Quite a few people told me that if I went to Anuradhapura, I can skip Polonnaruwa, because it's just "more of the same stuff".
But then, I am the type that would want to see every single of the major monuments and I was not going to give the ancient city of Polonnaruwa a miss. I actually found that I enjoyed Polonnaruwa more than Anuradhapura.
And I found Polonnaruwa to be quite different from Anuradhapura. If the experience offered by Anuradhapura is one of dagobas, then Polonnaruwa offers Buddha images. The major monuments in Anuradhapura were the various huge dagobas. Of Buddha images, there were few. Not counting the new images in the temples, the Samadi Buddha was the only ancient intact Buddha image of mention. The ones in the museum were either broken, or were not particularly finely carved.There were only 2 intact big old stupas in the Polunnaruwa (Rankot Vehera and Kiri Vehera). But there were far more Buddha images. The most magnificent ones must be the ones at Gal Vihara. I also like the ones in the Vatadage within the Sacred Quadrangle.
There were many images of standing Buddha though few are in good condition. There were also a few big images though badly broken (such as the one in Lankatilaka Image House)
We started the morning with a visit to the Archaelogical Museum (admission with Cultural Triangle tickets). This museum is well planned and well curated. It is definitely worth a visit.
By now, we found that we have become quite well known in the town! Many people recognized us as the two guys from Singapore with the "Vietnamese" hats. The hats continued to attract a lot of attention and we got many offers to buy it from us. We even had people asking us if we swimmed in the canal the day before!
After we enter main ruins (Cultural Triangle tickets required), we went to the Royal Palace Group first. We had dilly-dallied around too much and by the time we reached the Sacred Quadrangle, it was close to noon.
The problem again was that the stones became too hot to walked on. It was too bad because I found Sacred Quadrangle a rather spiritual place with many things to explore and experience (for those with a religious interest, that is). You can't tell from the photo of me praying in front of the Buddha in the Vatadage (it's a posed photo, since we weren't suppose to take photos with back against the Buddha, I had a photo of me facing the Buddha), but the truth of my feet were burning. What was in my mind was not prayers, but wishing that Sheung would hurry up and take the photo. But of course, Sheung was gloating there, saying that I need to suffer to prove my piety!
After the Sacred Quadrangle, we were quite tired from the heat. After a refreshing coconut juice (Rs40 each, not the cheapest. It was Rs25 at Sigiriya), we cycled northwards to the other ruins. I must confessed that I did not have much impressions of the ruins along the way till we reach Lankatilaka. This was a nice big image house with a huge but badly ruined Buddha image. There were a few people doing restoration work.
It was late afternoon wh
en we finally got to Gal Vihara. If there was just one reason to come to Polunnaruwa, it's Gal Vihara. This is where the famous statue of the Buddha standing with his arms crossed is found, along with a Buddha sitting in meditation and a reclining Buddha. The statues were beautifully carved and the interesting grains of the rock made the statues more interesting. I suspect these must be the among the finest Buddha images in Sri Lanka (I have not seen pictures of finer ones). It's a pity that a very unsightly metal roof 
structure spoilt what would have been a beautiful scene.More than 1 km north of Gal Vihara there is a Lotus Pond. The pond was designed to resemble a blooming lotus and it's quite a lovely peice of work. Sheung decided that if he ever had a place to build a pool, he would build something like that and took a few pictures for that possibility.
Finally, at the end of the dirt road, there is the Tivanka Pilimage. This is a big image shrine with a large Buddha image in the relaxed "thrice bent" (hence the name Tivanka) pose. There are paintings on the walls of the temple, but they are very faint and quite difficult to see, even after the caretake switched on some dim lights. On the outside of the temple, there are elaborate stucco works, especially of dwarfs and lions. Some of them were very fine and I suspect they were restored rather than original, but I can't tell for sure.
Leaving, we took the north exit. Along the main road back to town, we passed by a wood carving shop shop where I finally got my souvenir wood carved stupa. (I am building a collection of wood-carved stupa from various country). I suspect I overpaid it (Rs1500 plus a cheap pocket calculator. I took out my $2 pocket calculator and the saleman wanted it. He would cut the price to Rs1500 if I threw in the calculator. The marked price was Rs3800), but I was satisfied with it anyway.
We still had a little bit of time before sunset and we headed back to the canal for a swim and fish spa again.
I am fruit person (no pun intended) and back at home I would have a few fruits each day. I was craving for some fruits and so we went to a local shop and bought a water melon and some mangoes. We finally saw the local fruit "wood-apple" and decided to get 2 just to check it out.
On our way back, we joined a puja that was going at the pilgrim's rest house just south of the town's roundabout. There was a Bodhi tree with Buddha images under the trees. The tree and the images were all lit up in celebration of Vesak day. The puja was in Pali, but I could only recognize some words here and there. We sat quitely with the rest of the devotees around the Bodhi tree and enjoyed the spiritual moment for a while.
Back at the guesthouse, I finally discovered why the wood-apple is called the wood-apple. It was hard as wood! I could not cut it open and it only broke open after Sheung smashed it on the floor a couple of times. Seriously, it was not worth the effort to break open the fruit. It tasted horrible!
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