Colombo, Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
Many of us know of Sri Lanka, but often don’t make the connection to Ceylon. It was way back in 1972 that Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka. The name change was made to put aside its colonial British roots. Given the economic turmoil here now, probably not the best of choices. They were in a civil war from 1983 until 2009. For such a small country that seems like a long time to be fighting. Sir Lanka is slightly larger than West Virginia.
If a civil war wasn’t enough in 2019 the economic troubles really began. Severe economic problems arose due to rapidly increasing foreign debt, massive government budget deficits due to tax cuts, falling foreign remittances, a food crisis caused by mandatory organic farming along with a ban on chemical fertilizers, and a multitude of other factors. The Sri Lankan Government officially declared the ongoing crisis to be the worst economic crisis in the country in 73 years. In August 2021, a food emergency was declared.
In June 2022, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy in parliament. The crisis resulted in Sri Lanka defaulting on its $51 billion sovereign debt for the first time in its history, along with double-digit inflation, a crippling energy crisis that led to approximately 15-hour power cuts, severe fuel shortages leading to the suspension of fuel to all non-essential vehicles, and more such economic disorder. Due to the crisis, massive street protests erupted all over the country, with protesters demanding the resignation of the then-incumbent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
The protests culminated with the storming and siege of the President's House on July 9, 2022, and resulted in President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing to Singapore and later emailing his resignation to parliament, formally announcing his resignation and making him the first Sri Lankan president to resign in the middle of his term. On the same day the President's House was stormed, protesters sieged and stormed the private residence of the prime minister and burnt it down.
This is what we are stepping into today, not that we knew all of that before stepping off the ship. We have chosen a sort three and a half hour excursion this morning call the panoramic Colombo. Basically, this means getting on a motor coach and riding around for what we believe in an appropriate amount of time. You don’t get to really see of get a feel for country or city you may be visiting, but you at least get something.
The ship is berthed probably as far down in the port as possible. The port is big. It doesn’t appear as busy as many of the others but there appears to be a lot going on. China is said to have invested greatly in Sri Lanka, including the port area. It takes the motor coach about thirty minutes to wind its way through the port.
There is an unfinished elevated highway running along side the port. They appear to be working on it and when finished will avoid the congestion of the port area. The guide is doing his best to tell us about his country and what we are going to see, but some of our fellow passengers are being extremely rude and talking over his voice. He is using a microphone and they were still disrupting him. Admittedly he isn’t the best guide, but he also isn’t the worst, and he is trying.
As we exit the port entrance we turn left heading back in the exactly the same direction we came from. The difference is that we are riding along the other side of the fence separating the city from the port. The unfinished flyover freeway is still above us.
Looking around you do notice a number of large unfinished and abandoned looking skyscrapers. It is a guess, but they are probably forty or more stories tall. The best way to describe the traffic is chaotic. First of all, there are so many vehicles.
You can not help but to immediately notice the noisy, clamorous or even boisterous auto rickshaw called a tuk tuk. These three-wheel motorized form of transportation have no sense of danger. They dance in and out of traffic, squeezing between any two vehicles, even if one or both of them are a cement truck and bus which would easier decimate them.
As we ride along we watch the dance. There are a number of colorful bus in a variety of conditions. There is the large modern tour motor coach like the one we are in. There are a variety of 1960s or 1970 school type buses which are very colorfully painted, either to hold it together or hide the rust. There are cars. They are generally smaller vehicles but hey range from 1960s VWs to 2024 Rolls Royces. Well, only one Rolls was spotted and that was in a really nice neighborhood.
Oh, but we aren’t done yet. Now you have to add twice the number of all those vehicles in motor bikes. Bikes which range from motorized bicycles to Ducati 900s. Now maybe you are starting to get the picture. But let’s enhance your vision a little more.
The road is maybe nine or ten meters wide. Our motor coach is probably one and a half meters wide, maybe a pinch more. There is no sidewalk but there are hundreds of people milling about. There are no parking spaces but there are cars, tuk tuks, motorcycles, bicycles, carts and whatever parked on either side of the street.
Now add to that the stores along the road. They are open in the front, no doors or sidewalk between them and the street. They are displaying their goods at the front of the shop. Some shops have hand carts in front either selling fruit, vegetables or other items like toilet paper. The hand carts are maybe one to two meters in length. With arms or handles at the rear for pushing like a wheelbarrow. It is maybe a meter in width. It is basically a large box, with low sides, with a wheel or wheels.
So, from one side of the street to the other. Building, open stores, hand carts, parked cars, motorcycles, tuk tuks, and bicycles, the space in which the motorized vehicles like our motor coach and all the aforementioned cars, motorcycles, tuk tuks, trucks, and buses or flowing along in total chaos, then go back to the park vehicles, hand carts, open stores and buildings. From an aerial view you could imagine a river flowing between the sides of a moderately deep gorge with the buildings as the sides, with debris along the edges of the river. Look deeper and you see thousand of ants, sorry people, moving along and against the flow of the river, crawling over and weaving through the debris.
If you can imagine this then you have the start of what we see as we drive along. The buildings range of abandoned hulls to modern multistory edifices. There is everything in between, but generally there are stores, stalls or carts in front of every building you see. It might be called bright and lively by some. Admittedly it looks intriguing. But getting out there into that? Not without a guide who works part time as either a sumo wrestler or weight lifting instructor.
It isn’t all poor. Like everywhere else there are nice neighborhoods. We drive round Viharamahadevi Park a large green space with jogging tracks, soccer fields, area for picnics and nice shaded walking paths. There is a group of school children playing soccer on one of the fields. We even see a few joggers. We see a man with a python and his buddy the snake charmer with a cobra in a basket. They are more than happy to show what they can do for a small tip. Ok, they are basically begging.
What you don’t see are any from the hoard in the streets we went through to get here. There are few school children, snake charmers, and motor coaches of tourists. There are several tourists taking tours in tuk tuks. This appears to be a one of the fun ways to tour Colombo. Have to agree it would be a way to get an adrenaline rush, bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic.
Our excursion isn’t a get out and look excursion but just a drive through the city excursion. We pass by the beautiful Gangaramaya Temple. We stop for a potty break at Independence Square. A large open style building made of stone in a nice park like setting. We pass by cricket fields, soccer field, government buildings, exhibition halls and even one really large mall.
You are probably realizing by now that there are two or maybe three Colombo’s. The beautiful clean and green Colombo belonging to the “upper” class, the tourist Colombo, and then everyone else. The everyone else is easily the majority of the population an the occupy a minority of the space. The dichotomy between well off and busted poor is on display here.
You can’t judge a city or country by a three and a half hour tour. There were nice areas. Like Thailand, Malaysia and many of the other places we have visited, once you get out of the city and into the countryside it is a different story than the one the sixty gives you. Hey, even in California this is the case. You can drive around San Francisco and decide it is a drug invested homeless camp, which some parts of the city are, and you can drive up Nob Hill or Cow Hollow and see beautiful neighborhoods. You can go to the tourist centers of Pier 39 or along the Embarcadero and see what city officials want you to see. Here is no different. Maybe the divide is deeper between well off and broke poor, but it really is all the same.
One of the advantages of cruising is you get to visit a number of places. You can choose which ones to go back to or not. The disadvantage is that you only see a very small portion of anyone place. Even a seven or eight hour tour only gives you so much. It is easy to be turned off to a place because of the route the motor coach takes. Working hard to keep an open and honest mind during the trip. Many places will deserve a second chance.
Buonanotte e ciao, Enrico e Maria.
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