Colombo

Poolside at the Hitlon-we fancy huh?

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to catch the 8am bus to Colombo.  On the way there, our tuktuk ran out of gas so we all had to get out and push the tuktuk to the nearest gas station, great way to start the day!  I have to make one comment about the bathrooms in the train station-I wouldn't wish them upon my enemy.  Anyway we all boarded teh train safely and two hours later we were in Colombo.  Sandith (MEF VP) has a friend Sara who LIVES in the Hilton in Colombo so we got to spend the morning poolside, soaking up the sun.  After an amazing lunch in Sara's apartment (which overlooked the ocean) he drove us to the rugby club so we could watch the Kandy's private school team play Colombo's private school team.  Trinity versus Royal-the big game.  The rugby club reminds me of the gentleman's clubs that must have been prolific in my grandfather's day, it has that old colonial feel to it.  We hung out there for a while listening to these three guys who just started playing music at the bar, Portuguese influenced sort of samba rhythms.  Very cool.  Then Sara broke the news that he could only get 4 tickets and there were 8 of us.  So all of us girls in a heartbreaking decision decided to give up our tickets so the boys could go and we reluctantly agreed to TRY and enjoy ourselves shopping and eating :) . We headed to the Pettah, Colombo's bazaar and walked around there for a while.  I have never felt so loved in all my life, people (all men) would come up and start chatting and wave hello from shop windows, etc.  It could have to do with the fact that we were the only white people there and all us girls were wearing shorts, scandalously showing our thighs in public! Shame on us.

After strutting our stuff around the Pettah we headed over to the Galle Face Hotel which sits right on the waterfront.  It's the oldest hotel in Colombo and for $9.50 it is all you can eat and drink.  Boy did we eat.  There were sausage rolls, pizza, made to order sandwiches, pancakes, waffles, kieves, chicken puffs, and the DESERTS! Chocolate mousse, cake, fruit in syrup, scones, biscuits, things I can't even pronounce.  None of us have eaten for the past 12 hours because we are still full!  Before leaving the hotel we did some window shopping at the jewelry store where i proceeded to try on probably $15,000 worth of jewelry.  The man in the shop kept saying "sizing no problem" to which i responded "yes, money's the problem" to which we all laughed.  After that we decided to stroll down the promenade (don't we sound fancy). Upon walking out of the hotel a man steps in front of us and wraps a PYTHON around my neck. Holy F***. So I'm standing there negotiating with him on price as this python is coiling itself around my windpipe....great.  He says some tourists pay him 1000 rupees, I told him I'd pay him 100.  And he looked at me grinning and said "but i have to feed this whole chickens!", so I told him to feed it half a chicken and gave him 150 rupees.  Serves him right for wrapping a live snake around my neck in the first place.  We just freed ourselves from one snake when a man with a dancing cobra stepped in front of us...so naturally I just ran the other direction.  I had enough snakes for one day.

Kites

My new scaly friend

Walking down the promenade was unreal, the sun was setting and it was like a scene from "The Kite Runner" there were hundreds of kites being flown in the air.  The cultural diversity in Colombo is crazy. I saw my first Sri Lankan woman in shorts (very modern), lots of women wearing jeans and other trousers (which Michael used to say "would show off their personalities". You still see the traditional Sari's etc, and there is also a large amount of Muslim women in full burqas, etc.  After making some Sri Lankan friends we decided to try and walk back to the train station (with only a vague idea of what direction to head in). Sitting on the train us girls were waiting for the boys to show up, having told them we would meet them at the train after their rugby game.  The train starts to leave and is moving down the rails when all of a sudden all four boys start sprinting down the platform and jump onto the moving train.  So it turns out they made it, which is a good thing because then ext train didn't leave for four hours.  The train in Sri Lanka is a whole different experience, people actually hang off the side of the train if they don't get seats. Insane.