We can again confirm that every trip is unique. Even before we boarded on a plane in Ljubljana, we met a woman with Indian roots from Fiji, who is married to Slovenian man. Personified multiculturalism… she accompanied us all the way to Abu Dhabi and entrusted us her whole life story, where the things have almost turned upside down for us. Already at the Brnik airport, clerk at the counter failed to check us for a flight from Abu Dhabi to Colombo, but she didn’t told us why. However, when we want to check in at Abu Dhabi (where we were already abnormal late), we were informed that our flight is unfortunately full. Ok, now we know the reason why that clerk couldn’t check us in…
Now what…? We where lost, we didn’t know what to do. The airline immediately offered us accommodation and the flight the next day in the late afternoon, but things then changed in last moment. Five minutes before the end of boarding, we get tickets in our hands, for a famous business class, where is space for only a handful of people. Oh yeah, you should see look on four Slovenian tourists, when a young couple in sweatsuits sit on those luxurious seats 😀 of course we didn’t buy those by ourselves, we got those from a friendly employee at the airport…
Well, now we are here, at 33 degrees in Colombo – the capital city of Sri Lanka on Independence Day. Those two words we were hearing on every step on the way. This is the big deal here, city centre is closed, same thing with shops, clusters of soldiers and policemen, huge celebrations…interesting. As interesting as their public transport – here we have particularly in mind their tuk-tuks, cars or should we say motorbikes on three wheels. These swarming all over the place, everywhere you turn you will hear the trumpets and invitations to hop on his well decorated machine. This is the most favourable transport for short distances. However, you can still show some haggle skills and save couple dozens of rupees.
While we were wandering around the city, we, despite the holiday, came across an open marketplace, full of locals, where they sell various fruits, vegetables, nuts and other stuff. In comparison to our markets and shops, we can here find – to us, completely unknown fruit, as well already known, but those are completely different shapes and colours, same goes with the flavours…crazy good 🙂
We didn’t expect much from the Colombo, since many do not even recommend a visit. It doesn’t have some natural beauty, sights or anything else which would be memorable. However, this is the capital city with good connections to every city on island.
Another warning, don’t fall to friendly locals, who would, as they say, took you on a free guided tour of the city with the first tuk-tuk. The tour may end up with an unpleasant haggle in a tense atmosphere, since it is expected that tourists will succumbed and paid a high price. Unfortunately, every lurking on high earnings.
S & B
