Its fun to stay at the YMCA!

Ok so I have now recovered from our weekend in Colombo, and ALOT happened there, so I will almost certainly miss out some relatively major chunks!

We got the 6:20 train from Peradiniya to Colombo, stepped off the train and exited the station (the train journeys themselves are worthy of their own blog post... which I will probably make). Colombo is not a pretty place... the smell of sulphur billowing from the green (??) river was our first clue that this was not going to be a tropical paradise. This feeling was confirmed when we saw our first dozen beggars, and were harrassed by our first 20 or so Tuk-Tuks "Where you going... I take you... Where you going... Why you walking..." SHUT UP! There was the standard array of con artists who asked "do you not recognise me from your hotel" and "I friend, I show you to room", and litter scattered all over the place. This was confounded by the police officers armed with AKs placed every hundred metres down every road, and the military patrols that we saw going about the place!

We decided that before we tried to explore any further, we would find out where we would be staying that night, so we walked over the the YMCA and asked to see our room. The outside of the building was less than attractive, but thats nothing compared to the room! When flushed the toilet sprayed everywhere, the sheets which we knew were once white were a shade of brown, the window consisted of a peice of plastic dangling down from the outside of the building! Still, for 2 pounds a night, we were both convinced we could cope with this if we went and bought cheap camp beds, so we set off to do some shopping.

First stop was Majestic City, the City Mall, which featured 5-6 shops selling counterfeit DVDs, just as many selling illegally aquired designer clothing, and a spatting of shops selling random assortments of technology and tat. Needless to say I now own some Armarni and Boss clothing, and Ben went a bit nuts on burbarry, and we picked up the whole series of "The Pacific" for about 7 pounds... When in Rome...

We then checked out the "beach" at Colombo, which consisted of a railway track, broken glass and a weird green tint to the water that looked like food colouring (same colour as the sulphur river). We were not overly impressed with Colombo at this point, as you might guess, so we tried to check out some of the cultural aspects of the city, checking out the National museum. Now I do object to tourists paying 500 Rupees when locals pay 5 to get into a museum, but it was still worth it, despite the "white tax", as we got to look at the full history of the island, and learn about the ancient ruins of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa which we should be visiting this weekend. We stopped off on the seafront for a bit of dinner, which was great until the horizontal rain drove us back to the YMCA to consider staying for the night, despite not finding camp beds.

We reached the pit of horror, and thought "we will just take off the matress and sleep on the planks, we will probably be ok". 3 fleas and a moment of joint fear later we found ourself checking into the grand oriental hotel for the night. We had warm showers :) then set off to the club underneath the hotel to see what the Colombo nightlife could be like. I first sensed problems when we were told as we went down the stairs that "it was fine to touch" as the bouncer grabbed my moob. a minute later we were sitting at the bar with scantily clad women introducing themselves to us... another minute later we had "left something in our room" and had escaped! Next thing we see is a car with one man and three women crawl past us roll down its window, and have one of the girls proclaim "hello" in that way only special women can...

Not too badly phased we wandered away and found our way to a british style pub called "In... on the green" where we met and chatted to several slovakian girls who were travelling Sri Lanka for 3 weeks. We had a pint of 9% beer, 2 shots of arrack (a kind of whisky made from coconuts) and felt far too tipsy before heading back to the hotel for the night.

The next day was much more tame, as we headed to Alusgema, a coastal resort south of Kandy. It had stretches of fantastic golden beaches, a sea so warm it could have been bath water, and of course the touts who appear from the bushes to offer you a hotel to stay in, a place to eat... and of course "English boys really like Sri Lankan girls, do you want to meet any?"... Brilliant.

After this we made the several hour (as all journeys are) journey back into Colombo and out into the suburbs to meet up with miss Di Luzio and Khema in a place where I still dont know where it is... We just got off the bus when we were told! We had an awesome night of shisha, lasange (I miss western food) and the highlight, swimming in the cobra pool in a lightning storm (dont worry, we hit the water with a big stick before getting in to make sure the cobras werent in there at the time!).

The next day, we went back to Colombo to renew our Visas, and travelled to mount lavina, a decent beach near Colombo before heading back to Kandy. In true tradition, we used our "white persons credibility" (the ability of white people to never be questioned when they walk into expensive hotels) to walk down to a private beach, and enjoy a few hours reading and feeding palm squirrels nuts (check them out they are adorable). We took the train back to Kandy and wandered home. The culmination of the trip was when I arrived home, felt ill and just CHUNDERED EVERYWHERE! (had to say it) We still cant figure out what it was that destroyed my stomach but I'm just going to blame Colombo and its filth!