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HE SAID... We’d arrived in
Negombo at 11pm the night before, after a mammoth road trip from Kandy that took us south to Bogawantalawa and then north-west to this touristy beach town. We were exhausted, so we quickly scouted the streets outside our hotel (Rani Beach Resort) before crashing in our room. To describe our accommodation as a resort was stretching the truth just a little too far. It did have a pool and it was located on a beach, but that’s where its so-called ‘resort’ features ended. Maybe we were in an old wing – who knows?
Anyway, enough about Rani Beach Resort. It was a place to stay, somewhere to eat. We had no idea where we were, or what Negombo was like, so we had a day of exploration ahead of us.
We woke at 6am and looked around our room – we hadn’t been able to take in our surrounds when we arrived so late and so exhausted the night before. We desperately needed to wash some clothes, so we headed out into Negombo’s morning heat in search of a laundry. Luckily we found one just up the road from the hotel – she wasn’t
officially open, but she was happy to take our three bags full of washing. We walked back to our hotel and settled at a table in the sprawling open air dining area for a buffet breakfast. I opted for apple juice, tea, fruit (including a sour but tasty passionfruit), corn flakes, omelette, pastries, bread and marmalade.
After breakfast we quickly checked email in the hotel lobby (as there was no Wi-Fi in our room), then jumped into a three-wheeler (motorised tricycle with a passenger cabin, also called tri-shaws or tuk-tuks) and sped toward the ruins of the old Dutch fort on Negombo’s working seafront. The grounds of the old fort have long since been occupied by a prison, so there wasn’t a lot to see apart from a crumbling brick gateway. The lagoon water was putrid, the heat was intense and the smell of fish was overwhelming. We were still tired from our epic road trip the previous day, and it didn’t help matters when we witnessed a dead turtle floating in the heavily polluted lagoon. It was time to head back to the hotel and seek out some shade.
We picked up some drinks on the way,
checked out the hotel’s pool and beachfront and then retired to our room to catch up on our travel writing. The highlight of the day was running into an old travel companion. We met Damien (an Irishman living in Estepona, Spain) two years earlier in southern India, and we’d organised this Sri Lankan trip with him.
The heavens opened just as we were about to head out to Coconut Primitive Restaurant for dinner. We jumped into a minibus and drove along the busy beachfront road, climbed the stairs to the open air dining area of Coconut Primitive and settled at a long table. I ordered
devilled chicken (a spicy stir-fried dish) with fried rice, and Ren ordered the chicken and
kangkung (water spinach) with fried rice. The food was incredible, as was the atmosphere of this bustling eatery. The rain had eased by the time we finished our meal, so we decided to walk back to the hotel (a task made easier by the slightly more bearable evening temperature). We settled in our room and quickly captured our thoughts and impressions from the day, before crashing at 11pm. We were leaving Negombo the following morning, and I felt an
awkward sense of relief…
We woke at 5:30am and threw on our unwashed clothes from the previous day, as we were visiting the early morning bustle of Negombo’s fish market, so we were destined to get splashed and smelly! We clambered into a minibus and made our way along the foreshore to Negombo Lagoon, where Sri Lanka’s ‘illegal boat people’ apparently leave from (according to an infuriatingly biased diatribe from our puerile group leader). He clearly lacked an empathetic understanding of desperation, where the risk of drowning in a crumbling wooden boat is preferable to the short and long-term consequences of racially-based persecution. It took me by surprise that a company like Intrepid Travel would allow right-wing politics to infiltrate its staffing.
Disregarding the diatribe as contemptuous drivel, we drove over the busy lagoon bridge, jumped out of the minibus and carefully made our way around the blood-splattered floors of Negombo’s smelly, gory concrete fish market. Despite the early hour, the place was heaving with locals buying fish, and the fishermen were incredibly friendly. They knew we were tourists, and I really appreciated the fact that they welcomed us into their workplace. I tried not to get in
anyone’s way, but there were a few occasions when I suddenly realised a fisherman carrying a massive tuna was struggling behind me… Bloody tourists! 😊
After our confronting and grisly fish market experience, we walked back over the busy lagoon bridge, climbed into our minibus and drove a short distance to the lagoon foreshore, where we wandered in the sand and marvelled at the long hessian sheets on which fish are dried in Negombo’s searing sun. We sampled an incredibly fresh and tasty
bithara godamba roti (egg roti) at a tiny food stall on the foreshore, and we stood and watched a social (but serious) game of cricket being played out on the dusty, dirty esplanade.
We were heading inland to Dambulla around 9:30am, so we jumped into the minibus and drove back to the hotel. After selecting a table in the sprawling open air dining area (there were many of them), I had a relatively small breakfast that comprised orange juice, tea, cornflakes, omelette and pastries. I think the smell of the fish market had got the better of me…
I rarely say this when I travel, but I was well and truly ready to leave
Negombo!
SHE SAID... The Rani Beach Resort in
Negombo was a reasonably ok hotel, but having just stayed in two VERY nice hotels in Colombo and Kandy, it was bound to feel more ordinary than it was. We arrived at the hotel late at night after a very long road trip, and I had a small princess moment about the sheets and towels being scruffy. But I got over it, had a shower and fell into bed. It was so hot (even at night) that we only needed a thin top sheet.
We woke up at 5:30am as usual, but didn't have the energy to get going until about 7am. After the cooler temperatures of Kandy and the mountainous hill country we’d just been in, the heat in Negombo was a bit of a shock. It was already quite hot as we walked down our road to find a laundry service that had been recommended by our hotel. We eventually found Rani Laundry with the help of a policeman and a three-wheeler (motorised tricycle with a passenger cabin, also called tri-shaws or tuk-tuks) driver who gave me directions in Sinhala (I was surprised that I actually
understood a fair bit of what he said). We walked back to the hotel for a leisurely breakfast of fried noodles, chicken curry, a Sri Lankan omelette (with onions and green chillies), toast, various savoury and sweet pastries, and
anoda (soursop) juice which I loved! I’ve really embraced the hotel buffet versions of Sri Lankan fusion breakfasts, and I would never again class myself as a ‘non-breakfast’ person if I had this sort of selection every morning. 😊
We were not very motivated, but we thought we should do some sightseeing. Our hotel sat right on the beach, but we decided to explore the beach later on and looked to the list of sights in the Lonely Planet to plan our day. We decided to start by catching a three-wheeler to the Dutch Fort. The fort turned out to be just ONE crumbling arch, and we had to walk past a very fetid inlet to get to it. Even though the Lonely Planet had explained that one arch was all that was left of the fort (as the actual fort space is now used as a prison), we’d expected it to be at least intact or preserved in some
way. Oh, the underwhelmingness of it. 😞
We then walked to a small bridge that overlooked the old fort and the lagoon of Negombo, which was lined with bright blue fishing boats and a smattering of smaller tourist boats. Even though it was a striking sight, this area was more gritty than pretty and was very much a working lagoon. Fishing is the main source of income in the area, so it wasn't a surprise that we could smell the fish markets about a kilometre before we got to them.
By this stage we were melting fast, so instead of exploring the markets in the heat (never ever a good idea), we hopped into a three-wheeler and headed back to the hotel. We tried to explore the beach outside our hotel where there was a beautiful outrigger canoe with its sail up, however our attempts to admire it were hampered by the penetrating heat and the very insistent vendors (of tourist crap). We tried to find some shade but the flock of vendors stalked us and we eventually admitted defeat and returned to the hotel. We bought cold drinks from the small store in front of our hotel
and retreated into our air conditioned room for some quiet time (for Andrew) and a nap (for me).
That evening we started the
Real Food Adventure Sri Lanka Intrepid Travel trip, joined by our friend Damien who lives in Spain and who we hadn’t seen for two years (since our trip together in India). The group leader was Thila, and the rest of the group consisted of Phillip and Debbie (Aus), Michael and Mary (Aus), Lisa and Stevan (Scotland), Jacquie (Aus), Alix (Aus) and Theresa (Aus).
After our group meeting we had plans to go to dinner. However, a heavy storm broke just as we were heading out and after trying to sit it out, we had to resort to using our trip minibus for the few hundred metres to the restaurant.
Dinner at Coconut Primitive Restaurant was good, but clearly geared towards tourists. I tried my first ‘Sri Lankan Chinese’ dish of stir-fried chicken and
kangkung (water spinach) with fried rice, and Andrew had
devilled chicken (a spicy stir-fried dish) with fried rice. Sri Lanka has a small population of ethnic Chinese who came as traders in the 18th century and stayed on. As a result,
there is a strange hybrid of Chinese dishes that have been localised and taste nothing like their original versions.
We had a relatively early night, as it was a 6:30am start to visit the Negombo wholesale fish markets. The fish market is set right on the water and the smell of fish is overwhelming. I prefer my fish markets with refrigeration and without blood on the floor, but there was something fascinating about this noisy, heaving, fishy space with wooden boats and bundles of messy fishing nets surrounding us. The market sold fish from the small local boats that fished overnight and came in at dawn, and also from the bigger fishing vessels that fished in deeper seas and stayed out for a week or so. There was a mind-boggling range of seafood on offer, especially when we crossed the road to the area where the fish were cleaned and gutted for their buyers. This was where the very large yellow-finned tuna and sharks were lined up. This place was a chef’s dream.
We then drove to the retail fish market we’d passed the day before (near the Dutch Fort). The very pungent fish smell that hit us
wasn’t from the fresh or not-so-fresh fish as you would expect – it was the concentrated odour of fish drying in the sun… kilometres of it! Right next to the fish market, there were literally thousands of drying fish carcasses laid out on hessian mats on the beach as far as the eye could see. It was something I’ve never seen, and the scale of it was almost worth the assault on my olfactory senses. Almost. The hygiene in the area wasn't what I'd call satisfactory by any standards. It was an open area that was accessed by all the street dogs and crows, although the very strong brining process fascinatingly kept the dogs and flies away from the actual drying fish (but not the crows!). I don't think I can ever eat dry fish again while I have that image in my head. 😞
Satanically hideous smells aside, it was a fascinating process to witness. Any fresh fish not sold on the day, as well as those fish specifically caught for drying, were brined and laid out to sizzle in the baking sun. There was a small army of people who were gutting and beheading the fresh fish
before placing them in vats of brine, others were transporting baskets full of brined fish to the main drying area, and some were tending to the fish as it dried. Eventually there was the process of packing the dried fish for transport to wholesalers at other markets. It was a well-oiled machine in operation, but I was under no illusion about how back breaking this work was, or that these hard working workers got barely enough money to compensate them for the arduous work.
We then left the funky fish drying area and walked across the road to a couple of food stands and watched the making of
bithara godamba roti (egg roti), where a thin roti is cooked on a smoking hot griddle with a filling of eggs, chilli and onions. We sampled a couple and it was totally delicious!
A local bloke was very happy to demonstrate betel chewing for us, by putting together betel leaf, tobacco leaf, areca nut (nut of the areca palm) and lime paste. Betel chewing is a popular pastime of some older Sri Lankans, and used to be linked to old traditions and customs. The betel leaf is a mild stimulant
which apparently causes heightened alertness, and the areca nut releases arecoline and other psychoactive compounds which are addictive, not to mention the nicotine released from the tobacco leaf. It was all going well until the guy started spitting at our feet to demonstrate that the chewed mixture had released a red stain. At which point I beat a very hasty retreat from ‘the demonstration’.
We got back to the hotel at 8:15am and had a rushed hotel breakfast of omelette,
string hoppers (steamed vermicelli-like rice noodles), potato curry and
pol sambol (shredded coconut with onions, chilli and lime). The highlight of breakfast was the thick avocado smoothie, which I had multiple serves of.
After breakfast we had to scurry to shower, get ready and check out in 30 minutes, as we had to be on the minibus by 9:30am for our onward journey. The process was slightly delayed by the fact that all the clothes we had worn to the fish market had to be forensically sealed to avoid them contaminating the rest of our pack with their disgusting fishy odour. We made in onto the minibus with minutes to spare. Our minibus trip crew were Anil the
driver, Hemantha the bus assistant and Thila the group leader.
Our short stay in Negombo was a mixed bag of experiences. It was interesting to see a working fishing town in full scale operation, but from what I’d read prior to our trip, I had been expecting it to have a relaxed seaside getaway vibe… and it certainly didn’t! I understand that tourism in Negombo has grown exponentially due to the fact that it’s close to the airport and it has the closest ‘nice’ beach to Colombo. However, I would seriously question it being marketed as a seaside getaway. The beach that our hotel opened onto was nice enough, but the water wasn’t what I’d call ‘inviting’. And while I normally like staying in hotels in the thick of things, I think the over-determined (my nice way of saying “friggin’ pushy”) vendors and three-wheeler drivers coloured my experience of the area. It reminded me of the non-nice parts of Phuket, which is never a good thing.
I may have liked Negombo more if we were in a different, more relaxed part of town. However, we were coming back to Negombo one more time, so I will leave my final judgement until then.
We were on our way north-east to Dambulla, the gateway to Sri Lanka’s so called ‘cultural triangle’.
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Lori Walker
non-member comment
Satanically hideous smells
What a great description - satanically hideous smells! I've never experienced anything quite like that on my travels. "Yuck" doesn't quite cover it. I tried chewing betel nut in Vietnam - an interesting experience but probably not something I'd do again... I'm enjoying the blog!