In this post, I will tell you why I didn’t like Sri Lanka at all. Yes, this post is going to talk about all the negative experiences and feelings related to my Sri Lanka trip, but I also have another post in which I will tell you about the nice things (the sights, that is). I still think, however, that a short holiday in Sri Lanka could be enjoyable, especially if you pre-organise everything and travel from place to place continuously. If, however, you are interested in more than the surface or the superficial tourist sights, and the local people are an important part of the country for you, then I think there are much better places for you to choose from.
1. Introduction
I was originally planning to spend 3 months in Sri Lanka, but ended up leaving the country just after a little more than two weeks. I wasn’t forced to, but I felt that 2 weeks with two free weekends (I have to work during the week) will be enough for me. Here is why.
I was in Sumatra in Indonesia, and since the two months you are allowed to spend there with once extended visa was already over, I had to find my next destination. I was thinking of going to one of the countries in Southeast Asia, but when I was examining the map, I suddenly realized that Sri Lanka is actually not too far from where I am.
I had never been to Sri Lanka before, but I had spent several months in India, which I didn’t like very much – no, not the sights, those are great. But this is another story, which I will perhaps write about a little later. Anyway, I was a little worried that Sri Lanka would be the same as far as the people are concerned. But when I checked some of the online forums, everyone wrote “No, Sri Lanka is not India”. So I said OK, let’s give it a try then.
2. Arriving in Colombo
I booked an apartment in a hotel in Colombo, and when I asked them if they provided airport transfer, they wrote back to me that I could find numerous taxis at the airport, I should use one of those. The email didn’t sound very polite or helpful, but I put it down to a possible language barrier: don’t expect everyone to be able to do excellent business correspondence in English.
I hired a taxi for 3000 rupees. The driver said, of course he knows the place I am going to, but it turned out later that he wasn’t entirely sure about the address after all. I gave him the phone number of the hotel (they also suggested in their email that I should call them if I can’t find the address), but there was no answer. He tried again, no answer.
We did find the street, but we couldn’t find the house number, or any sign of the hotel. But we stopped, got out of the car and looked at the houses carefully. At this moment, a man leaned out of a window of a house which looked like one in those slums, and I asked him if he knew where a certain Ocean View Apartments was to be found. He said yes, and came down to the street.
There, the taxi driver and him started a dispute in their own language (which could either be Sinhalese or Tamil), and the dispute became louder and louder, and more and more aggressive. I quickly paid the driver, and stepped aside. They were already on the brink of a fist fight, but then a third man appeared, who was trying to prevent the actual physical fight between the two. Then he turned to me, and quickly showed me to the first floor of a different building, luckily not the slum-like house they came down from, and I checked in. These two gentlemen, as it turned out, were the hotel staff.
So this was my very first experience of Sri Lanka and its people, after a very long journey from Sumatra in Indonesia, with a long stopover in Kuala Lumpur. Not a good one. Will they be as aggressive with me too? Are they going to fight with other people too? Should I be afraid of a physical attack? These were the thoughts I went to sleep with on my first night in Sri Lanka.
3. Staying in Colombo for 10 days
The stay in the “apartment”turned out to be OK, although it was not an apartment, but a room with a narrow opening, with a sink that didn’t have the pipes and so was unusable, and there were a few giant cockroaches in the bathroom, but otherwise no problem. I had a balcony, from where I could see into the room of these two guys in their slum-like apartment.
The next morning I ventured out into the streets. Big mistake. The moment you step outside, you will be stormed and besieged by an army of people, most of them tuktuk drivers, but various other people too, who will try to sell you things, ask you for cigarettes or ask you for money. They will follow you for hundreds of metres, and it is impossible to shoo them away, no matter how you tell them no.
This became so annoying after a while, that it was at times really unbearable. They get at you even when you are walking steadily, but should you, heaven forbid, stop for a moment to look around you, to look at a building or for any other reason, then there will be even more of them.
This is only one of the things that made my days in Colombo unpleasant. Because you will find such people in other countries too – in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Thailand – although nothing that could be compared to what you have to endure in Sri Lanka. But in those other countries, the other people, the normal people, will make up for this hassle: other local people, who are nice and smiling, with whom you can have nice conversations, who are friendly and welcoming.
Not so in In Sri Lanka. People were running in the streets, pushing you aside or bumping into you, people will look at you in a suspicious way, and their faces and looks can be described as anything but nice and welcoming.
On my way to the airport (leaving Sri Lanka at last), I asked one of the bus drivers at the bus terminal where I could find the bus to the airport. He looked at me, frowned and sneered at me, and turned away. I just can’t imagine anything like that even in Europe, where people are said to be too individualistic, not to mention in Asia – I mean Southeast Asia.
4. Kandy
Just after two days or so, I was already thinking about my next destination, because I said to myself, I should leave this country as soon as possible. Especially that Christmas is coming, and flight tickets may become more expensive over the holiday season. But I thought, it would be a shame to only see Colombo, and maybe the capital city is very different from other places in the country. So I decided to spend another week in one of the most famous places in Sri Lanka: Kandy. It is a favourite among foreign visitors, and a must see for everyone visiting Sri Lanka, at least that’s what the guidebooks say.
I quickly booked a room on Airbnb in a good location. Communication with the host was not very good, and that again made me disappointed – but you know how it is: after all the initial problems, all the further inconveniences look double the trouble and double the size. Anyway, I just couldn’t help attributing the owner’s not really helpful and not really friendly emails to the general Sri Lankan behaviour already.
He turned out ot be a nice guy though. But if you think Kandy is different from Colombo in terms of annoyances, you are mistaken! You are followed by – it seems – hundreds or thousands of local bad guys, and it never stops, and you wish you hadn’t left the safety of your hotel room. No, people were not overly welcoming in Kandy either, people ran into you in the streets in Kandy, too, and after a time, you had the feeling that you must protect yourself from millions of dangers. No, I didn’t get robbed or mugged, but I was maniacally holding my shoulder bag tight when I was walking in the street.
5. Prices
Sri Lanka is very cheap regarding food, clothes and shopping. Hotel prices are higher than in most countries in Southeast Asia or India, but they are still affordable.
However, when it comes to services/products that a typical tourist will have to pay for, it is very expensive compared to Asia in general. Entry tickets are very often ten or twenty or even a hundred times higher for tourists than for local people. Actually, I didn’t see any entry ticket below 1500 rupees, but you’d better expect to pay between 2000 and 3000 for sights. Now for a comparison, for the Intercity Express from Colombo to Kandy, for first class “observation” car, I paid 800 rupees. And for the second class ticket for the same route, you pay 250 – one sixth of the cheapest entrance ticket.
For those of you smokers, another expensive thing will be cigarettes: 1300 or 1400 rupees a pack, and in most places, you can only buy one single brand. Because I am a smoker, I wrote a separate post about it.
6. In conclusion
I know there are people who love Sri Lanka, who return to the country several times, and who think that it is one of the best possible tourist destinations of all. I know because I have read some of the forum posts that seem to imply this. And I can understand that, but I am sure they have vastly different priorities than I do.
For me, the number one reason for travelling is the local people. Their way of thinking, their way of life, what they do and how they do those things – their culture, if you want one word for this. I don’t care if they have no world famous cathedrals and pagodas, if they are otherwise wonderful people: friendly to visitors, welcoming and helpful, and perhaps even interested in you as a foreigner. Bangladesh is one such country (OK, there are wonderful sights in Bangladesh, too before anyone gets hurt😀), and it is at the very top of my list of “beautiful countries with beautiful people”. I don’t actually have this list in writing yet, but I think I will create one for you to read.
And I don’t care if the country is full of world-famous sights, both natural and man-made, if the people are unfriendly, selfish, dishonest and not welcoming at all. Most countries of course will be somewhere in between these two extremes. For me, Sri Lanka, together with its big neighbour, India, is rather close to one of the extremes, I’m afraid.
