Don't Leave Home Without....

Kandy, Sri Lanka - Don't leave home without a bottle of Gin! The main thing going on in Kandy right now is the Esala Perahera festival which is an approximately 10 day Buddhist festival and the largest festival in Sri Lanka. One of the downsides of the festival apart from the crazy crowds, police checkpoints and hawkers is there is a ban on selling booze in all the bars/restaurants for the whole festival.

We didn't realize this until we headed out our first afternoon for a walk around town. We stopped to take a look at the bar at our hotel which has a great vantage point overlooking the city and saw a sign on the door saying no alcohol would be served during the Perahera Festival!

Luckily we had decided in Singapore to get a bottle of gin at duty free. We had gotten kind of tired of beer on our trip and wine was always expensive and/or not very good. Cocktails are readily available everywhere but also very expensive. So we decided to bring our own bottle and just buy tonic water and make our own G&T's.

Lucky thing we did! Our first night in Kandy Betsy went down and asked the bar for two glasses with ice and lime. The bartender laughed and asked her if she had a bottle of rum in her room, she got nervous and said no that we just had some sparkling water but he didn't care either way.

So each evening we have our Gin & Tonic and sit and watch the sun go down from our hotel. It's quite the colonial experience!