– USUAL DISCLAIMER: it’s been a while, WordPress. Normally I would have something to blame for my lack of posting, but this time…
… nothing. Apart from maybe being distracted by the exciting lives of other travellers and making friends along the way through the wonderful world of hostelling. But you can’t blame me for that? Can you? –
So I left you all contemplating the obscure town of Nuwara Eliya, right? Well we only spent one night there, and it wasn’t very exciting, so don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with the dull, ‘we went here, then there, then did this and saw that’, style narrative. Instead, I’ve selected a few Sri Lankan tales that I will individually blog about to round off the first part of our trip.
Yep, we catch our second flight in two days. Singapore, we’re ready for your noodles.
One Banana?
Way back last week, in what seems like another age – what day is it? – we were wandering down to the lake in Nuwara Eliya, which, as is the norm around here, we would have had to have paid a higher price than the locals to get into the complex. Opting to keep our foreign payments (a few days later, a fellow backpacker informed me that if we’d travelled north to Sigiriya, aka Lion Rock, we would have paid 3800 rupees more than the locals) we chose to view the lake from the road. Brushing that fun fact aside, before you get to the lake itself, there are many pop up stalls on the roadside selling fruits.
As we’d travelled through several towns by then, we were getting a clear picture of trade in Sri Lanka. Back in the UK, it would be unheard of to open two of the same franchises/stores next to each other (such as two McDonald’s’ – gross), but here, everyone is selling the same product and you find yourself choosing between six of the same stalls to purchase that perfectly ripe piece of fruit. Where do you even begin?
Trying not to make too much eye contact with the sellers, I eventually chose a bright red apple that looked crisp enough to take a few hits from the Sri Lankan cricket team. With it swinging in a bag at my hip, I scanned the stalls for the ripest looking bananas. It appeared that I would be picking the best out of a bad bunch, so I walked towards an elderly gentleman who smiled and said hello. He was missing his top front teeth.
“Can I help you, Madam?”
“How much are the bananas?”
“Twenty rupees, Madam. This?” He pointed to a long, bruised green one underneath a bunch that was hanging from the roof of his stall.
I stood on my tiptoes and pointed to a stubby, yellow, equally bruised one at the top.
“That one, please.”
“One?”
“Yes please.”
“One banana?”
“Yeah.”
“One.”
I nodded, not sure what else to say. Is it weird to want one banana? Apparently so.
It was the sweetest, softest banana I’d ever tasted. My short stay in Nuwara Eliya taught me not to judge a banana by its skin, and that making an elderly Sri Lankan fruit seller smile, is a better way to spend my money than on an over-priced admission to a tourist attraction.
I will continue to ask for one banana, even if I fancy two.
Kinaesthesia 