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Hey Colombo
After surviving the night in the bunker we were out the door at 5am and heading into the airport. A plane, some chicken curry and 3 hours later we had landed in Colombo - Sri Lanka.
We had sorted out the visa online so going through immigration was smooth. We planned to take the bus, but on trying to find the stop we were swarmed by the local taxi peddlers. After many crazy prices we got further to the bus stop ready for the next round!
The bus took about 45 minutes, going down a fairly empty expressway, until we reached the city when traffic ground to a halt with buses, cars and tuk-tuks squeezing every inch of free road. From the bus station we used our new tactic of avoiding the pushy requests to get in a taxi by heading off and getting a drink, although we only got asked once so it seemed less intense that the part of Asia we had left.
Getting a tuk-tuk after the drink was easy, but the driver figuring out where he was going took several pairs of glasses and discussions with at least another 4 drivers.
Our hotel room had a front window from wall to ceiling. It overlooked a two lane road, two train tracks and then the great expanse of open Indian Ocean. Some of the trains going through looked like people were well squashed in, with some people hanging on outside, but not as bad as some of the pictures of Indian trains I have seen.
A short walk found us lunch at some kind of local restaurant (their name for these are 'hotels'!). I ended up with two bowls of Dhal and a kotthu (cut up pieces of roti stir fried with veg and meat/cheese/whatever you order). This was confusing as I thought I ordered chicken rotti. The kotthu would have been ok if it wasn't for the egg and it wasn't that spicy either, but the dhal had a good kick and was a welcome rest from the South-East Asian curries of the last 4-5 weeks. It was also very cheap (216 rupees to £1), with two drinks and Tash's fried rice it cost 600 rupees!
A short tuk-tuk ride took us to the area of the old fort, which was now a port, that had some interesting colonial buildings left as well as newer buildings such as their own world trade centre. There was a funny moment with some local people laughing away at Tash rubbing some sun cream into my neck. We took a look in a building called Central Point that was the old central bank. It was bombed and left in a bad state before it was restored in 2013. It housed a small museum about money, this was also next to a clock tower.
Outside, an invisible force pulled some wool over my eyes just in time for a older gentleman to start talking to me. He claimed to be a captain of a ship (but didn't look or dress like one). He said that around the corner was a look out with good views (liking a good view, I took off and followed him). We entered a hotel lobby and took a lift up to the rooftop bar and took some pictures. Meanwhile he was giving us a mini history lesson and pointing out some sights.
We sat down for a drink and then I started to feel uncomfortable about the situation. He then spent the next 15 minutes trying to convince us that we should go to the city of Kandy to stay and visit a tea plantation. Many times we told him we would not have time to go there but he said the word Kandy at least another 30 times. He also suggested that he could send some tea to our home address free of charge, but then in later conversations started mentioning paying for a shipping fee (that kept changing in price). So I knew we should probably leave after the drink and go (Tash thought the same but we couldn't talk). Conveniently when the bill arrived he stayed very quiet, and didn't offer to pay his share. Tash got up and asked the staff to split the bill for what we had, and in the meantime the guy started muttering something to me about "We don't do this in my country". All very uncomfortable as we got into the lift he then joined us to go back down, giving me back the address he got from me to send the "tea" and he said sorry a few times before walking out the hotel. I had easily under estimated how wrong a conversation with an old man could go. I've wanted to try and interact with local people to try and learn a bit about them, but outside of the Philippines people only want to talk to you if they want you to buy something! (Laos wasn't too bad either).
We managed to walk around a bit more of the port, seeing the lighthouse and a stupa that's mounted on legs so that it could be seen from the sea. We got back into a tuk-tuk to take us back to the hotel so we could watch the sun set from our room. We agreed a price (300), the taxi driver didn't know where to go though and we got confused at one point and thought he had gone past it (keeping one eye on the sun starting to drop alongside us). Eventually we got to the hotel and he asked for 500, which resulted in us leaving promptly after giving the pre agreed 300 to the driver. Not the best afternoon!
Leaving that behind us we had a great view of the sunset from the room, it always looks so big and red but so disappointing and small when you take pictures. We decided to eat at the hotel, which was much more expensive but was still very good. I had some more Dhal + rice, Tash got some chicken curry and paratha.
Bowls of rice; 50
Different beers tried; 10
Hotels stayed in; 14
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