First real Day - Exploring Colombo

 

Feb. 10

We got up fairly early and ready for breakfast.  A short walk away was a café attached to a hotel where we started the food part of our trip.  We went for the Sri Lankan breakfast which included three kinds of hoppers and some chutney.  Hoppers are more or less bowl-shaped coconut crepes cooked with thin sides and a thick bottom.  We had two egg hoppers each and a sugar hopper.  Very tasty.

The place had real coffee and cool fans as well as a view of the road and the ocean with trains frequently going between the two.  We were surprised to see the doorman swigging from a 40 ounce alcohol bottle at 8 am but later found out that was normal behaviour in this country.  Liquor bottles are sturdy and have good screw caps so we noticed many drivers and workers swigging water from them as they toiled.  Considering that most of the time we were there the temperature was mid-30s before humidex, water was always a necessity to have on hand.

We headed back to the hotel to freshen up before heading out on our one day in Colombo.  It is by far the largest city in Sri Lanka but all of the guide books recommend leaving there as quickly as possible as they say there is little to see in the city. 

Our coconut vendor

Our helpful hotel staff helped us book a tuktuk and we headed off to the big downtown market.  This is a crowded place that covers blocks of the central city.  There are some fancy shops but it’s mainly small stalls selling produce or household items.  The streets are crowded with tuktuks and other vehicles squeezing by all of the people and lots of action happening.  Down side pathways were narrow passages  where shops mainly sold trinkets on a wholesale basis.  If you lived in Colombo, this is where the bargains would probably be had.   I found some local electrical adapters and we drank and ate from a green coconut sliced open with a machete.  Once we finished drinking he took the coconut back, sliced a sliver off the outside and chopped it open.  The sliver was used as a scoop to get out the gelatinous coconut meat out before discarding the whole shell. 

The Market

We wanted to see the red mosque but it was set to open 30 minutes later than the internet told us so we went in pursuit of lunch.  We avoided the restaurant closest to the mosque as a tout had attached himself to us and we didn’t want him hassling the restaurant for his cut for tourists eating there.  We went around the corner to what was probably a typical local place.  We ordered rotis and parathas, with my parathas coming with scoops of curry and condiments on a metal plate wet with tap water.  Our drinks both had ice in them, which was something we were avoiding but I didn’t notice mine had any until I got close to the bottom as it was a creamy drink.  They kept offering me more curry and we had tea there while watching locals come and go.

Back at the red mosque, we were let in by a vendor at the gate and were able to watch men walk around and worship through an iron gate while we waited for our tour to begin.   A bunch of us waited for about 45 minutes until a man with little English started to hand around robes for the women and insufficiently dressed men to wear.  About 20 minutes after that our guide arrived, which was only a few minutes before the mosque was supposed to close for tours for the afternoon.  He led us through the building giving us a little bit of information but letting us have lots of time to poke around.  The mosque was set up with the most ornate work in the old building and the new building comprising several floors of large open spaces able to accommodate 10,000 worshippers.  The view from the roof was impressive, but the best views were really of the outside of the building from the street.  The use of red and white was quite striking from a distance but the work on the inside didn’t compare with what we had seen in Morocco and Turkey.

The Red Mosque.

After the tour we were hot and tired and wanted to head home.  We talked to a few tuktuk drivers but the process was long, with many of them needing to go to nearby stores to help translate our bargaining.  Touts tried to do this for us, which always inflated the price.  We finally found someone for a reasonable amount and he tried to be a tour guide by pointing out some random building along our way home.   He made some excuse about needing directions and tried to get us to go into a gem store,  Meg gave him an angry rant about how awful gems were and what a scourge status symbols are on society.  We finally got home and he tried to tell me that we had a agreed on $7 American for the ride, not 700 Rupees ( a large difference).  When we dismissed this he then went on about how he deserved a tip but we weren’t listening to him by that point.  When we got back to our room I installed the PickMe app on the phone to book rides so that we could be spared such problems in the future.

We met our friends Devi and John at a nearby café and had lime sodas and fruit juice in a fan-cooled courtyard of a local fair trade store, Barefoot.  We grabbed some lunch and went around the neighbourhood in search of an ATM.   The fees varied greatly here (from nothing to $5) and my card consistently worked while Meg’s only sometimes worked, even at bank branches where it had worked before. 

We met Devi and John at their hotel, which had a stunning glass wall view of the city, and headed out to Devi’s relatives' place for dinner.  This was a house that was newly renovated and stunning, with an ornate wooden wall from a library on one side of the large living room across from an enormous chandelier.  There was a nice open courtyard with trees and fish and well restored antiques all over the space.  We were introduced to many family members and had good conversations and excellent local food throughout the evening.  Soon after 9, though, the jetlag set in and Meg and I could barely keep our eyes open. We said goodnight and grabbed a tuktuk back to our room, where we fell over almost immediately. 

Dinner!