Sri Lanka

We hopped an early flight yesterday morning and bid the Middle East farewell. Next stop, Colombo, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). We’ll spend 4 nights/3 days here and will plan our two-and-a-half-week journey through this island nation in the Indian Ocean.

We have a good first impression of Colombo. The city is very clean and green (and very humid), and the people so far are extremely friendly and happy.

The traffic is chaotic and your life is in the hands of the tuk-tuk drivers as they weave and honk and swerve through the mass of cars, motorcycles and tuk-tuks as they all try to gain a competitive advantage in a swirl of congestion and chaos. It is actually quite fun because we haven’t seen any accidents, dented cars or maimed people wandering about. So far…

The weather right now is unpredictable as the monsoon shifts from the southwest to the northeast. This will affect our planning and put some limitations on where we’ll travel, but hey, what’s a little rain? We’ve had virtually no rain during our past six months of travel, so a little downpour here and there won’t be a problem.

Our tuk-tuk driver’s fingernails and lazing around the city centre…

 

We forgot to mention above one quite funny observation when we arrived at Bandaranaike International Airport. Typically, when you depart an airport, you have to go through the duty-free stores consisting of cosmetics, booze, cigarettes and candy before you get to your departure gate, and when you arrive at an airport there generally are few, if any, duty-free shops.

As we walked towards the final Customs declaration exit, we entered a long duty-free hallway selling not booze and cosmetics but washing machines, vacuum cleaners, televisions, refrigerators and other large-ticket items. I suggested we should buy a new washer and dryer, but unfortunately we don’t have any room in our luggage.

We’ve never seen anything like this before in all of our travels.