In the Singapore orchid garden during a layover.		Dinner with lj's (julie's brother-in-law) parents and best friend in Singapore.	The fort lighthouse from our room in Galle, Sri Lanka.	The 17th cent Dutch church next to the hotel.	A stupa on a headland seen from the room.
Yatagala temple outside Galle - an ancient Buddhist temple built into the overhang of large boulders.	A land monitor slinks around on the temple grounds	A catamaran excursion on an inland lake.		An enormous water monitor!	The train derailed by the tsunami in the town of Perilyia. 1500 people lost their lives on the train.
Temporary shelters for tsunami victims			Julie and a water monitor gazing out to sea on the fort ramparts.
		Boats tossed onto land by the tsunami...		The view from the beach villa.

In Singapore we stayed over at The Scarlet, a new small hotel in Chinatown.  After sightseeing, we met lj's parents and friend for dinner (delicious pepper crabs!) 

Then we went to Amangalla in Sri Lanka, located in the former New Oriental Hotel in the 17th cent. Dutch fort town of Galle on the southern coast.  We saw some old temples and went out looking for water monitors on a catamaran in a lake.  We also saw a cinnamon harvest and went to Uda Walawe in the interior of the island to see game animals.  All along we encountered tsunami damage and victims and lots of survival stories.   In Galle, water overran much of the city, but the fort walls of the old city protected much of that space from extensive flooding.  Nonetheless, 500 fort residents sought shelter at the hotel Amangalla because it occupied the highest ground of the fort.  For three days the hotel, which had been open for only 2 weeks, provided food and shelter for the villagers. 

On the ground, there were huge differences in destruction depending on the beach elevation and the depth offshore.  Villages a kilometre apart often appeared to have been affected in very divergent ways.  In Peraliya, the damage included a derailed train where thousands of people lost their lives that was left on the old tracks next to the newly build railway.  But other nearby villages suffered much less damage. Perhaps this is why so much of the infrastructure has been rebuilt so quickly.  What remains are many temporary houses as the government sorts out regulations on the setback of new houses from the beach. 

We finished our trip on the beach at Amanwella near Tangalle where we snorkelled on the reef and swam in the surf.