Hello! Thought I should write one last blog before I leave Sri Lanka, but it's currently 11.30 at night so might not be too coherent. Flying to Bangkok tomorrow morning (waking up at 3.45!) and I have procured some surgical masks from hospital so I can avoid catching swine flu as I pass through the airport!!

Today is Vesac in Sri Lanka which is a festival to celebrate the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha. The whole city has been decked out in lanterns and Buddhist flags, and as we drove though this evening all the lanterns were lit up and people were milling around in their temple clothes etc.

Since my last blog entry about 2 weeks ago I have been working at one of the government hospitals in Colombo, fairly similar to the hospital in Kandy, although we have been going General Medicine rather than Obs and Gynae. Although we haven't been allowed to be as hands on as we were in Kandy, we have been seeing some good signs, as patients here aren't treated as effectively as in the UK so still have thyroid goiters etc. The wards are possibly worse than in Kandy - at one point there were 71 patients on our ward, despite the fact that there are only 40 odd beds. 2 or 3 in one bed is a regular occurrence, and some patients don't even get a bed, they just get 'admitted' and told to come back to the ward the next day!! There are no isolation beds so patients with MRSA or TB are kept with other patients (the patients with TB get a surgical mask to wear!).

Last weekend we went up north to the cultural triangle where we visited Sigiriya, Dambulla, Anradhapura etc. Sigiriya is apparently the 8th wonder of the world - an enormous rock fortress built by the King of Sri Lanka after he killed his father to fend off his brother. It took him 7 years to build and then he only lived there for a further 11 years before dying a brutal death. Here we also had a ride on an elephant which was a lot of fun!! It's quite slow with a lot of side to side movement, which made it relatively easy to fall off, especially when you rode up front on the head with nothing to hold onto. Anradhapura is an ancient city with lots of temples etc, I will have to upload the photos when I find a computer that will let me. One of the temples had a bodhi tree grown from a branch of the original bodhi tree that the Buddha attained enlightenment under. There were absolutely masses of people all around, praying, burning incense, chanting etc. There was a real festival atmosphere, but it must be like that all of the time!!

That weekend we also went to the Hilton Hotel for a buffet lunch which was absolutely amazing. We paid the equivalent of about 15 pounds and had as much food as we could eat (I saw this as a challenge), which involved eating solidly for 3 hours. I tried sushi (average) and soufflé (good) which counted as my adventuresness for the day.

Anyways I'm sure that there's lots more I should write about but I can't think of any of it now and I need to wake up in 3 hours and 45 minutes and I'm not even in my pyjamas yet, so I really should stop writing.

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