Sri Lanka

Last week I went to a conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka and had an excellent experience. The conference itself--on Thursday and Friday--was very useful, and I met a lot of colleagues from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Nepal, and other countries in the area. On Saturday morning, I set off with four colleagues in a tour van to explore some of the cultural sites in the interior of the island. Sri Lanka is a beautiful country--very green and lush, with lots of wildlife and warm, humid weather. We explored some Buddhist ruins, temples, and elephant orphanage, and some local factories where craftsman plight of their trade (very elaborate wooden sculptures, and "batik" canvas artwork). We saw lots of elephants, monkeys, and bats (fortunately, most of the bats were sleeping in trees).

I was very impressed by the country-- it's set up well for tourism, the people are very friendly, and there is a service culture there that just isn't present in Kazakhstan. The country also feels very safe, though we were advised not to travel to the north and east sections of the island, where the Tamil Tiger rebels are still active.

The only downside to the whole experience was the trip home--my 4-hour layover in Dubai turned into a 40 hour layover, because they shut the airport down after a different plane skidded off the runway. The airport was not ready to handle the resulting mass cancellations, and I spent most of a day in long lines of confused, angry people, trying to figure out what was happening. I eventually went to a hotel when I finally confirmed that my flight would not be departing that day. I had a chance to see little bit of Dubai (and a nice shopping mall with movies in English!) before my flight finally left the following night.

I posted some Sri Lanka pictures in my web album, as well some pictures of a bowling excursion two weekends ago.