A few days ago Bob and I returned from an adventurous trip to the country of Sri Lanka. It all started when the daughter of a friend started Instagramming from her trip to Sri Lanka last year. We loved her pictures, and when she posted a photo of a sloth bear, that sealed it for Bob.
• Location
To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure where Sri Lanka was. I even asked, "Is it near Ceylon?" I was embarrassed to learn that Sri Lanka IS Ceylon, and has been since I was 12 years old. Ceylon was the name of this large island when it was a British Crown Colony between 1815-1948. In 1948 Ceylon became politically independent of Britain, and in 1972 it became a republic and adopted its new name of Sri Lanka
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| Google maps |
I have seen Sri Lanka described as "the teardrop of India." Perhaps India is mourning the fact that this beautiful gem is not part of their country.
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| Google maps |
• Culture and Religion
While the two countries have many things in common, there are significant differences, not the least of which is the significant difference in religion.
SRI LANKA: INDIA
70.2% Buddhsm 79.8% Hinduism
12.6% Hinduism 14.2% Islam
9.7% Islam 2.3% Christianity
7.4% Christianity 1.7% Sikhism
0.1% Other/None 0.7% Buddhism
0.4% Jainism
0.9% Other
Buddhism shapes almost every aspect of Sri Lanka's culture, and there are Buddhist shrines everywhere.
• Size and Population
It is interesting to compare Sri Lanka to India and also to the United States. Note the differences in population density and GDP:
SRI LANKA
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INDIA
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UNITED STATES
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Area
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25,330 sq. mi.
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1,269,219 sq. mi.
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3,796,742 sq. mi.
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Population
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21,670,000
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1,324,171,354
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327,167,434
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Population density
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847 people/sq. mi.
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1,038 people/sq. mi.
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85 people/sq. mi.
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GDP (PPP) per capita
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$13,500
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$7,795
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$62,518
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The US is about 150 times larger than Sri Lanka, but has only 15 times the population. That is something that really surprised us on our trip. We did not expect Sri Lanka to be as crowded as it is.
Compare Sri Lanka to the state I live in:
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| Map taken from this website |
It is actually about the same size as West Virginia, but it has twelve times the population!
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| Map taken from this website |
Why all this matters is because our first piece of advice:
• Driving
DON'T RENT A CAR. Not only is the steering wheel on the right side and they drive on the left side of the road (opposite from us, British style), but the roads are very crowded. Traffic is incredibly crazy and obeys a completely different set of rules than we have in the U.S. For example, the horn is used to let someone know that you are passing or that you are next to them. No one seemed to honk out of frustration! Lots of passing happened in the face of oncoming traffic, and everyone just slid over a bit to make it work. We were often driving down very narrow city streets with only inches between our car and the one going the other way. There are millions (literally) of slow-driving three-wheelers, the taxis of Sri Lanka, on the road that drivers need to be aware of.
Probably more than any other country we have every traveled to, we would not want to be behind the wheel here, and according to our guide, it would not be legal for us to drive.
Which leads to more advice:
• Guide
Hire a driver/guide. We were fortunate to have the owner of Lankatracker, a highly rated wildlife safari company in Sri Lanka, as our driver and guide for the entire time we were in the country. We cannot say enough good things about Sanjay, a native Sri Lankan who knows his way around the country and may be the best animal spotter we have ever had (which is saying a lot as we have gone on safari in at least six African countries).
There are many subspecies that are found only on Sri Lanka. It's a nature lover's paradise, and having a good guide who really knows what he is talking about is important. Sanjay is a licensed naturalist, one of very few in Sri Lanka. He could name anything we pointed to.
Sanjay also picked up on our interests quickly, adding an extra elephant safari for me, spending time to identify birds for Bob, and stopping at roadside stands to get us bananas or other local fruit, like this bag of jackfruit:
. . . and this plate of mangostins (my new favorite fruit in all the world):
• Itinerary
Planning an itinerary is important, and Sanjay's other half, his wife Christine, was as incredible as her husband. She and Bob worked out a pretty complex customized itinerary that got us to everything on our list. She checked in often with Sanjay to discuss driving routes, see how things were going, etc. On our last day she had a man (one of Sanjay's many connections) waiting on a street corner with two Sri Lankan cookbooks for me to take home because she too had picked up on some of our interests.
An interesting thing about Christine is that she is British, and I think that is a real strength for this duo as she understands the Western mindset well. They make an unbeatable team.
• Visa
You need a visa to enter Sri Lanka, but be careful about where you order it. Bob ordered ours through a third-party website where he had to pay an extra amount of money to get the visa. He says we ended up spending an extra $50.00 or so, over and above the approved amount. He notes it was well-disguised so that he didn't realize it wasn't the actual government site until it was too late. He did some research later and saw all kinds of people complaining about it. However, we did get our visas (printed on an 8.5 x 11" piece of white paper), and they got us into the country, so it all worked out.
• Time Zone
Sri Lanka is 12.5 hours ahead of California when California is on Daylight Savings Time, and 13.5 hours ahead when it is on Standard Time. We've never been in a time zone that used a half-hour increment. It was weird, and somehow it made it harder for me to figure out what time it was at home. Before we left, however, I had installed a great app called "World Clock - Time Zones" on my phone that helped me a lot. It's free and very easy to use. This is what the app looks like in the App store:
This is what I saw on my screen:
• Currency
We always use the airport ATM to pick up our first batch of local currency. We flew into Colombo, Sri Lanka, and there are two ATM machines in the area just before travelers exit the airport building. Using the machine was easy. The most any machine would give us was 50,000 rupees, which is about $280.00 at the current exchange rate of 178 rupees/$1 US. Most often, the rupees came out in mostly 5,000 bills, with perhaps a few lower denominations.
That's a problem because you need lower denominations (100 rupee bills) to pay tips. Sanjay often had to cover our tips, and then we would keep track and pay him back at the end of the day. The entire time we were there, we were given a coin as change only once.
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| 20 rupees = $0.11, and 1000 rupees = $5.60 |
178 rupees/1 dollar is not an easy conversion to make, but I had downloaded a new app before we left that did the conversion for me. It is called "Currency," is free in the App Store, and works offline. It is super easy to use. I will definitely keep this one around for future foreign travel. Here is what it looks like in the App Store and what it looks like in use on my phone:
• Charge Cards
We used cash for most of our admission fees and tips, but we were able to use our credit cards, even the American Express occasionally, for meals and bigger purchases.
Food and Water
We mostly ate at our hotels. We usually had what was called "half board," or dinner and breakfast included with our room. We would have liked to be a little more adventurous, eating where the locals do, but Sanjay was always concerned about our health and was very careful about where we ate. At least most of the restaurants we went to had a "western" half and an "eastern" (Sri Lankan) half. We ate the Sri Lankan food. Why travel and then eat what you can eat at home?
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| The Sri Lankan side of the buffet |
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| There is always plenty of yummy fruit. |
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| This is one of my two favorite meals. More about it later! |
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| Hopper with egg, another one of my favorites. It's like a bowl-shaped crepe with a runny egg in it topped by coconut sambol. Delicious. |
As for the water, not even Sanjay drinks water from the tap. There were always a couple of bottles of water in our hotel room, and Sanjay kept our car well-stocked with water as well. I did brush my teeth with tap water (although my husband used bottled water), and I remained healthy throughout. Still, it is a good idea to bring Immodium for diarrhea. We also always carry a prescription antibiotic that we get through the travel clinic at Kaiser, where we are insured.
• Toilets
Sanjay asked me to give him 20-30 minutes warning if I thought I might need a restroom. Like most African/Asian countries we have been to, the locals mostly use squat toilets (called "eastern style"), and he somehow knew that wouldn't "sit" well with me. Nevertheless, I did visit one restroom where that was the only option, and it was at the theater where we saw a cultural music and dance show designed for tourists!
It's also a good idea to always have a small package of tissues with you. Most of the restrooms do not have toilet paper and instead have a woman passing out three or four squares to each guest as she enters (and you should tip her). Several times I would have been out of luck if I hadn't had my own supply.
• Safety
Never at any time did we feel threatened or that we were in danger. Everyone was friendly, and there seems to be no animosity towards foreigners in general or Americans in particular. We asked our guide how Sri Lankans feel about President Trump, and he told us that he is liked because he opposes China, a country out-of-favor with Sri Lanka.
There are a LOT of dogs on the street, and they all look the same: medium-sized, short hair, and quiet. They are called "street dogs" and usually belong to someone, but they are free to roam and rarely have a collar. They are quite passive. I never had one come up to me to sniff or paw me. Pretty much they sleep in the shade during the hot day. I don't think I even heard one bark!
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| They are different colors, but otherwise they look the same. |
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| This street dog dug a burrow for himself in a pile of dirt. |
Speaking of finding shade on a hot day, be prepared for sweltering, humid, relentless heat. It was pretty much 95℉ or hotter when we were there, with a couple of days a little cooler than that when we were in the mountains. The humidity felt very high. It took just a few minutes of walking around in the sun before we were drenched in sweat.
It's a good idea to bring a sunhat, although you can also buy one from one of the numerous local vendors at archaeological sites who weave them out of coconut leaves, which is what we did. They are just a few dollars, very lightweight, and large enough for our big heads.We ended up leaving our hats with Sanjay for use by his future guests. They would probably smash up okay in a suitcase and rebound upon unpacking, but it seemed like too much trouble and we were short on space.
My husband, who tends to sweat a lot, also had a lightweight towel that he could use to wipe his face. He found that very helpful.
• Clothing
Besides a hat, it is critical that you bring long pants and a pair of socks you can easily take on and off if you are wearing sandals or flip-flops. This is the single biggest piece of advice I wish someone had given us. At all the Buddhist temples and shrines, guests must take off their hats and shoes, and they are not allowed in if they are in shorts and/or tank tops. (It's especially nice--and respectful--if you have white or light colors to wear, as that is what the Buddhists themselves wear to the temples/shrines.)
I did not take a single pair of socks other than my heavy compression stockings, so I had to walk around barefoot every time we went to a temple or shrine. In 95° F weather, you can imagine what the natural stone floors feel like on your feet. Do you really want to walk on something hot enough to fry an egg on? The locals might be used to it, but we certainly were not. When we started to feel heat blisters on our feet, it did keep us from seeing some of the things we might otherwise have walked around.
• Cell Phones and Internet
Our provider, Verizon, has a $10/day international plan that gives us unlimited data and texting. Not all countries are covered, but Sri Lanka is. It was worth the extra expense to be able to whip out the cell phone to look something up, text the kids, check my email, and post to Instagram whenever I wanted. Wifi was spotty in our hotels and often only available in common areas, which made our private access even nicer.
• Plug Converters
It's been years since I've had to take a voltage converter anywhere. Nowadays electronics are all dual voltage, as are my curling iron and travel hair dryer (which I'm glad I brought along as several of the hotel hair dryers were barely blowing air). All you should need is a plug converter, unless you have an outdated item.
I was very confused when I researched plug converters. So many different types were cited as the type to bring along! I ended up bringing three different ones, just because I couldn't figure out which one to bring and I didn't want to be stranded without one: Types D, M and G.
Well, it turns out that I didn't use the Type M at all, which is like the Type D except it has fatter, longer prongs. (It's what we used in South Africa.) I did use both of the other adapters, usually at the same hotel, because rooms would either have outlets like these that allowed for multiple configurations:
Or they would have one kind by the bed and another kind on the desk. Crazy. The typical European two-round-prongs plug would have worked in several places, and I was even able to plug in without an adapter at all in a few places.
However, outlets were limited in most of our rooms, so I would recommend an adapter that gives you two plugs for one adapter, like this one, available for $6.99 on Amazon:
When you have camera batteries, a phone, and a watch to charge, and there are two of you, these 2-for-1 adapters can be very helpful.
Even the Emirates Airline gets into the multiple plugs thing:
• Airline
Speaking of Emirates Airline, this was our first flight with them, and we were generally impressed by their service and available perks. Forbes magazine ranks Emirates as the sixth best airline in the world. (No US airlines make it into their top ten.)
Bob was mostly excited about the uniforms of their flight attendants, which he calls "funky."
We were both excited when no one claimed the third seat in our row on our flight from LAX to Dubai, a 16+ hour flight, and we could spread out. (No such luck on the return trip.)
They gave us a very nice swag bag: a padded cosmetic case with socks, a toothbrush, an eye mask, and earplugs:
Emirates Airline has a really good selection of movies. Between the two of us during our 32-34 hours on the plane, I think we watched about 14 of them. They also have something I haven't seen on a plane before (although maybe I haven't looked)--a camera that shows you more or less what the pilots see. The resolution wasn't great, but it was fun to watch as we flew into Dubai.
There are no direct flights from LAX to Colombo. Sanjay noted that there just aren't many American tourists in Sri Lanka. They get mostly Europeans and Asians. Our layover was in Dubai. We flew from Los Angeles, over the North Pole, and down to Dubai, had a 4- or 5-hour layover (and a 7-hour layover on the way back), and then flew 4.5 more hours southeast to Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka. It is a l-o-n-g journey.
If you have a tendency towards swollen ankles, and even if you don't, compression socks are a must. I couldn't find mine for the first leg of the journey home, and by the time we reached Dubai, my ankles looked like tree trunks. I bought a pair in the Dubai Airport, but it was too late. I still had elephant ankles when we got to LAX 17 hours later.
Dubai Airport is ENORMOUS, and it is the world's busiest airport for international traffic and third-busiest for overall passenger traffic. This is NOT the place to plan for a one-hour layover. It took us about an hour-and-a-half to deplane, be shuttled to another terminal, and walk to our new gate. I wouldn't want to attempt anything less than a two-hour layover in this airport.
We had to laugh when the first thing we saw was Krispy Kreme:
Later on, at our new gate, we noted other US fast food chains:
The menus looked pretty much like what we are used to, with the exception of a lack of ham/pork. In this Muslim country, that makes sense.
However, most of the airports we've been in don't have a date aisle that is as big as the chocolate bar aisle in Duty Free:
Nor do they sell dates rather than scoops of gelato:
And I don't remember seeing Aladdin's lamps and camel tchotkes at LAX:
. . . or camel milk chocolate:
• Final Words
That's everything I learned in preparing for and taking the trip, or that I wish I had known before I left. Getting ready for this trip and the travel time to get there was a little more intense than some of the trips we've taken. Give yourself plenty of time to plan and prepare. An incredible journey awaits you!
Stay tuned for more posts about Sri Lanka.
Love how you embraced all of this! Really, a wonderful read and thanks for the "shout out" very much appreciated!
ReplyDeleteGreat listing of all those things you don't think about until it's too late. We should all print this, adapt it for our intended country and check things off.
ReplyDelete