While Southeast Asia can be a laidback adventurer's paradise, it's also home to some pretty chaotic cities (Bangkok, Saigon, Kuala Lumpur). Escape the crazy and be sure to add these six charming towns to your next SE Asia itinerary for a little calm and a whole lotta charm.
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Keep Calm and Nuwara Eliya On
Nuwara Eliya is one of the highest towns in Sri Lanka's "hill country," which gives it an enviable status as it's also one of the coldest places in Sri Lanka. And sure enough, when I arrived by train in neighboring Nanu Oya, I needed to grab my lone cardigan out of my bag. And, to my surprise, it wasn't enough. People weren't lying when they described Nuwara Eliya as "cold." It wasn't just a slight temperature drop, like Malaysia's Cameron Highlands, where the temperature was pleasant by day and you needed an extra layer at night. The temperature in Nuwara Eliya sent me pulling every article of warm clothing out of my backpack and cobbling them together in an outfit that might label me as crazy: my ankle-length black skirt, tank top, long-sleeved button down denim shirt, black cardigan, white scarf. I was so covered I looked like I might be a Sister Wife, or Amish. But, I had no choice, so I set off to see what else Nuwara Eliya had to offer, besides a climate that felt like I was at the beach in San Francisco.
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A kingdom on a hill: Sigiriya in Sri Lanka, where an ancient kingdom once ruled.
A Day Trip to Sigiriya and Dambulla
In my original itinerary for Sri Lanka, I'd thought I'd have to head north from Kandy and spend a night or two in Dambulla or Sigiriya to see the cultural sites up there. But as soon as I arrived at my hostel in Kandy, the Canadian girl running the place assured me that seeing both could be done in a single day. Since this day trip is not detailed in either the Lonely Planet or online anywhere, I thought I'd spell out how you can make this trip.
1. Wake up early. Crazy early!
OK, so to my parents, this would not be early. But to me and all the other normal people on the planet, you'll have to rouse yourself at the ungodly hour of 6:30 or so as you'll want to be at the bus station between 7 and 7:30 and on a bus by no later than 8 am.
I Want Kandy
OK, let's start with the obvious: who wouldn't love a city that sounds exactly like the word used to describe the sweetest stuff on earth? Just thinking about the name of Kandy, considered Sri Lanka's "cultural capital" as it was once upon a time the center of the kingdoms that flourished here, conjures up Nutcracker-worthy visions of sugar plums and cotton candy and rainbow-colored lollipops. And saying "I'm going to Kandy" makes my inner six-year-old immediately think I'm skipping off to Willy Wonka's secret chocolate factory, even though the mature, rational person inside me knows it's just a big city in Sri Lanka with no candy factories or magical Christmas fantasies in sight.
I mean, hey, if you needed to rebrand a city or town to sound way more appealing, woudn't yummy food be a great place to start? Who wouldn't want to visit Tiramisu, Ohio, or Butterscotch, Texas, or Caviar, Russia, or Smorgasbord, Sweden? I would. I would put all those places on my list, even if there wasn't a single smorgasbord in sight. (Smorgasbord, by the way, is one of those words that is so enjoyable to say, I wish I had more ways to use it in regular life. Maybe I should move to Sweden?)
Anyhoo. Here's the travel recap for those of you who actually care about what I'm up to and not my thoughts on renaming towns-seeking-tourists with names that sound like they belong in Candyland.
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