Sri Lanka | Colombo
The second leg of our journey was only 4 hours, and so it felt like the hard work was done. Our VISAs were already approved, but we were still required to fill out the entry form. Scanning the kiosks, we approached the one with the shortest que but naturally the longest wait. The dark-skinned gentleman refused to fold his lips into even a fake smile. He stamped my passport, annoyingly getting some of the stamp on the other page. I hated him for this and think he did it deliberately as a punishment for my many questions.
British Colonial rule, whilst over, could still be found in the most discreet of places. For instance, Colombo Airport had its fair share of 3-pin plugs, a modern and permanent graffiti equivalent of 'Britain woz 'ere'. I'm not particularly anti-Empire, I don't know enough about it to form a meaningful opinion to be honest. (I think I'd be pretty pissed though if a gang of people came from another island and started telling me what to do, and then 50 years later called me a Paki for visiting their island. Oh wait. Anyway, there are apparently more curry-houses in the UK than in all of India - made up facts like this at least sort of feel like mild culinary revenge)
There were rows and rows of duty-free alcohol, but I was not planning on doing much, if any, drinking on this holiday. I wanted my head to be clear, and the feeling of hangover to be a thing of the past. It only seemed right that I should trade my unhealthy blood-alcohol level with an equally unhealthy lung-smog level.
Stepping out of the airport, we were greeted by our chauffeur - through his thin smile and abnormally fast pace, I could sense mild irritation that we were late - which we were. I blamed it on the plane, but really it was because we were waiting at the wrong luggage belt.
The air smelt like India but tasted less of lead and petrol. It brought back memories of my first and only trip to the motherland. Through the nose, memories became animated, and smells were brought back to the tip of my nostril. I marvelled at the brain's capacity to keep a record of almost everything, no matter how faint the imprint, or how badly categorised the memory. I held the air in my lungs for a moment longer, and felt vivid colour drain into what was only a pencil sketch memory. Then I coughed like an aggressive smoker.
Seated in the car, we paid attention to everything that was going on outside while taking too many photos and videos of things that barely mattered then and would matter less when we got back home.
Our first hotel was called Sunrise Boutique, but on arrival we were offered a room in their sister hotel, which was closer to town, and at the time of writing was nameless. We were greeted by Darryl (with two r's), friendly faced and helpful. You'd trust him with your wallet, that sort of guy. But I only say this in hindsight - when we first met he offered us some watermelon juice, which I thought he may have been drugged, so he could steal our passports and rape us. Neither of those two things happened. The unnamed hotel had its charm, random expensive wooden ornaments placed amongst other more basic wooden stuff. Breakfast was nice too - Sri Lankan Omelette (normal omelette plus spices), a fruit plate and toast and jam. The flies had first helping of the fruit, while I plastered my jam onto the toast (note: jam is nothing more than sweets that adults could eat in the morning, while telling their kids to drop the Haribo).
We spent the evening walking to Galle face beach. There were many locals, arm in arm, eating some of sort flattened fried crab. I wanted to try it in the spirit of adventure but I held out in the spirit of not getting diarrhoea