Colombo, Sri Lanka – Friday 30th March

This is the capital of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) which is a large island to the south east of India. Apparently the country’s earliest inhabitants came from the north of India and the city of Anuradhapura, the first capital, was the home of Buddhism until it was abandoned following an invasion from south India.  The Portuguese landed in 1505 and took control of the west coast, then the Dutch took over followed by the English in 1796 – they of course introduced the tea for which Ceylon is famous.  The country became independent in 1948 and changed its name to Sri Lanka in 1972.  There has been ongoing violence between the Sinhala and Tamil communities but the war officially came to an end in 2009.  There is still a strong military presence in Colombo.

The welcome committee

We docked in a container port again – problem with our ship being too big for the cruise terminal.  The local taxi union did not allow the ship to provide shuttle buses into the town so those of us not booked on a tour had the option of over-priced taxis or a long dusty walk to the dock gate – we  chose the latter – it probably took about half an hour and of course we were constantly harassed by taxi drivers telling us what a long way it was!  When we got through the gate we didn’t have clear view of where we were as we had been given the wrong location for the ship by our tour office!  We decided to utilise one of the tuk-tuks who offered to give us a tour of the sites.  As usual the ride was quite fun but a bit scary with all the traffic and sometimes suffocating with traffic fumes.

A typical street with waiting tuk-tuks

In truth there is not a huge amount of interest in Colombo.  We saw a few temples and the driver took us into one which was intriguing.  It had a sort of museum with cabinets stuffed full of antique watches, firearms, carved ivory and all manner of Buddha statues which we were told were real gold encrusted with real diamonds emeralds and other gems.  If that is true they must be worth a fortune.  There was also an old Rolls Royce which looked to be in good working order.  Outside we met the baby elephant shown in the photo.

Lots of ivory used in the decorations!

There are some remaining old colonial buildings such as the museum and telegraph office, and some nice developments and posh houses around a park area known as Victoria Park.  Also the sea front looks quite attractive and has some luxury hotel developments.  We did see a cricket ground where a game was going on (this the day after Sri Lanka beat England in the first test).  We were dropped off  at a large market which was very colourful and very loud with all the stallholders shouting out their offers – things were incredibly cheap but the quality of the clothes was poor – we had better luck in the small shops nearby.

We failed to find a bar or even an inviting café and were wondering how to get back to the ship as we didn’t really know where it was when an enterprising local offered to take us for 5 dollars!  Seemed like a bargain to us – he then engaged a tuk-tuk and guided it back to the dock gates – unfortunately the taxi union had managed to ban tuk tusk to so we had the dreary walk back, this time accompanied by lots of big smelly lorries.  Not our favourite port of call – however fellow guest tell us that we shouldn’t judge Sri Lanka by Colombo as most of it is a beautiful country.

As an aside, we have been told that we are now entering waters which are subject to piracy.  For the next two weeks we will have an armed guard on board and the ship will be blacked out at night – we had a piracy drill which consisted of everyone sitting in the corridor outside their cabins – in case anyone shoots us through the window I guess!  They are certainly taking it very seriously.