Life's a Leech

My poor, aggrieved mother is still recovering from last week's Peanut Cheese, in which we hung out of the side of a Sri Lankan train for 8 hours, then later asked a stranger to drive us to an abandoned "bangalow" in a remote valley where no one would be able to hear our cries for help.

Aside from it being close to 5 p.m. when we arrived and me being really ready to eat lunch, I wasn't really that concerned about the location or emptiness of what she refers to as The House of Freakin' Usher.

Until the taxi driver left and the bungalow staff asked if we wanted something to drink.

Them: Something something something drink?

Us: Oh, yes! We would really love some tea.

Them: (silence)

Us: Some tea, please?

Them: (more silence)

Us: Tea? You know, the national drink and largest industry of Sri Lanka?

In retrospect, I might have paid more attention when the owner of the bungalow texted me to ask if we would be bringing a local guide with us, or if he should arrange for a supervisor who spoke English.

I might have also spent the extra 0.05 cents to photocopy the "food glossary" page from our guidebook.

Eventually, we worked out a creaky system in which either the owner or a manager would call from Colombo to talk to the (theoretically) English-speaking supervisor, who would then come find us and hand over his cell phone.

I would talk to the manager about what we wanted to eat and when, and then he would talk to the supervisor again.

Then the bungalow staff would retreat to the kitchen and emerge two hours later with the most delicious Sri Lankan feast imaginable.

Then the manager would call back to make sure were happy and fed and to urge us once again to call him if we needed anything.

This happened approximately 37 times during our two-night stay, which was a little excessive but led us to realize (eventually) that the poor guys in charge — both in Colombo and at the bungalow itself — were pretty stressed out about having us there.

Sure enough: a quick flip through the guestbook revealed that the only other non-Sri Lankan guests had visited back in 2007.

The novelty of having Western visitors may also explain why we were treated like royalty.

I mean this in both the good sense and the challenging sense of said treatment.

On one hand, if we sat in one place for more than 20 minutes, we could be fairly certain that a nice man would bring out a tray with tea or snacks for us to eat.

On the other hand, the English-speaking supervisor and his minions kept us on a pretty short tether.

Toward the end of our second day, for example, we wanted to walk down the dirt road to the village, partly just to take a walk and partly because we really wanted to take a photo of the big yellow sign that described the guesthouse as a "bangalow."

We thought it might create an international incident if we just disappeared, so I went and found Mr. Supervisor.

Me: I wanted to let you know that we're going for a walk. We'll be back before dark.

Mr. Supervisor, looking more than a little concerned: (silence)

Me: We're just going down the hill to the village.

Mr. Supervisor: (silence)

John, coming to find us because he can hear from afar that I'm not having any luck: We're going to walk on the road. Down to the village.

Mr. Supervisor: No.

John: No?!

Mr. Supervisor then disappeared into the back of the bungalow, eventually returning with a young guy we had never seen before.

We didn't know who he was or where he came from, but it seemed like he spoke slightly more English than our English-speaking supervisor.

Mr. Guy: Is everything okay?

John: Yes, it's fine. We're just going to take a walk. To the village.

Me: For fun!

Mr. Guy: For fun?

Us: Yes, just a walk. Two kilometers. We'll be back in an hour.

Mr. Guy: Any problem?

Us: No problem. We're just going to walk. For fun.

Mr. Guy considered this for a minute, then translated for Mr. Supervisor, who shook his head and — to our surprise — laughed out loud.

We laughed, too, but mostly out of relief that we were going to be allowed off of the property.

As John and I scampered down the hill, having all kinds of fun, we realized that this is another key difference between us and the bungalow's normal clientele.

We think it's fun to walk four kilometers up and down a hill for no reason, while the last thing a wealthy Sri Lankan from Colombo wants to do is walk down a muddy path into a village with 10 families, 17 chickens, and a tiny hole-in-the-wall store.

See how much fun we were having?

But as tempting as it was to just sit around on the lawn at the guesthouse and wait for treats to be delivered, we also used our Colombo food hotline to arrange a short guided trek into the jungle adjoining the guesthouse property.

Sinharaja Forest Preserve (and, we assumed, its buffer zone) is known for its healthy population of leeches, so we spent a good part of the morning gearing up for said trek.

John and I agree on most things related to travel, but we learned that morning that we are from two different schools of leech prophylaxis.

John opted to wear longish shorts with two pairs of bright white liner socks. His theory being that if you can see the leeches as soon as they jump onto your legs, it's easier to remove them.

He was also fairly confident that the leeches would not be able to penetrate both layers of socks to burrow into the warm, tender areas around his ankles.

As an added bonus, I think you'll agree that it's a pretty hot look:

I, on the other hand, felt that it was important to seal all openings around my ankles by tucking my thick cotton pants into my socks.

Which is also a hot look, though more in the overheating sense of hot than the hot sense of hot:

Our guide, meanwhile, was from a third school of hiking through leech-infested jungle altogether: he showed up with bare feet, a sarong and a machete.

Bare feet or no, our guide did not pull any punches.

Within about 10 minutes, we were boulder-hopping across (or in my case, through) a deep river / waterfall on our way to a rubber tree plantation on the other side of the valley.

We were surrounded by giant trees, ferns, vines, snail-covered rocks, the soothing sound of rushing water, and something else I feel like I'm forgetting...

Oh yes: now I remember.

About 57 million leeches.

We did our best to keep an eye out for birds and reptiles and monkeys in the trees overhead, but I have to say: it was difficult to divert our attention from our poor besieged ankles.

Toward the end of our hike, John did spot a lizard hiding in a tree:

But John's photo session with this adorable little guy coincided with me saying something like, "You know, I think I might have a leech in my sock."

Back at the bungalow after what turned out to be 45 minutes — at the very most — of trekking in the jungle, we removed our boots and socks for the Day of Reckoning.

As it turns out, John's school of leech-wear was fully vindicated.

While my school of leech-wear...?

Mine was clearly not.

Just in case you're not completely grossed out yet, here's what an engorged leech licking its chops looks like:

I know.

I know!

Me at the dinner table last night: I'm not really sure if I want to subject people to that disgusting photo.

John: But it's educational! Just think of the hordes of people who have never seen a leech!

What might be even more educational is considering the type of loving boyfriend who would take a close-up photo of a leech wallowing in his girlfriend's blood-soaked sock.

Around the Bend

Our trip to Sri Lanka was chock full of fun things like elephant safaris, train rides through the mountains, tea plantations, outrageously good Sri Lankan food, and an endless supply of delicious Ceylon tea.

We also had a few adventures that were — how can I put this? — not exactly what we had in mind.

We had originally envisioned our 6-hour train journey between Kandy to Ella, for example, in the relative comfort of the first-class observation car at the front of the train.

We learned, however, that the current demand for tourist-related services in Sri Lanka far outstrips the supply, including but not limited to the aforementioned train car.

Instead, we found ourselves crammed in the space between the train cars with a considerable number of Sri Lankan families, other tourists, backpacks, suitcases and bags of rice.

But I think we may be more chicken-class people than first-class people: the minor inconvenience of standing for what ended up being close to 8 hours was mitigated by the thrill of (don't read this part, Mom) being able to hang out of the side of the train as it wound through the mountains.

We were also really pleased about the steady supply of food vendors who clambered over and among the hordes of people stuffed into the standing-room-only train.

As it turns out, I'll suffer through pretty much anything for 8 hours, if you feed me at half-hour intervals with savory Sri Lankan donuts and mangos rubbed in chili salt.

Our favorite vendor, however, was the friendly guy with a giant basket of fresh-roasted peanuts calling out "Good Penis! Good Penis! Good Penis! Try Good Penis!" as he made his way down the aisle.

Needless to say, it wasn't possible to pass that up.

After three days of hiking, eating, and drinking tea in the hill country of Ella, we were sufficiently recovered from our train ride to head to Udawalawe National Park, where we were thrilled to find lots of elephants and monkeys and about 3 zillion different kinds of birds.

We learned, incidentally, that different cultures have wildly different ideas of what makes for thrilling natural encounters.

One Sri Lankan tourist we met explained that most Sri Lankans don't get that excited about seeing elephants, in part because they're all over the country, and in part because they're featured in religious festivals that take place every year.

Sure enough: when we were riding around in the back of a safari jeep, our guide could definitely could take or leave the elephants, while he made sure to hit the brakes every single time he spotted a rabbit or a deer — yawn — cowering in the bushes.

John and I, on the other hand, got so excited about seeing monitor lizards that our guide started referring to them as "your favorite animal."

As in, "Oh look, there's your favorite animal again. I guess we'll stop and take another photo!"

He was really nice about it, but we suspect that our enthusiasm for the monitor lizard may not have been shared by everyone in the safari vehicle.

From Udawalawe, our plan was to travel by taxi to a guesthouse advertised as being "in close proximity" to Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a rainforest in southwestern Sri Lanka.

Our version of "close proximity" means you can get there in, say, half an hour.

This version of "close proximity" was something from another dimension altogether.

Ahem!

Before I go into the vacation-monologue equivalent of an 8-hour, standing-room-only train journey, I should confess that there was a certain lack of due diligence in our planning for our Sri Lanka trip in general.

And in this case, when I say "due diligence", what I really mean is "looking at a map."

In our defense, there was a not-insubstantial amount of chaos in our lives in the weeks leading up to Christmas, when we might have been scrutinizing our Sri Lanka travel plans and making follow-up calls and printing out something that had our return flights listed on it.

The kind that of chaos that leads one to pay rent twice in one month.

Just as, you know, a hypothetical example.

I say "might" because even when we aren't struggling to keep our lives together, we really try not to plan our trips down to the last antibacterial hand wipe.

(For the record: I deny antibacterial hand wipes, unless they're provided by my dear friend Janet, in which case I carry them around with me grudgingly and out of some misplaced sense of loyalty and excessive hygiene.)

So at some point during the headache-palooza of December 15 to 24, we found a place that described itself as being in the Sinharaja Forest Preserve "buffer zone", and, as I mentioned, in close proximity to Sinharaja.

It looked lovely in a humble, remote guesthouse kind of way, and since most of the other places we found were already booked, we went with it.

To get there, we asked one of the guys who ran the campsite in Udawalawe to help us organize a taxi.

Other than knowing it was somewhere in the vicinity of Sinharaja, we only had its name (Eco Jungle Hideout) and the name of the tiny village where it was located.

In retrospect, we might have paid more attention when we asked Mr. Campsite if he knew of it and his answer was, "Oh yeah...Eco Jungle...Hideout. It's....nice."

Thirty seconds later, his conversation went the taxi driver went something like this:

Mr. Campsite: Something something something Sinharaja.

Mr. Taxi: Okay.

John: Will he be able to take us to the hotel?

Mr. Campsite: Something something something something Eco Jungle Hideout something something.

Mr. Taxi: (silence)

Mr. Campsite: SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING ECO JUNGLE HIDEOUT SOMETHING SOMETHING

Mr. Taxi: (silence)

Mr. Campsite: Sinharaja something something something

Mr. Taxi: Yeah, okay.

Mr. Campsite (to us): Okay, he'll take you to Eco Jungle Hideout. No problem!

So we settled into the taxi. I stuck my head out the window and enjoyed the scenery, while John followed the slow but steady progress that showed up on his GPS.

For the record: traveling by private taxi is a relatively luxurious and speedy way to get from point A to point B, but even so: overland travel in Sri Lanka in general is somewhat laborious, especially if one has to traverse a mountain on molar-jarring dirt tracks.

Our estimate was that it would probably take 3 or 4 hours — at the very most — to travel the 60 or so kilometers from one park to the other.

Long about hour 4, Mr. Taxi started rolling down his window and asking people in the tiny villages and bigger cities along the way if they had heard of Eco Jungle Hideout.

This had mixed results — meaning some people pointed this way and other people pointed that way — so he kept driving.

Long about hour 5, we found ourselves driving through yet another tea plantation, this one complete with buildings labeled in the Queen's English as "Superintendent's Bungalow" and "Staff Recreation" and (our personal favorite) "Muster Shed."

The road snaked up the steep mountain in a series of long, slow switchbacks that were also charmingly labeled: Bend 1, Bend 2, Bend 3, Bend 4, Bend 5, Bend 6, Bend 7...

Long about Bend 10, Mr. Taxi parked his taxi, motioned to us to stay put, and hiked straight up the slope to interrogate some poor woman picking tea for a living.

While he was gone, John leaned over with the aforementioned GPS to show me that we were pretty much off the map.

I promptly rummaged around in my backpack and found a phone number for the elusive Jungle Hideout.

When Mr. Taxi came back, he seemed pretty happy to get on the phone and talk with someone who a) spoke Sinhalese, and b) could confirm that this hotel was not invented by crazy people from the Netherlands.

After they conferred, I also spoke with Mr. Guesthouse on the scratchiest cell phone connection imaginable, and I confirmed with some effort that yes, we were coming, and yes, we would like to have lunch when we got there, which seemed like it was going to be relatively soon.

And so Mr. Taxi turned his van around on the single lane road and we crawled back down through Bend 10, Bend 9, Bend 8, Bend 7, Bend, 6...

We were almost to Bend 5 when the phone rang again.

After a second, lengthier consultation, we turned around again and drove back through Bend 6, Bend 7, Bend 8, Bend 9, Bend 10...

Roughly two hours and sixteen more phone calls later, we turned onto a dirt track marked by a big yellow sign:

The good news about the tourist bangalow?

Our driver found it, thanks largely to the kindness of strangers and the wonders of cell phone technology.

The bad news about the bangalow?

It really seemed a lot like a Sri Lankan version of the hotel from The Shining.

Grand old estate in a semi-advanced state of decay perched at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere?

Check!

Darkness sweeping over the valley in the form of armageddon-like rain clouds?

Check!

Silent, lurking groundskeepers?

Check!

Complete absence of any other guests?

Check!

Complete absence of any sign of there ever having been any other guests?

Check!

Even our driver seemed a little concerned about leaving us there.

Whereas if I were him, I would have dumped us by the side of the road way back at the Muster Shed.

Nothing to Declare

Because John is a responsible adult and makes me wear sunscreen, all I have to show for our three weeks in Sri Lanka and the Maldives are a few more freckles on my nose.

Even so, many of my coworkers have stopped me in the hall this week to say, Jij bent wat bruiner! / You're a little browner!

In my mind, this is straight out of the Only In the Netherlands files. In reality, I still am — and always will be — the color of a pasty oyster.

But I suppose that in a largely sunless country where most people are the color of a pasty oyster, a newly freckled oyster is bound to stand out.

With these few freckles on our side, we're doing our best to re-acclimate to life somewhere other than a tropical paradise.

For me, that meant spending my every-other-Wednesday off running errands and reacquainting myself with Nijmegen's thrift stores.

Which I Love. With a capital L.

Occasionally, they're helpful for procuring household items that we sort of need, like yet another spice rack or an old-school popcorn popper or (insert sigh of longing here) a matching set of kitchen canisters labeled in Dutch.



More frequently, they're a place for me to discover and bask in the quirkiness of Dutch culture.

I believe it was this old Dutch brick mold that finally drove John to say last year, "Um, maybe you need to get a job..."



I really do try to resist purchasing too much Netherlandsalia, for fear that our household will no longer fit neatly into a shipping container to wherever the wind blows us next.

But sometimes, gentle readers, resistance is futile.

As of this afternoon, we're the proud owners of something that could only have been created in the Netherlands. Niets aan te geven: Een spannend kaartspel voor spelers met een stalen gezicht.

Translation? Nothing to Declare: an exciting card game for players with a face of steel.



Further translation?

Nothing to Declare: an exciting card game in which family members take turns playing a customs official and everyone else lies to try to get away with not paying taxes on items in their luggage.



You: You're kidding, right?

Me: Dude, I cannot make this shit up.

Here's what the box says:

A camera and a bottle of cognac! Smuggle it or declare it: who dares to risk a stiff fine? Will the customs official catch the smuggler? An exciting and fun card game for the whole family.

You take four cards. A necklace! With a steely stare at the customs official, you say "Nothing to declare." The customs official has no idea. This time, no penalty. But will that work for the next player, too?

Because nothing says "fun for the whole family" like alcohol, cigar smuggling and tax evasion!

Say Hello To My Little Friend

Sometime last summer, I noticed a special sticker on one of our staple Dutch foods, the Sultana Fruit Biscuit.

I say "staple" because we eat Sultanas by the crate as an all-purpose snack, or even as breakfast in a pinch.

Sultanas are neither cookies nor crackers, and so the taste is a little hard to describe. My best attempt is that if a low-sodium saltine and a grape Fruit Roll-Up had a love child, it would be a Sultana.

On the down side, they're not all that flavorful, and they're dry enough that you need a nice cup of tea or a glass of water to really choke them down.

On the plus side, they more or less of fill the hole in our lives where energy bars used to be. And they're reasonably healthy, and portable, and available in quantity.

Also, they have the most brilliant tagline in the entire History of Advertising: Met de beste rozijne, or With the best raisins.

It really does take the breath away.

In any case, it was hard not to notice when the sticker started showing up on the front of every Sultana package.

Though I cringe to admit this, saving now for Mr. Jummy did not immediately make its way on to my to-do list.

At some point, however, I peeled the sticker off and read the text on the other side:

Wist je dat het een Mr. Jummy rugzak en handpop in één is!

Did you know that the Mr. Jummy is a backpack and hand puppet in one?!

Why no! I had no idea that the Mr. Jummy is a backpack and hand puppet in one!

This discovery had two major selling points:

First, it fit nicely with my theory that the Dutch are obsessed with puppets.

For the record, I don't have any evidence to back this theory up, other than my sense that every single child in the Netherlands owns a miniature puppet theater, as well as my vague discomfort at the number of puppet theater performances on offer on any given weekend in the Netherlands.

Secondly, it spoke to my fervent belief that the only thing more useful than a backpack is a backpack that is also a hand puppet.

Four Sultana proofs of purchase, €3.99, and six weeks later, I became the proud owner of my very own Mr. Jummy.

He and I have had lots of fun adventures ever since, but the highlight of his short existence has been coming along to my sister's wedding in upstate New York.

Because nothing says bridesmaid's accessory like a red backpack / hand puppet!

And while I've never had any shortage of methods for torturing my sister, having Mr. Jummy take part in her special day really brought things to a whole new level.

As it turns out, one of the main reasons that I survived 48 hours of wedding madness is that my sister's 5-year-old niece also really loved Mr. Jummy.

And so the three of us played and played and played. And then we played some more.

Most of the time, this involved him finding potentially delicious items (think bark, rocks, flowers, or caterpillars) and then deciding whether to eat them or spit them out.

Other times (as might be expected), the play involved Mr. Jummy visiting the dentist.

But sometimes, too much eating and too much dentist made Mr. Jummy tired, and he needed to take a nap.

I'm sorry to say that between my favorite black Smartwool shirt and the flower petals in Mr. Jummy's mouth, the effect of this particular nap was downright...sepulchral.

A few days after the wedding, we went out for a cup of coffee with my sister's new mother-in-law.

I got more than a little nervous when she leaned over to me and said in a low voice, "I need to talk to you about your little friend."

My low-level panic subsided when she revealed her question, which was whether I could buy another Mr. Jummy for the niece in question and send him to the U.S. for Christmas.

As I mentioned, we eat Sultanas by the crate, and thankfully, Sultana's marketing efforts continued to soldier on, so four more proofs of purchase, €3.99, and six weeks later, we marked the arrival of Mr. Jummy the Second.

But as everyone knows, international immigration is kind of a big deal.

Combination backpack / hand puppet or not, Mr. Jummy needed papers.

Fortunately, this was nothing an inkjet printer and a glue gun couldn't handle.

And so yesterday, with his valid passport stowed gently in the backpack half of his existence, Mr. Jummy and his little suitcase full of Sultanas started the long and cramped journey to upstate New York.