Colombo is CHAOS.

July 3rd, Colombo.
It has been a wonderful – ful of culture shock – day!! I started the day having breakfast at the hotel at about 9.15 (fruit, toast and a coffee). I realized I definitely don’t like papaya, it’s awful!!!! After that I went back to the room and Rosie came to pick me up and have breakfast herself and then leave. We left the hotel at about 10.45 and set of to Pettah in a tuctuc (that’s the local cab). When we arrived to Pettah, real live in Colombo started for us. I didn’t realize we were going to be so different in this country. I haven’t seen more than 6 western people in the whole day! Well, we walked across the Pettah market (where they only sold shoes, bags, watches and movies) and then we got lost, really really really lost!!! All over Colombo you can find soldiers, it’s pretty amazing. I actually had the weird idea that they could help us because they obviously speak English… I was really wrong. They didn’t understand us but they (and we) really tried to communicate. We gave up after 15 minutes of trying and just started walking toward Galle Rd. Rosie realized that there was a weird Sri Lankan guy following us and started to get nervous, but in the meanwhile, I continued walking and trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get out of there. I then realized there was a Tourist Board here in Colombo, so we decided to go there and ask a couple of recommendations. Ok, they might smile a lot the Sri Lankan people, but I can assure you this is the first time in my life I feel discriminated by my skin colour. To get a tuctuc to drive us there was easy but to fix a price wasn’t at all. Usually they have to charge between 150 and 250 rupees rides in Colombo, but for us they just put the prize a “little” big higher. Of course, we slowly are becoming real Sri Lankans, so at the end we managed to get a normal prize. Thanks god the Tourist Board existed. A man came to help us out with the tuctuc and let us in. I’m sure you all imagine a nice office with air conditioning, lamps, chairs and a big map of Colombo. Yeah, of course. It was a small 6sqm cabin with no light, no air conditioning and with a police officer and an old lady sitting inside. That’s Colombo!. We got a tuctuc fot 500 rupees an hour (about 4€ an hour) and then the fun begin. We went to a Buddhist temple and it was beautiful. We had to put up a long white skirt and couldn’t show our back to the Buddha. It was really amazing, I enjoyed it a lot and took lot’s of pictures (also some of myself, mom!). After this we went to an Hindu temple and then to the Victoria Park. We walked around and Silba (our tuctuc driver) showed us the cinnamon trees and explained more about plants. I was more interested in his life, and I figured out of him this: he is married and he has got 3 childs, two girls and a just born baby boy. He lives in Colombo for almost 12 years. He had to come here because his dad is an Ayurdeva dr (oil and plant treatment) and in Kandy there was no work for him. No he is tuctuc driver and Ayurveda dr here in Colomb, because he can earn more for is family, but he misses his other family in Kandy. He earns about 70.000 rupees each month and his little flat in Colombo costs 25.000 each month. Ha! I’m becoming a real specialist in interviewing!
We ate at the Summer Garden Restaurant, a nice place were all the resident people of Colombo come to eat. A mixed salad each (which was totally different from the western mixed salad) a 2L bottle of water and two beers (one for Rosie and one for Silba) turned out to be 700 rupees each, almost 6€, and it really was fantastic food. During meal it’s normal to burp and make funny noises (good for you, dad) but I couldn’t stop laughing when he just burped and burped and burped all dinner long!. After all of this we went to buy my Sari, a lovely ocean blue with silver on it one. This is the most expensive thing I’ve bought here, I think it was 30€ or something, but it’s really worth it.
Oh yeah, I want to let one thing clear: the weather in Colombo is like the mood of a menstruating woman, it changes like mad during all day. But It’s fun, I like it.
We ended in the National Museum and then we walked across the Victoria park again till a supermarket to buy something to drink, toilet paper (yeah, there’s no toilet paper in Sri Lankan toilets), apples and some chewing gum. We crabbed a tuctuc and he drove us to the hotel, a normal ride that would take 15 minutes but it took us like almost 40.
Now we’re at the hotel with our laptops and enjoying the evening. It goes dark really early at about 7pm. We’re going to ask a pineapple juice and enjoy the football match Argentina – Germany.
Good facts of today:
-To get lost around Colombo.
-All the crazy tuctucs on the road.
-Burps throughout our meal.
-Only seen 7 white people all day long.
-This is a good one: Silba trying to convince me to buy Sri Lankan Marihuana because he says it’s a really special type here in Colombo and he knows how I can find it. I don’t know if it was a defense reaction of my mind or not, but when he told me the first thing that came to mind was the board hanging in the emigration post in the airport saying “Possession of any drug in Sri Lanka is punished with death penalty”. Hahaha.