Visit the Miracle - Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka celebrates its 1st anniversary of the end of civil war that was lasted almost 3 decades. Now Sri Lankans enjoy the true taste of 'Peace and Harmony'. Despite of the fact that there are some more activities to be done to establish true democracy and economic stability, Sri Lanka can be easily rated as one of the best places to visit. In January 2010 New York Times rates Sri Lanka as No 1 of 'The 31 Places to Go in 2010'.

Retrospective



Although Sri Lanka came across some political instability last year, people enjoys the new born freedom and many foreigns have visited Sri Lanka in 2010. Its obvious that country is more or less going in the correct direction and its the responsibility of the Sri Lankans to guide the government in the proper direction.



It's a great feeling to live in a country that has just came across such a pathetic situation and now.. moving forward with a great confidence. There are no wonders why NY Times has rated Sri Lanka as the no1 place to visit in 2010. The article it self justifies what were the motivations behind the rankings.
I'm quoting from the article created by New York times and in-between I've added some photos taken by me that shows beauty of the island nation.

For a quarter century, Sri Lanka seems to have been plagued by misfortune, including a brutal civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and a separatist Tamil group. But the conflict finally ended last May, ushering in a more peaceful era for this teardrop-shaped island off India’s coast, rich in natural beauty and cultural splendors.


The island, with a population of just 20 million, feels like one big tropical zoo: elephants roam freely, water buffaloes idle in paddy fields and monkeys swing from trees.


And then there’s the pristine coastline. The miles of sugary white sand flanked by bamboo groves that were off-limits to most visitors until recently are a happy, if unintended byproduct of the war.


Among the most scenic, if difficult stretches to reach, is Nilaveli Beach in the Tamil north. While a few military checkpoints remain, vacationers can lounge on poolside hammocks under palm trees or snorkel in its crystal-clear waters. Or they can order cocktails at the Nilaveli Beach Hotel (www.tangerinehotels.com/nilavelibeach), a collection of recently renovated bungalows with private terraces.




An international airport in Hambanthota, on the island’s southern shore, is under construction, which will make the gorgeous beaches near the seaside village of Galle easier to get to.

Decimated by the tsunami in 2004, the surrounding coastline is now teeming with stylish guesthouses and boutique hotels.




Unawatuna, a crescent-shaped beach a few miles south of Galle, may be furthest along. Higher-end hotels there include Thambapanni Retreat (www.thambapanni.biz), which features four-poster beds, yoga and an ayurvedic spa. The Sun House (www.thesunhouse.com), in Galle, looks like a place where the Queen of England might stay, with its mango courtyard and colonial décor. One stylish place tucked within Galle’s city walls is the Galle Fort Hotel (www.galleforthotel.com), a refurbished gem merchant’s house run by a couple of Aussies.





I'm sharing nice compilation of videos created by Sri Lankan Tourism Board.


The Small Miracle


The theme that used by Sri Lankan Tourism Board to promote Sri Lanka's tourism is 'Small Miracle' and they came up with a nice set of videos that covers almost every bit of taste of this paradise island.


Part 1





Part 2




Part 3





Part 4



Comentários

Postar um comentário

Postagens mais visitadas deste blog

Understanding Reactor Pattern with Java NIO

Imagem
Why non-blocking IO A typical server application, such as a web server, needs to process thousands of request concurrently. Therefore, the modern web server needs to meet the following requirements. Handling of thousands of connections simultaneously (significant number of connections may be in idle state as well) Handling high latency connections Request/response handling needs to be decoupled Minimize latency, maximize throughput and avoiding unnecessary CPU cycles Hence, to cater to such requirements, there can be several possibilities in the server application architecture. Having a pool of sockets for each client, and periodically polling them: This is the most straightforward approach; however, it is more or less impractical without non-blocking sockets. This is extremely inefficient and never scales with the increasing number of connections. Thread per socket: This is the conventional approach and was initially used in some applications and this is the only practical solution wi...
Leia mais

A new journey.. A new working place.. WSO2 Inc.

Imagem
I guess switching blogs is less riskier than switching jobs. Anyway I had to take that risk of switching jobs in last month (12/2009) as I've joined WSO2 as a Senior Software Engineer. My very first job lasted only one and half years owing to various issues I had with the type of work I got during my first employment. However it was a good experience on some rare technologies like Search Engines and Indexing.. and not forgetting C++. Now.. the context has changed.. technologies has changed.. environment has changed... So I believe it's a whole new experience to me to work for WSO2 , which is a renowned Open Source SOA Company. These are my first few steps in the world of SOA and Web Services...
Leia mais

WSO2 ESB 4.5.0 Released !!!

Imagem
We have just released WSO2 ESB 4.5.0, the High Performance Open Source ESB,which is the first ESB version based on enhanced WSO2 Carbon 4 platform.  I would like to give an high level overview of WSO2 ESB 4.5.0's new features and improvements.  XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 support In most of the integration scenarios, we need to leverage the new features of XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0. WSO2 ESB 4.5.0,  comes with XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 support. Also, we did a major performance enhancement with the introduction of Saxon as the deafult XSLT/XPath engine.   JSON  Integration is all about handling diverse message types. In that context, JSON plays a major role as numerous APIs are exposed via JSON.  In ESB 4.5.0, we introduce a brand new JSON implementation, which can be used to Streaming JSON (JSONStreamFormatter and JSONStreamBuilder) messages through ESB. In case, if we need to mediate message based on the message content (rather than streaming), th...
Leia mais