Colombo, or not Colombo – not a question at all I’m afraid.
Well, we got here after a relatively easy set of flights and transfers at London Heathrow and at Mumbai. Heatherow got me startled with the idiots driving on the wrong side of the road, and at Mumbai’s otherwise cool and well functioning airport we were constantly harassed by this god awful elevator music that repeated maybe three tunes all over on a repeat. Gladly there is very little some beer cannot fix. In Colombo we were approached by the first swindler as soon as we had passed immigration, but we got it away from him rather fast \o/ – score 1-0 to us! Once we arrived to our hostel, we were greeted by this happy, smiling old fella (whom I hereby I name Sri Lanka Daddy I,in honor of or HCMC hostel owner, “Asia Daddy”) and were quickly shown into our room – which is quite a bit fancier than we expected. We have two big rooms, one bathroom and one open air bathroom with complimentary lizards and everything!
Today, on our first full day in Sri Lanka and Colombo, this place had just been crewing us over at every possible chance. First, on your way to the Fort we apparently got careless and took a ride in couple of metered tuktuk´s, or taxis as they seem to call themselves here (HA!). All well and all, except nope – sure, they drove us there, but via some scenic routes and the trip ended up costing us way more than it should have – score 1-1, damn! And things were just about to get even better, the train we were hoping to secure tickets to had been sold out – which means that we have to wake up at some ungodly hours tomorrow morning in order to get standing tickets in some 3rd class carts just in order to get to our next destination. Oh the joy! And just to add to the insult, after grabbing some semi decent chow in the center we set off to find us a watering hole – it turns out that it is harder to find a needle in a haystack than to find a place that sells beer in Colombo. How is one supposed to keep his electrolyte levels in balance without the nectar of gods?! 4 hours of wandering and a couple tuktuk rides later, still no bars, pubs or anything even remotely like that.
Sri Lanka Daddy I at the least pointed us to a grocery store with a liquor department – which turned out to be two guys in a small kiosk with heavy iron bars – like the customers would all be misfits and criminals. Regardless of the off putting nature of the place, there were crowds of people rushing to the counter all the time and trying to stick their money into the hands of the clerks in order to secure their piece of this escape from reality. What a surreal experience.
Thus far Sri Lanka, and Colombo especially, has been as appealing as an over cooked flaccid wiener.
Tomorrow, Colombo – Hatton – Dalhousie and the 5 hour train trip standing… “Wheee?”