What we thought was comedic at first, slowly turned sour as we realised more and more monkeys were gathering around. All of a sudden, there were monkeys everywhere. In the bathroom, on the upper floor, 2 particularly fiendish monkeys ended up under the bed. We had monkeys all over the room and were extremely close to us. Luka ended up growling at the monkey, but to his dismay not only was the monkey unfazed, but it also mimicked his growl and pounced. After throwing pillows, Ben tossing water chucking crackers, and assorted dry rations at the monkeys, we battled it out. The rest of the trip was uneventful, we spent the rest of the day feasting at a fantastic buffet and retiring early at a beautiful hotel. Once we woke up, I spent the rest of my bus ride reflecting happily on the adventures I went on, and glad that my friends came with me.
