Sri Lanka is a
mysterious, exotic country. Famed as much for its cricketers as its Ceylon tea,
many people equally associate the country with the rebellious Tamil Tigers and
The Maldives. I was fortunate enough transit aircrafts there on this recent
trip back to the UK.
It wasn’t the
best of starts to a trip in many ways. Unable to check-in online, we boarded
the plane for the five hour trip to Colombo expecting to find our pre-booked,
extra legroom seats and staff waiting with a cold Lion Beer. Instead we were
met by the 3+3 seating arrangement common on low-cost airlines, no tv monitors onthe
seats or hanging from the cabin, and a pricelist for alcoholic beverages. On
top of that our seats weren’t located near to an emergency exit so had no extra
room. Anyone familiar with low cost travel will immediately recognise the
conditions in which we would spend the trip.
Actually we had
already been made aware that this leg of the journey would be conducted by Sri
Lanka Airway’s ‘sister’ airline, MINLanka. We just expected that whilst the
conditions would be a tad cramped, they’d have pulled out the stops with
everything else. As I said, we could have had a better start.
Turning the clock
back for a moment, Yohana and I had found out a couple of weeks prior to our
journey that we would be accompanied by one of our friends from Jakarta.
Stewart used to teach at EF Gading Serpong but is currently employed by the
Jakarta International Montesori School and was heading home for Christmas on
the same flight as us. With the 3+3 seating it was very easy to arrange for
Stewart to move from his booked one into the one next to us.
Another thing
that we were painfully aware of was the transit in Colombo. All nine hours of
it! What to do with that time had been the source of much discussion. Stewart
had talked about leaving the airport for a few hours, but on checking into it
it seemed that Uciel would need another visa. For the sake of a few hours this
didn’t really seem to be worthwhiile so Yohana and I had resigned ourselves to
getting some sleep on an uncomfortable airport bench and trying to sneak
complimentary shots from the duty free sellers.
As it transpired,
in conversation between the three of us, we decided that it would at least be
worth checking into the transit visa thing so, on arrival in Colombo, we headed
for the customer services desk. They directed us to a short queue where we
waited to speak to a chubby Sri Lankan guy. On reaching his desk and explaining
that we had 9 hours to kill and wanted to leave the airport, and him having
looked through our boarding passes, he finally suggested we speak to his
colleague sat next to him. This meant going to the back of a slightly longer
queue. As our turn to be seen approached, the guy we’d originally spoken to
moved from his original seat, sat on the opposite side of his colleague and
called us forward. My initial suggestion that we had just spoken to his brother
produced not a titter. Maybe I need to work on my timing.
Explaining our
dilemma, he kindly pointed out that we would be given a free meal due to the
length of our stay and then started talking to his colleague about hotels.
Quickly stopping him I explained again that we had only a few short hours and
didn’t really want the expense of a hotel and that we’d rather do our own thing
if he could just see his way towards letting us out of the airport.
His answer was
that if that was what we wished to do, we should go and explain our situation
to the head of immigration, who would issue us with a pass. Coming from the
rampant corruption of Indonesia, I jumped swiftly to the conclusion that to
arrange this money would have to change hands and, at the same moment, a
thought dawned on me.
“Er..., that
hotel thing. Is it free?” I enquired, tentatively. I was thinking that he’d
been happily looking into hotels and maybe it wasn’t an address that we needed
as part of the short stay visa thing, but maybe we could wangle this another
way or, that even between the three of us, the cost would be minimal.
“It depends on
the type and cost of your ticket” said the portly chap. “Let me see those
boarding passes again”.
Next thing we
know, we’ve had our free meal vouchers taken away from us and replaced with a
white docket entitling us to a single and a double hotel room and a meal each
at vaguely cricket-sounding The Sunhill Hotel, and this would come with
complimentary transport to and from said hotel. Winner!
Now at the risk
of seeming ungrateful, a few things should be pointed out. From receiving this
voucher, it then took another hour to get to the hotel due to the Sri Lankans
seemingly endless fascination with making visitors join pointless queues. This,
plus the wait for the complimentary taxi. On arriving at the hotel, we were
shown to our more than adequate rooms (evidently a single room is a smaller
room that contains a double bed and our double room had a double bed plus an
extra bed) but on requesting the location of the restaurant were were given the
perplexing reply that there wasn’t one. On asking for the bar we were again
informed of a lack in this area too. But the guy on duty just took us outside,
over the road and into a nearby Indian restaurant where
we were told that a few beers and some red wine for Uciel was very possible and
that we could pay by card (on account of not having any Sri Lankan Rupees).
The final thing
we were left with was the confusing; “Please be back at 9pm for food”.
We ordered the
drinks and sat chatting and watching Liverpool condemn Cardiff to another
Premiership defeat and decided that food must be a take away affair. It’s a
shame as, on reflection, we’d have gladly stayed in the place we were and whose
prices were very reasonable.
We weren’t the
only people in the restaurant, two other tables had groups of guys seemingly
preparing for Christmas. Sri Lanka is predomninantly Buddhist but never let
that get in the way of a celebration. They seem to be a lot like the Thais in this respect. It
turned out that one group was having a birthday party for one of their number
but the other group, sat on the table nearest to us were celebrating after a
positive stock take result at work. They did this by sharing a bottle of gin
and some food and then banging on their table to a beat that went well with “We
wish you a Merry Christmas”. This was produced in pretty good English and was
obviously for our benefit as when they finished they all stood up and came over
to our table. Hands were shaken, cheeks were kissed, high fives were handed
out, photos were taken and emails were swapped. The genuine emotion these guys
displayed as they talked about their hopes for our appreciation of their
country was mirrored when the next table of guys did exactly the same thing. Nearly
too awesome for words.
Back at the hotel
we had time for a shower and to eat the fried rice and spicy chicken that was
delivered to the room before the taxi arrived to take us back to the airport
where the plane that would take us the UK, the decidedly bigger and better
equipped plane, was waiting.
Those few hours
have really given me some encouragement to revisit the teardrop island.
