December 12
We woke up around 7:00. One of us slept well then there was
me. We showered and went down to an English breakfast of toast, tea, and scrambled
eggs. We called Mr. Kularathna (Mr. K) and off we went. Today we wanted to
visit some more of the places we are familiar with in Colombo. Great photo
opportunities for Ron. But first, we made a coffee stop at Cinnamon Grand Hotel and
had our first coffee since Monday morning in Thailand. We enjoyed Americanos
and pain au raisin.
We went downstairs by the koi pond to see if one of our
favorite restaurants still was there. Nope. It is now a Chinese restaurant and
not our fave cuisine.
We headed next to
Pettah, an old area of Colombo where you can experience a chaotic market place.
Ron has some great pics showing the traffic (OMG), merchants, shoppers and
workers.
Please note the men pushing wooden carts loaded with merchandise.
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| A Hindu Temple |
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| The red Moque |
Most of the businesses in
Pettah are dominated by Muslims who specialize in trading of goods and the
Tamil traders from India who specialize in gold and jewelry shops. Sri Lanka is dominated by Sinhalese who are
Buddhist, followed by Tamils who are Hindus, followed by Arabs who are Muslim
and there are Catholics due to the Portuguese invasion several centuries ago.
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| Traditional Indian Saris |
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| Women Police |
The people of Pettah represent all classes and ethnicities. Note the various styles of dress.
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| A Muslim couple |
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| Men in sarongs rather than pants |
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| Buddhist monk |
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| So. Indian Kurta |
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| More traditional Saris |
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| The First tourist hotel in Sri Lanka |
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| The Cargills Company Building |
Sri Lanka was colonized by
the Portuguese in 1505. Dutch Ceylon
existed from 1640 until 1796 The British ruled from 1815 until 1948.
After weaving our way
through traffic, we went to the Old Dutch Hospital shopping development. We
picked up three gifts for friends back home then ate a simple lunch at a café
there.
We have been awed by the
number of huge upscale developments in progress here. I have no idea who will
be living in these very expensive large apartments overlooking the India Ocean
but there are numerous high rises under construction. We asked our friends here
about who lives or will be living in these apartments and they said they have
no idea but many of them are vacant. They also felt there isn’t the class of
people here who can afford to live in these luxury apartments.
We came home and rested
briefly then went to The Asia Foundation. Ron did a project here in 2004-05 and
he was based at The Asia Foundation. Our friend Suba worked on the project with
Ron and today he had arranged a gathering there of people who had worked on the
project. It was a great reunion with lots of funny stories to share about
things that happened at the time. Our favorite was the story about one of the
workers who had put the air conditioning remote in his pocket by mistake and
tried to make a phone call using the remote, thinking it was his cell phone.
Short eats and tea were served. Short eats are various small fried wraps
containing either ground meat or veggies, usually spicy as most SL food is.
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| Suba |
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| Anton |
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| Don Brownell |
Anton and his wife Dushy gave us a ride home. Later we
caught a trishaw and ate at our favorite Indian restaurant. It was as good as
we remembered.
Please note the men pushing wooden carts loaded with merchandise.
Love the memories! . . . and the photos!
ReplyDeleteTricia, as always, thanks for bringing us along for the ride. Love the way you capture the diversity of people, your descriptions of the food and cultural observations, such as "Who's going to live in those fancy new apartments?" And Suba's answer that they're mostly vacant. I was excited to see there are women police in Sri Lanka.
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