Day 113 Ahangama to Colombo, Sri Lanka

Day 113 – Hers.

A walk on the beach and breakfast overlooking the crashing waves began the day.  We loaded up the Gecko bus for the last time and set off for Colombo.  We dropped off one member of the group in another coastal village where he was to meet his girlfriend for another four days of sun and sea.  His girlfriend has been volunteering with Habitation for Humanity, building houses for poor families – similar to the project Rob worked on in Guatemala on our last big trip. 

We took the highway to Colombo – it was well-paved and quick, only about an hour to the outskirts of the city.  The Sri Lankans we have met are proud of their government – there is free health care and education for everyone – and money that was being spent on the civil war is now being used to build the country’s infrastructure.  According to Deva, the people of Colombo have ambitions to turn their city into a success modelled on Singapore.  They are already expanding the harbour and building a second international airport – and skyscrapers are being built right, left and centre.  We saw the brand new performing arts centre, the national library, a good selection of beautiful temples, churches and mosques, several large hotels and shopping malls, and a wide variety of sport facilities as we drove around the city.

Colombo is green, attractive – and very clean.  Many of the government offices – including the new parliament building – are located in a large parkland suburb outside the commercial capital, surrounded by a lake and a wildlife sanctuary.  The colonial-style buildings in the centre and the Cinnamon Gardens areas give the city something of a southern European or South American feel.  There are still some obviously older and poorer neighbourhoods – but even these are, for the most part, well maintained.  The traffic is far worse here than anywhere else in the country – but nothing like we have experienced in most Asian cities we have visited. 

We stopped at ‘Food City’ (a very Western-style supermarket) to use their loo and buy snacks – and then at our favourite ‘P&S’ for a takeaway lunch of samosas and pasties. Our hotel is located several kilometres south of the centre of the city – so we munched on our purchases as we drove, arriving at around 2:00 and bidding a very fond farewell to our terrific driver and his very able assistant.  The hotel is nice, if a bit out of the way.  It has a restaurant, swimming pool and good wifi connection – even so, most of the group just collapsed into their beds for the afternoon..... a few have tummy problems, a few are flying out ridiculously early tomorrow – and a few just felt like chilling in the air conditioning!

Day 113 – His.

Now we are back from the mountains it is sweaty and hot. So, chilling in the air conditioning is a good way of putting it. We were going to use the hotel swimming pool but it is closed until December the 1^st – so that didn’t happen. What did happen was we grabbed a local bus (a bit of a disco theme here with flashing coloured lights around images of the Buddha at the front and partytime Baile music all the way) into town  and walked along the Galle Face – an area of Colombo just below the port and right by the sea. It is one of the high rent areas and has the Hilton at the top of it. Along the promenade is a whole clutch of little huts that set themselves up as restaurants by throwing a few plastic chairs around and barbequing as much chicken as they can sell. The meal was tasty, hot and filling and absurdly cheap. Our guide, bless him, paid for our bus tickets and helped us order – he is a real sweetheart. After dinner we strolled along the sea front into town and saw the lighthouse and stupa by night – they were all lit up and quite charming. Then we caught the bus back to the hotel. Of course people are unwilling to let the holiday end – this mostly because they are such a great group of people – so we wandered off to a local market to buy ice cream. Tomorrow is our last day here and I will be most sad to leave.