Ampara

After Monaragala, I hopped a bus to the lovely small town of Ampara (which is pronounced something like "Umpire").  There isn't that much there to see, and people looked at me weird when I said I was going to Ampara instead of Arugum Bay.  But, I'm not much of a swimmer or surfer, which is primarily the reason tourists visit the coast.  So, I went to Ampara.

Why Ampara?  There's only one reason to go there--the town has a lovely Japanese Peace Pagoda near which elephants sometimes pass in the evening.

The Peace Pagoda

When the Japanese try to paint Sri Lankans, this is the result.

There's a lake nearby, too.

The temple itself.

Inside the temple

To make a long story short, the elephants never showed up, unsurprisingly enough.

What did happen was that a wedding party arrived and started posing for photos.  A couple members of the procession walked up to me and asked if I was

 a) Korean, and
 b) a boy

They then proceeded to mock me roundly (in Singhala) for over 5 minutes (lol, I'm not exaggerating or being paranoid here; they were really rude to me, for no apparent reason).  I walked in the other direction, and a good many of the wedding party members proceeded to follow me, just staring.  They chased me around the grounds for awhile till I hid in some bushes, still waiting for the elephants to show up (which they never did).

At least I got to watch the sun set.