Sri Lanka - baby birds and beef!

Dayglowhamster

The engrisi baby birds and the beef that went oink!

After a whole morning in a boat all our thoughts were turning to food. The lads that did our boat trip asked if we would like to eat where they eat when they go out. Obviously we jumped at it and said yes!

I won't try to describe the 'restaurant' except to say it was fine once the remaining half of a dead cat had been swept away! The food arrived with finger bowl and our new friends all washed their fingers - we followed the example. My friend who is also left handed washed her left hand in the finger bowl - which is where the giggles started as they were kind enough to gently explain why this was so funny.

Then the food arrives mixed rice, huge chunks of beef (which it turned out went 'oink' when it was alive), sauces, and chicken. The lads helpfully ordered cutlery for us, which arrived as a very random assortment of teaspoons, knives and forks (not in equal numbers) and a serving spoon. However we really wanted to eat with our hands - especially as we were being told you can get more in your mouth that way! We were carefully shown how to pick up the food on fingers and push it in to your mouth with your thumb.

We all went for it - one of the lads said something in Sinhala and the others nearly fell off their chairs laughing. We kept asking what he had said, he was a little embaraased and more keen to make up for laughing at us. Eventually he told us what he'd said "Messy baby birds". I don't know if they just decided this was unfair because next they asked if we could show them how to use the knife and fork (just forks were fine but a knife and fork was a different thing!). The result was 3 SL fishermen shooting food all over the place and 4 Engrisi baby birds! All of this was made much harder by the fact you then had to keep the food in your mouth and breathe while in fits of hysterical laughter. It seemed like we measured the aerodynamic qualities of nearly everything on our plates, chicken legs fly furthest under a knife and fork, rice however seems to have the best overall range. For us this was made so much worse by the fact we didn't really want to try the toilets - WE HAD TO STOP LAUGHING - above all things THIS is the one thing that prevents any chance of 'giggle stop'.

I think just about everyone in the place was also watching and giggling some loudly some quietly. The owner of the restauraunt gave beer and said we could come back anytime and eat at local price.

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Mine's not as clever as yours!