So before heading off to Sri Lanka I was googling around for visas and cool places to surf and stumbled upon this article – it’s about a British woman who got arrested and deported from Sri Lanka for displaying her tattoo of Buddha. And it seems to have happened to a few other travellers to… travel advice from the British is

‘The mistreatment of Buddhist images and artefacts is a serious offence and tourists have been convicted for this. British nationals have been refused entry to Sri Lanka or faced deportation for having visible tattoos of Buddha.’

Ehrm so Pax has not one but two sleeves with Buddha on his arms. So this is going to be interesting I thought while Pax suspected I was playing a trick on him. Anyways off we went and took the good advice not to wave our arms around passing through immigration. And then – well quite a few local people reacted when they seen Pax arms but I suspect only because of hearing about that British woman not because they felt offended in any way. And when we asked why it would be offensive it was hard to get a proper answer the best one we got is something along the lines that if you have Buddha on your arm and then do something bad it’s disrespectful to Buddha. But altogether I would say nothing to worry to much about – Sri Lankan people are cool.