Guess Where I was?

Here’s a wee surprise! I was last minute in ……

Sri Lanka! We've travelled extensively in the Indian Ocean area but have never been to Sri Lanka so an unexpected chance to escape the chills of wintery Germany and flee to temperatures of 30C was very welcome. 

What an experience it was and unfortunately not all positive! 

First up though, the weather was fabulous and Sri Lanka offers a myriad of sights to see! My sketchbook page shows the stupa of the Kande Viharaya temple in Bentota, spectacular but an impromptu stop here on our way to buy drinks meant I didn’t have my mobile with me to take snaps! 

This was a house behind our hotel in Kalutara North, a tourist area on the west coast of Sri Lanka, and now to our travel experiences.

We had decided not to take full board because we had enjoyed eating out at local restaurants in Thailand, this proved to be a mistake. On our first day we met a friendly German couple who were spending the winter in Sri Lanka, they were long time friends of a local restaurant owner (and tour operator) and they suggested eating out at his eatery which was just down the road from our hotel, apparently it was reasonably priced and so grateful for the tip we headed out for dinner there later.

 First we had to run the gauntlet of tuk tuk drivers outside the hotel, in the beginning  we were polite but they are very persistent and after a couple of days we decided the best tactic is to look (and walk) past them, unless you really need one (always agree on the destination and price before getting in!). Having arrived at the restaurant which was quirkily decorated with mostly Russian graffiti, we sat down with the couple we'd met and another German couple who were also staying in a B&B run by the host. Given the menu we were surprised to find he was offering pizza and seafood, to be honest I love pizza but I didn’t go to Sri Lanka to eat pizza! No local specialities were on offer and the prices for both pizza and seafood were above those I'd pay in Germany, with a pizza running at about 10€. The pizza was good, the seafood looked so so and nothing like the photos in the menu. I was disappointed, we still returned the next evening, we really didn’t see any alternatives nearby and other restaurants we did see offered the same fare. No curry, no local breads nothing like the delicious foods I'd read about before we left, lots of people who'd been on round trips said they too had never seen local specialities. After 5 days of eating there, we went to eat in one of the restaurants in our hotel, had fabulously aromatic prawn curry with a wonderful pan baked bread, first time ever that food in a 5 star hotel cost less than at a local eatery! 

Sri Lanka offers lots of amazing sights but although on the map the distances seem doable in reality with the traffic journeys take probably 3 times as long as they would in Europe, so next comes the double whammy. Our affable host started to ask us whether we wanted to go on any trips, and he'd plan individual tours for us. We sat down and discussed the possibilities, due to distance the tip is to do two or three day tours, with overnight stays in other hotels. Now this is fine but our hotel was booked and paid for and so we were a bit reluctant to pay for other accommodation, we really wanted to relax and so we talked about doing two one day tours one to Kandy and one to Galle (more about Galle in another post). Our friendly local said fine, that will be 240€ Per trip, we were gobsmacked to say the least, in Kandy we were sightseeing so no entrance fees and my husband wanted to stop at some Elephant thing, so there was entrance fees to that. Let’s get this all into perspective …… the average worker in Sri Lanka earns 150€ per month, if we presume the average wage in Germany is 2000€ that would mean paying about 3000€ for a day trip! I'm all in favour of a win win situation for both locals and tourists and expect to pay tourist prices but that’s ridiculous and unfortunately that was my lasting impression of Sri Lanka ….. the feeling of being ripped off. 

I'm not alone with this, in loads of travel forums you'll find people with similar experience, horrendous entrance fees, people who will tell you to your face that your 5€ tip is ''little money'', expensive restaurants and the famous my husband/wife/child is in hospital and needs medication story are just a few of the scams to expect.

Before we travelled, I checked out the possibilities of local transport which I always prefer to booking tours with travel agencies or tour operators, truth told a train trip to Kandy costs 3€ one way and local taxi driver at the train station where we set off for a self-organised trip, offered to do a trip to Kandy with us for 40€ (Bit of a difference to 240€)'. The taxi driver explained that he and others were not allowed to come to the hotels after 6am in the morning, the perfect way to keep prices for tourists high, stop the competition. I was disgusted, and one more thing to trips and travel! Regardless of how you travel, tuk tuk, taxi or tours you will be taken to wood carving shops, herb and spice gardens, jewellery shops and tea shops where you will be ripped off accordingly, even if you vehemently protest beforehand that you don’t want to be taken, you will end up there! 

Sri Lanka …. Beautiful but beware …. you are often seen as a walking wallet! So glad that our travels abroad helped us to stay grounded and not be ripped off as others definitely were!