First night in Sri Lanka

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  Negombo, Sri Lanka
Wednesday, December 29, 2010

From Joanna

I could bore you ranting for pages about our journey woes, but sleepiness and a few beers have taken the edge off my fury. It is enough to say that about thirty five hours ago, Easy Jet kept us in the check in queue for an hour and a half, then the crush at airport security delayed us another two, and we missed our first flight by moments. After a couple of hours of waiting for our bags to be returned to us, a friendly kiwi whose half Turkish daughter was one of the twenty or so fellow passengers who suffered the same fate, gave us a lift from Luton to Stanstead where Simon saved the day finding a replacement flight to Istanbul.


Two flights later we are snoozing under the mossie net in a greasy room at Negombo beach, about 7kms from the Colombo International Airport in Sri Lanka. We have to wait for Simon to turn up from London tomorrow. Colombo is an hour trip from the airport, and so our 10 minute Bajaj trip to the beach was a much more appealing option. 'Bajaj' is the name for the ubiquitous Sri Lankan three wheeler tuk tuk. They are death on wheels and I was paralysed in white-knuckled terror.

This is a Catholic area. There are huge concrete churches along the beach. We stopped by a boxy peach one with open sides and back. A first communion was being held. Though the church was very large, there were only a couple of pews, so everyone kneeled on the floor, except the impossibly tiny children who played in the dust outside and were delighted by us funny looking foreigners. Best was touching us, and getting us to say 'hello', like we were the small ones, and they the cooing adults. The priest, looking very papal in a particularly sickly shade of purple directed the bare footed and plastic veiled congregation in a well rehearsed, repetitive cycle of kneel – stand – sing – kneel - chant – stand- sing- kneel, which seemed designed to stop everyone's legs from falling asleep on the marble floors.

There are hundreds of naivety scenes set up along the road. They range in size from about a square metre to full life sized ones, with giant baby Jesus and room sized managers.

The other major pastime on offer was backyard cricket on the beach, either playing or watching. In the cool of the late afternoon the couple of dozen tourists leave the mile or so of beach and hundreds of locals come out to play, swim, chat or just sit around staring at whomever wanders by, which was pretty much only James and I. No girls playing or swimming in any of the games, except a couple of toddlers in the least serious of the games. The boys are either small and pointy or beautiful handsome lithe young things.  Girls are yet to be seen.

We lie under our blood dotted net, trying not to think about the dots on the sheet.

We know that we are paying too much for the accommodation and food here but we are fresh off the plane and don't have our haggling heads on yet. (2000 sri lankan rupee for the room the first night is just under £12. The following night we move to a nicer place and pay 600 rupee per room).

Later James goes next door to complain about the thumping disco that has started up. We are at first surprised and amused by middle aged lumpy tourists dancing outside our window like creatures possessed – limbs failing and bottoms wiggling. But after the novelty wears off we think they represent all that is wrong with people. The witch hotel manageress next door refuses to turn down the music and is rude to James. 'So get another hotel' she says.

You forget that when you travel you are at the mercy of everyone else. You don't have a sanctuary that you can lock everyone out from, but must be tolerant. You are a guest and can't complain. I am misanthropic at the best of times. Perhaps travelling through some of the most populous countries on a shoe string is not the best fit. I will have to rub up next to people. I hate rubbing up next to people.

There are two saving graces. Firstly, Ti-i-i-ime is on my side (oh yes it is). The shoulder barging gladiatorial combat that is (was) my morning walk to work only exists during the week when I have (had) somewhere to be and I want (had) to be there now (then). If you are not in a hurry, other people don't seem to get in your way so much. Don't know why, but it is some sort of universal law of physics that some very smart man with an algorithm could graph. And secondly, James is some sort of angelic, beatific, love thy neighbour, slightly hippy-ish saint character that sort of steps in when I am getting wound up and soothes everything down and prevents me from throwing tantrums, bollocking people and getting stressed. He is the good cop in our good cop / bad cop. Or he is like the blue Gaviscon encircling and calming the red indigestion in the commercials. Gaviscon - What A Feeling!

We spend about half an hour killing the mossies that have found their way into the net. We are like King Kong swatting at the airplanes. Later in the night we wake up bitten. How are they getting in? Seriously... how? Earlier in the night we spent at least ten minutes identifying the three small holes in the net, and taping them up. How are these insects, which I am guessing don't have the most complex of brains better at finding ways in than us? We try to squash them all again but now the roles have been reversed; we are Samwise and Frodo being pursued by the dragon riding death wraiths.

The Nazgūl came again . . . like vultures that expect their fill of doomed men's flesh. Out of sight and shot they flew, and yet were ever present, and their deadly voices rent the air. More unbearable they became, not less, at each new cry. At length even the stout-hearted would fling themselves to the ground as the hidden menace passed over them, or they would stand, letting their weapons fall from nerveless hands while into their minds a blackness came, and they thought no more of war, but only of hiding and of crawling, and of death.
(The Return of the King, p.97)

Now that I read this over it is obvious that 'mossies’ should be spelled 'mozzies', or else it is like mossy. I would like to spell it ‘mosqie’ but that seems like it is pertaining to a mosque. There is something juvenile and faintly American about the use of a 'z' in the middle of a word, let alone a double.

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