24/07/2008
Colombo, Sri Lanka.
And so, in a true spur of the moment decision, i have ended up in Sri Lanka. After meeting an Aussie couple in the back of a taxi on Koh Phangan who live and work here in Colombo, and then finding out my cheapest way from Bangkok to Chennai was via Colombo (on Sri Lankan Air), i decided that it must have been where i was meant to be... So instead of a 4 hour stopover, i made it 2 weeks.
Which in itself is a perfect example of Simon's planning ability and forethought. If only i had looked past the Lonely Planet websites "Sri Lanka Highlights", down towards the "Travel Warning" section... Or maybe even looked at the Australian Government's "smart traveller" website. Then i may have known about the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional co-operation) summit happening in Colombo right now. Or even about the Tamil Tiger activity since the cease fire ended in January (which i may also have known about if i actually listened to the news more!) - suicide bombings, passenger bus attacks and train bombings in recent months. I probably would have seen the "Please reconsider ALL travel within Sri Lanka" warning. Or maybe the blanket "Do NOT travel in northern or eastern regions" warning. But hey, i wanted an adventure didn't I?! The Tigers have claimed they will observe a unilateral ceasefire for the duration of the summit, but Colombo is bloody crazy at the moment. It is a city in lockdown. Army and police everywhere. Security checks and searches, just to walk down the street. Now really isn't the time to be here. We have just returned from changing our flights (just to do that involved waiting for the armed men to allow us out of the hotel grounds, 2 'pat downs', 3 bag searches, a passport check and a metal detecter - in less than 1km of walking) - we now leave tomorrow. Which is a real shame - there's a lot of stuff i wanted to see here, but, shit happens. Maybe another time.
Even leaving all of that aside though; wow. How different to Thailand. Of course i knew that this would be the case and thought i had prepared myself, but Thailand is so, so, so easy! It makes you lazy as a traveller - everything is right there for you, setup to make travel almost effortless. So, to land in Colombo, with about 10 Sri Lankans and no tourists other than myself and Didi, really seemed like the true start of my adventure.
In Thailand, we fit in perfectly. Here, we both (especially me!) stand out like daisies at a tulip show.. Not a single man here has long hair (let alone dreads), and every man wears a collared shirt (literally every man), while the women are all in sari's (so beautiful), or full muslim attire, burka's and all. So for me to arrive in a singlet and pair of thongs, and Didi in a T-shirt and shorts.... Let's just say we drew stares from everybody! Even the taxi drivers seemed surprised to see tourists, and didn't quite know how to approach us! But approach us they did, and after the cheapest price to the city coming in at 1700 rupees (about $17) we decided to jump on a bus. We didn't have any real idea where it was going, except that we could get another bus to town from wherever it dropped us. So for the bargain price of 100 rupees each ($1, and we still probably got charged more than locals) we made it into the city.
But city is a relative term.. We were on the side of a busy road, backpacks on, near an military post, with a lot of people looking at us rather strangely. A good 10 of them holding automatic machine guns. We asked a few people where we could find a cheap place to stay, but they either ignored us, or said they didn't know. So we decided to start walking towards the largest group of buildings, one of which was wearing the famous Hilton logo.. I figured if there was a Hilton, maybe there would be a few cheaper hotels in the vicinity, maybe even a hostel or a guest house. I figured wrong. We walked a long way, asking many a policeman, soldier and local, until we were advised by a group of those said soldiers, to get in a taxi, who would know of a place we could stay. By this stage it was beginning to get dark, which is why they said we shouldn't really be out. The taxi's all claimed to know of cheap places, but wouldn't tell us where. Just that they would take us. For about double the price of the room. So there we were, like fish out of water, with our backpacks on and no idea where to go! We ended up near a very, very fancy looking hotel, as heavily guarded as it was flash. Surely they would have a 'cheapish' room for the night, or be able to tell us of another.. Wrong again. The bus to town cost us 100Rs. For a night there in their cheapest lodging, they wanted $100. About 10,640Rs. And no, they didn't know of anywhere else. Shit. He must have felt sorry for us, and called over some other guy and explained the situation. This person said he might be able to do us a favour...
It turned out he was a travel agent, sorting out peoples holidays in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. He said he could get us into another hotel for 6000Rs. For the one night, we figured what the hell. Let's sleep on a real bed, and have hot water (both of which we've lived without since leaving Australia). It's still only $30 each; let's splurge. So, we went out the front to await his driver and car, then headed towards the new hotel - the Ceylon Continental. We were stopped on our way into the secure precinct (which houses the Hilton, ours and a bunch of other hotels, the world trade centre and a host of other 'important' buildings) where 3 armed soldiers decided to search the car and our belongings. One smile from Didi and they changed their minds about searching our backpacks! Which nearly made it all worse. The driver decided to have a go at them about hassling us if they didn't even search the bags. It got a bit heated - raised voices, large gestures and waved machine guns - but in the end, they simply took his ID number, and let us go. What a start!
On arrival at the Continental, we realised what $60 gets you in Sri Lanka - a concierge, doorman (at every door), a lift operator, 4 restaurants with countless staff, live music in the foyer, a large swimming pool, great views of the tumultuous Indian ocean - i could keep going. You can imagine how well we fit in there also - the only thing that could have made our entrance more of a story is if the band had actually stopped playing...
But I am enjoying myself immensely! There is a certain satisfaction in drawing all those looks. Some of the staff have taken to us (offering better service than they give the snobby types who frequent here), while others still don't believe we are staying here. And, we realised that our travel agent friend had actually done us a great deal - the standard rates are actually $96US per night before taxes (up to 15%) for the room we got. Nice. Even at $60, it's still about $50 more than i wanted to pay, but with the state of Colombo right now, i'm happy to be here...
And tomorrow we fly to Chennai! India at long last. I have waited nearly 8 years to go back, and tomorrow it begins.....
