After a 2 am arrival at my hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in which my driver had to repeatedly ring the doorbell to wake up the night watchman, I arose to find a nice buffet breakfast waiting for me downstairs as part of the deal. Afterwards I walked about a block and a half to a golden beach and walked up and down it past numerous cheap hotels, cafes, and restaurants. Plenty of stray dogs roamed around, and a train line ran through, with the widest-gauge tracks I’d ever seen.
My plan for the day? Get some money changed over, inquire about tours, pop into the centre of town to see what there was to see and compare tour prices, and then return to the hotel. Simple enough, I thought. Well, the money changing, which is very simple and straightforward in Singapore (just rock up to a man behind some glass and fork over your dough for his dough), seemed very bureaucratic. There were numerous forms to fill in, passport requirements, and endless double-checking and running around between desks in the chaotic bank office. What would have taken seconds in Singapore took me hours in Colombo.
Next I tried to find out about tours through the head of my hotel, but her English was good; she kept telling me to tell her exactly what I wanted to see (when I was hoping for advice on what was worth seeing), and she was a bit cagey when I asked her about prices. She was also busy talking with others much of the time, so I finally gave up and decided to hop a tuk-tuk into the centre of town to see what other tours might be on offer.
The hotel recommended the tuk-tuk ride as the safest option for getting into town because of pickpockets, but the drive in was long and crazy. I felt like the ride was a long game of bumper cars – except you never actually hit anyone. Just constant near misses! At the end, the tuk-tuk driver ripped me off, shortchanging me by the equivalent of the entire trip (not much, but still). Welcome to Sri Lanka!
Colombo is busy, noisy, and full of crowded markets and chaotic traffic. Every time I ventured toward what looked like an interesting historical part of town, it turned out to be a high-security government office; security guards waved me away.
It seemed hard to find any information at all about touring the island. The most common way to see the island seems to be to hire a driver (for the price of renting a car) and have them chauffeur you around to all the big sites. I tried to walk all the way back to my hotel but gave up after about 15 km. When I tried to buy a soft drink to rehydrate, the shop owner insisted I drink it on the spot so he could keep the bottle. Perhaps he just sent it back to the bottling plant to be refilled, but it sounded a bit dodgy, so I declined.
Finally back at my hotel, I flipped through my Lonely Planet with my hotel manager and told her what I wanted to see. She said she would call her driver and get a quote. It all worked out in the end, but paying for the tour became a major nightmare due to the price – which wasn’t that bad by Western standards, but converted into Sri Lankan Rupees made it sound astronomical. ATMs wouldn’t pay out that much in a day, and I couldn’t find an American Express office to cash a check. Finally, after much scheming to pay for it, I noticed a Visa / MasterCard machine under their front desk – even though I had already specifically asked if they took any credit cards (No! They said). So, after a lot of headache running around about yet another issue, it was all easily resolved with a credit card.
Flight from Singapore to Colombo, Sri Lanka
