Blogs from Colombo, Western Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 7

Ayubowan everybody! This is the first word of Sinhala I learnt and its the polite way of greeting people. Often accompanied by putting your hands together and bowing your head. So this is my second blog post. Not going to ramble on too much because I'm in an internet cafe and I'm not sure how much its costing me! Its my fourth day in Sri Lanka and I've been craaaazy busy! I'm not allowed to say much about the places I'm working so this blog will be mostly about my life outside of work. I can say that I'm working at 8 placements that involve working with people with special needs or mental health problems or I'm teaching English. This week has been training and observing but next week I will be thrown in the deep ... read more

Well folks it's the penultimate day of my trip to Sri Lanka. What better way to celebrate than to get up at 4.40am to go hiking lol Yes that's right i got up at 4.30am so we could leave at 5.30 to visit the Hortons Plain national park to see the world end, little worlds end and Bakers water falls. We neede to get there before 10am as the mist engulfs the worlds end and you don't get to see the view. So armed with our pack up breakfast we headed for the park. I nipped to the loo. Opened the door to see a nice view of the hillside but no one could see me going to spend a penny, a novelty loo stop if there ever was one lol. Answering the call of nature ... read more

10thApril Colombo, Sri Lanka Another early morning arrival into Sri Lanka, we berthed at their container port and when we got onto the coach for our trip it took about ten minutes just to get to the port gates. Colombo is Sri Lankas capital city and is at the crossroads of the great spice routes where cultures and races have combined for centuries. Sri Lanka (Ceylon) became a British colony in 1802 after being ruled by the Portuguese and latterly the Dutch. Plantations were established (coffee) and was a leading export until destroyed by disease. Tea was introduced and Sri Lanka is now the fourth highest producer in the world. The majority of the country’s earliest inhabitants were Sinhalese from northern India, the Dravidian (Tamil) invasions from southern India caused the Sinhalese to abandon the northern ... read more

The bus ride to Colombo was about three hours. We arrived at the Concord Grand Hotel, which is actually pretty nice and has a great pool, around 2:00 and since Danielle was leaving for the airport that night, she and I and Nicole left the hotel and went exploring. On the local bus. It was surprisingly easy to find what we were looking for, which was the Cinnamon Gardens area of Colombo. But we got totally ripped off on the bus. The guy who was taking the money told us it was 18 rupees, but we thought he said 80. Each. So he just went with it and took our money, but one of us needed change and I noticed that from 100 rupees, he gave 50 in change and walked away. So that got us ... read more

On our way back down south we needed to overnight in Colombo so we could extend our visas. On our first visit Matt had found a good hotel by the old Dutch fort that was clean and quiet and we decided to spend a couple of days in the capital to explore a bit and catch up on some business. Our first stop was immigration to renew our visas. The office was surprisingly efficient and it only took 2 1/2 hours to complete the paperwork and interviews, and walk out of the office with stamps in our passport. It did cost twice as much for Matt (American) as it did for me (Canadian) though. Next, I wanted to buy a proper Sri Lankan salwar kameez as I was tired of wearing my one long skirt and ... read more