P.S. I am sorry that several blogs from different days will come out at the same time, I am writing them on MS word then publishing them whenever I can.
As predicted, sleep didn’t really Happen before leaving Bens for the coach in the morning, but a little bit happened in the Coach, and apart from having my passport swabbed for explosives(!), we passed through to departures without any problems.
However, when we reached departures, our adventure really began, when we were offered a free sample of some “Snow Queen” premium vodka. We weighed up the fact that it was free, and the fact that it was 7am, and decided it was worth a tipple… That and our pint at 8am set us up well for the first flight.
A lifetime of flying easy-jet didn’t set me up for the glories of our first Emerites flight to Dubai. Screens in seats, up to date films, and complementary alcohol every hour or so made us far more tipsy that it is reasonable to be at midday. We also got a bit too excited when we were looking through the “under the aircraft” camera whilst going over Baghdad.
We got to Dubai at about 8pm (their time), and headed straight to the tallest building in the world (its name escapes me at the moment) on their metro. Two major thoughts about Dubai – 1) the use of unnecessarily big buildings to prove they are rich, and 2) don’t try and walk anywhere! The latter was discovered when we tried to walk from the airport to “the creek” after the metro closed – about a mile as the crow flies. After crossing one 5 lane road and walking through 2 neighbourhoods which looked like mugging central, and travelling about 400m total (as the crow flies) in 45 mins, we thought it would be best to spend the 2am-9am period of our stopover in airport departures. After a few hours of talking to randomers (including a south African doctor who might offer us an elective there!) and riding those travelling escalators up and down the airport, we finally set off for Colombo (via Male in the Maldives).
After another flight of several hours (and Ben having a G and T which did NOT agree with his tiredness), and an hour sat in the aircraft in the Maldives, we arrived in Colombo just after sunset. The queue for Immigration was a bit nerve-wracking as we didn’t actually get VISAs in the end before leaving the UK, but we got in anyway so all was good. We then started the 2.5 hour drive from the Airport to our accommodation (at this point we still didn’t know where it would be - the driver didn’t speak English, but seemed to know where to take us).
Where can I start on Sri Lankan Driving… my old saying that its not too close unless you hit rings true here. I did not know it was possible to fit a car, 2 bikes, 2 three-wheelers and a cow side by side across a road, but it turns out you can! Overtaking seems to occur primarily on corners (especially around the inside of corners), with busses overtaking lorries favouring this tactic mainly. Luckily in our tiredness induced stupor we found this experience fun, not realising the eternal danger we were in.
Finally we arrived at our accommodation – A friend of our lab supervisor who has offered us his spare room with en suite as accommodation. After an extensive search for things with more legs than we have, we went to bed after our 48 hours of sleep deprivation joy, and thought about what would happen when we finally saw this country in the day time!
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