Our hotel in Kandy was gorgeous. Twenty-five dollars got us a room with a view in an old colonial house with impossibly high ceilings and an impossibly stunning view of the hills surrounding this graceful town. There was one problem: mosquitoes. Kara had bargained for three mosquito coils, but later informed me that they don’t really work. “Well then,” I said, on our way back from a surprisingly good dinner of Chinese food, “let’s just try and kill them all.” And so Kara and I, tired from the day, did what any expats on vacation would do. We went on an good-old-fashioned mosquito hunt!

The next morning after a stunning two course breakfast with excellent coffee, fruit, eggs and toast, Kara took off to church, and I, wanting to keep a best-friend tradition alive, despite the country, went to get a massage. After all, how often are you in Sri Lanka and can get an Ayurvedic massage? I spent the rest of the day covered, literally head to toe, in oil.

Later that day, while on the train back to Colombo, Kara looked at me alarmed. “What is that?”, she said looking at the side of my head. Not certain if she should risk contact with the offending sight, I wiped some sweat from the part of my face apparently responsible for the duress, only to find my hand, well, green. “Oil,” the masseuse had said earlier, as he reached for the next in a succession of vials that were used, “Very good quality. Smell nice, no?” Apparently that was not the only indicator of its quality.

“You happy?” the masseuse had asked when my hour was over. The question seemed a strange invitation for an evaluation of the massage. I had said yes, and of course it was true. But add some humidity, dirt, and a lot of walking and sweating, and I think my answer had changed by mid-afternoon.